Page:Ling-Nam; or, Interior views of southern China, including explorations in the hitherto untraversed island of Hainan (IA cu31924023225307).pdf/214

 210 Ling-Nanu.

day. The roseate hue of the early dawn tinges them with a colour, and lights up their dark-green sides with a beanty all its own. In the increasing light, which reveals their form more distinctly, showing here and there the rude gash of some land-slide, or the glaring white surface of some crystalline rock, or the sparse covering of trees on the upper slopes, much of the subtle charm and mellowness disappears. The clond-shadows cast by the noon-day light flit dreamily over their sides, soothing us into content; but this charm is sometimes broken by the shimmer of heat rays, which blind us as we look. As the day declines their charms return, and as the rich purple hues of evening spread their royal mantle over the wide expanse, a mysterious chain, woven by unseen hands, draws us toward the great mountains, and the human spirit is brought into sympathy and communion with the Divine Spirit through these noble works of His hands. The eye never wearies in its gaze, until the veil of naystery grows thicker with the deepening shadows, and, the darkness falling, shuts out the vision from our sight, but, not from our mind, where tt continues to live and repeat itself in after days, the halo of distance and lapse of time only softening its charms.

As we draw near, the mountains that have attracted us assume more definite shape. We see them to be a detached group of unique formation, and not the dividing range between this and the adjoining province, as we had supposed. As their outline becomes better defined, certain features are seen more clearly. White surfaces here and there indicate the kind of rock, marble perhaps, to be found. A waterfall of grand proportions is seen