The Fire Was Thrown To A Great Height; The Fountains And Jets All Wallowed Together; New Ones Appeared, And Danced Joyously Round The Margin, Then Converging Towards The Centre They Merged Into One Glowing Mass, Which Upheaved Itself Pyramidally And Disappeared With A Vast Plunge.

Then innumerable billows of fire dashed themselves into the air, crashing and lashing, and the lake dividing itself recoiled

On either side, then hurling its fires together and rising as if by upheaval from below, it surged over the temporary rim which it had formed, passing downwards in a slow majestic flow, leaving the central surface swaying and dashing in fruitless agony as if sent on some errand it failed to accomplish.

Farewell, I fear for ever, to the glorious Hale-mau-mau, the grandest type of force that the earth holds! "Break, break, break," on through the coming years,

"No more by thee my steps shall be, No more again for ever!"

It seemed a dull trudge over the black and awful crater, and strange, like half-forgotten sights of a world with which I had ceased to have aught to do, were the dwarf tree-ferns, the lilies with their turquoise clusters, the crimson myrtle blossoms, and all the fair things which decked the precipice up which we slowly dragged our stiff and painful limbs. Yet it was but the exchange of a world of sublimity for a world of beauty, the "place of hell," for the bright upper earth, with its endless summer, and its perennial foliage, blossom, and fruitage.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 84 of 466
Words from 23000 to 23257 of 127766