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the ravine (through which the clear water still tranquilly flowed) arose
to an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty
feet, and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to
shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which depended
densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the whole
chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more frequent and
intricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon themselves, so
that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. He was, moreover,
enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature
still remained, but her character seemed to have undergone modification,
there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety
in these her works. Not a dead branch--not a withered leaf--not a stray
pebble--not a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal
water welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with
a sharpness of outline that delighted while it bewildered the eye.
Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom
deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel
brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin of
very considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. It
was about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but
one--that immediately fronting the vessel as it entered--by hills equal
in general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly
different character. Their sides sloped from the water's edge at an
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