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186 All preparations being now made, my wires were connected. We bade adieu to the ladies, and started off. Knowing, as I now did, what country we were in, I tried to recognise it as we passed along. I had known it well in days of yore, and I found that my recollections had not failed me. The hills and valleys were all the same, and the rivers and streams still ran in the same courses, but otherwise the country was entirely changed. The vegetation was much more luxuriant, the villages and towns, the iron-works, the factories, the railways, and the canals were all gone, and in their places was an endless number of little modest-looking villas, such as the one I had slept in last night, surrounded by gardens laid out with the utmost care. Here you would see a great clump of magnificent forest trees, and yonder, a number of patches of flowering shrubs all arranged with a view to effective landscape decoration. There was a master-hand visible in the whole, but there was no stereotyped regularity. If you could imagine some great being taking up handfuls