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 angle of some forty-five degrees, and they
were clothed from base to summit- not a perceptible point escaping- in
a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a green
leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuating color.
This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the water that
the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of small round
alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by glimpses- that is to say,
whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the
inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On these
latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size. The
impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth,
color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness,
voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that suggested
dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and
fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, from
its sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid the
folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to
fancy a panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden
onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky.
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