Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/538

472 to paint the gloriousness of the expanse of hills and plains revealed when these vapours melted before the morning sun, and, breaking, mounted up in contorted masses to the clouds above; or of Kartery, three thousand feet lower, with its waterfall, and plantations of white-flowering coffee. He would essay to lead the reader up the declivity of the Mukortee peak, and bid him lie down upon the brink, and look into the abyss from the summit of the sheer, unbroken, perpendicular precipice; and then, withdrawing him, roll into the chasm the stone on which his elbow had leaned, and let him listen to its echoing thunders as it reverberated in its fall to the depths below; or would invite him to journey to Sisparah, the summit of the pass to the western coast of India, to look out upon huge buttresses of granite mountain clothed with a forest dense, deep, unbroken,—the abode of the wild elephant, the tiger, the buffalo, and ten thousand smaller beasts,—and stretching in one sheet of living green from the summit of the pass to its base, miles distant, and far away into the plains of Malabar. But it would be in vain; such scenes must be the reward of toilsome journeys and laborious ascents. Great and glorious are these works of God; most