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It was, indeed, an immense undertaking that had been accomplished; for the whole of the wood and iron work, of thirteen ships, had to be carried for upwards of sixty miles, over a difficult and mountainous country.
At eight o'clock in the evening, reckoning as above ground, where there is day and night, we are not more than two leagues from the mighty beast. Its long, black, enormous, mountainous body, lies on the top of the water like an island. But then sailors have been said to have gone ashore on sleeping whales, mistaking them for land. Is it illusion, or is it fear?
Now they traverse a level valley to emerge at the foot of a mountainous region that must be attacked with alpenstocks and helping hands. "Oh, look at that awfully dark place! It might be Pluto's hallway," said a girl. "Don't go that way," called the guide; "you must just follow me. There is where that stranger strayed off and was never heard of again.
But, in such a mountainous sea as was then running, the horizon of a person in a boat is naturally very restricted, and I knew that, although I had failed to catch a glimpse of either the wreck or the raft, the latter at least might be afloat, and my plain duty was to remain in the neighbourhood so long as there was any chance of falling in with it; I therefore watched my opportunity and, seizing a favourable moment, wore the boat round on the other tack and, again bringing her to the wind, went back as nearly over the ground I had already traversed as was possible.
But in that instant she was almost certain that she had seen a faint streak of light from a crack at the side of one of the heavily shuttered windows! The next morning dawned windy and wet. A heavy northeast gale had whipped the sea into gray, mountainous waves. A fine drizzle beat in one's face through the slightest opening of door or window.
Tom Collins, who was a good judge of heights, having travelled in several mountainous regions of the world, estimated the nearest precipices to be upwards of three thousand feet, without a break from top to bottom, but the ranges in the background towered far above these, and must have been at least double. "I never saw anything like this before, Tom," said Ned, in a suppressed voice.
At a distance could be faintly seen the towers of a city; while beyond, the sea stretched like a blue wall, far as the eye could see. Inland the country was broken and mountainous; the hills being, in all cases, thickly covered with trees. From two points, in the heart of these hills, white smoke curled up, as soon as the smoke of their fire died away.
In Ireland and Scotland improvements also went on apace, but not so rapidly as in England, as might have been expected, considering the mountainous nature of these countries. In Scotland the first modern stage-coach was introduced in 1776.
"Physically the island has lost none of its picturesque character, so vividly portrayed by Abbe Rochon more than a century ago, who wrote 'The Traveler, who in pursuit of knowledge traverses for the first time wild and mountainous countries, intersected by ridges and valleys, where nature, abandoned to its own fertility, presents the most singular and varied productions, cannot help being struck with terror and surprise on viewing those awful precipices, the summits of which are covered with trees as ancient perhaps as the world.
Some weakness of his sight compels the use of tinted spectacles, and he had now turned these, with a pair of particularly observant eyes behind them, upon the scattered British forces and the long exposed line of railway. De Wet's force was an offshoot from the army of Freestaters under De Villiers, Olivier, and Prinsloo, which lay in the mountainous north-east of the State.
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