Recollecting the gallery under Niagara
Falls, I wondered if some similar natural formation was to be
looked for here.
"Now, in the light of the morning sun, looking around me from the
little plateau upon which I stood, and remembering a vague
description of the country which had been given to me, I decided
that I was indeed in the neighbourhood of the Temple of Fire.
"We had followed a fairly well-defined path right to this
plateau, and that it was nothing less than the high road to the
citadel of Fire-Tongue, I no longer doubted. Beneath me stretched
a panorama limned in feverish greens and unhealthy yellows.
Scarlike rocks striated the jungle clothing the foothills, and
through the dancing air, viewed from the arid heights, they had
the appearance of running water.
"Swamps to the southeast showed like unhealing wounds upon the
face of the landscape. Beyond them spread the lower river waters,
the bank of the stream proper being discernible only by reason of
a greater greenness in the palm-tops. Venomous green slopes
beyond them again, a fringe of dwarf forest, and the brazen
skyline.
"On the right, and above me yet, the path entered a district of
volcanic rocks, gnarled, twisted, and contorted as with the
agonies of some mighty plague which in a forgotten past had
seized on the very bowels of the world and had contorted whole
mountains and laid waste vast forests and endless plains.
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