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56 peaks were twenty miles high at the least, and the ring was greater than a couple of good-sized counties. The lowlands were still half hidden by floating clouds. I can hardly describe that huge mountain-chain. We have nothing on earth so gigantic. Precipices of miles high, jagged peaks of shining rocks, hanging terraces clad with what looked like vegetation of many hues; soft yellows, delicate pinks, and especially pale blues.

"At last it seemed I was approaching one of the peaks. I rested there. There was no snow, though so high, and the rock was bare. It was like an earth rock, but of no stone that I had ever seen. I looked around me on that wonderful spectacle. Lines of colossal mountains, chain beyond chain, were on one side of me; on the other, an immense expanse of low country stretched in a huge amphitheatre, partly shining in the blazing sunlight, partly shadowed by the huge ranges of distant peaks—a land divided between day and twilight.

"Then my dream changed. I felt that I was slowly sinking lower and lower into that vast valley. As I sank, it appeared that the sun set amid the gigantic mountains. A vast lake lay at my feet, and in it a large island with