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"Numerous shafts of columns, which are scattered about in all directions, remains of the walls of extensive buildings, and large heaps of rubbish covered with earth and overgrown with grass, give some, though a faint, idea of the splendour, of the ancient city, which at the time of its greatest splendour, at the beginning of our era, had eighty thousand inhabitants."
The cabin stood high upon a level terrace, with clusters of aspens behind it, and was sheltered from winter blasts by a gray cliff, picturesque and crumbling, with its face overgrown by creeping vines and colorful shrubs, Wilson Moore could not have chosen a more secluded and beautiful valley for his homesteading adventure.
His feet felt in the way, his arms seemed too long for practical purposes, his elbows had a way of invading other people's precincts, and his hands looked red and clammy. It occurred to him dimly that he was not a man after all, but only a big overgrown schoolboy, and that little Miss Saville knew as much, and was mildly pitiful of his shortcomings.
I examined it with feelings of intense anxiety, certain, as I was, that the flooded spaces, over which we had been travelling would, sooner or later, be succeeded by a country overgrown with reeds.
Everything is changed, the hills levelled, the valleys filled up, but he presently finds a strip of woodland near the shore edge, and a path much overgrown with blackberry-vines. He picks his way along, now and then meeting with a remembered aspect, when he comes across a sort of Swiss châlet on the sloping hillside.
The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe; and Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance.
The wall, too, was overgrown with ivy the broad ivy, whose spreading leaves hide every little stem that clasps the bosom of the hard stone, and, with most cunning wisdom, extracts sustenance from all it touches.
For one thing a big ditch faced them, its opposite bank overgrown with bramble bushes, and for another the sloping moss offered itself invitingly, like a cushioned sofa. So they lay side by side, watching the empty ditch, listening to the faint trickle of water tinkling down it.
During the night no sound was heard, but to everybody's surprise a distinct path up the mountain was noticed in the morning. It was so overgrown with weeds and moss and straggling creepers that it was obvious it had not been used for a long time. The ascent was accordingly difficult, but half way up the first sign of life, noticed since the expedition began, made itself visible. It was an eagle.
He approached his old home through overgrown plantations. It awed him to part the branches and to feel himself drawing nearer at every step to the only house he had ever called his own. As he heard the splashing waterfall he stopped, not daring for the moment to go on. When at last he did so, and mounted the little hill, he found no house at all; nothing but ferns and weeds, man-high.
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