The Beauty Of The Locality Lay Entirely Within Itself.

Innumerable red ridges ornamented with fig-trees, rising out of green and grassy slopes, met the eye everywhere to the east, north, and northeast, and the country between each was just sufficiently timbered to add a charm to the view.

But the appearance of water still was wanting; no signs of it, or of any basin or hollow that could hold it, met the gaze in any direction, This alone was wanting to turn a wilderness into a garden.

There were four large mounts in this chain, higher than any of the rest, including the one I was on. Here we saw a quantity of what I at first thought were white sea-shells, but we found they were the bleached shells of land snails. Far away to the north some ranges appeared above the dense ocean of intervening scrubs. To the south, scrubs reigned supreme; but to the west, the region for which I was bound, the prospect looked far more cheering. The far horizon, there, was bounded by a very long and apparently connected chain of considerable elevation, seventy to eighty miles away. One conspicuous mountain, evidently nearer than the longer chain, bore 15 degrees to the south of west, while an apparent gap or notch in the more distant line bore 23 degrees south of west. The intervening country appeared all flat, and very much more open than in any other direction; I could discern long vistas of green grass, dotted with yellow immortelles, but as the perspective declined, these all became lost in lightly timbered country.

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