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Continuing the line of coast to the westward, the expedition passed through the most wretched and desolate country imaginable, consisting almost entirely of a table-land, or of undulating ridges, covered for the most part with dense scrubs, and almost wholly without either grass or water.
After that the moon rose, and the landmarks, which had seemed more or less familiar in daylight, lost their remembered featurings. During the first few miles the trail had led broadly across the table-land, with the eastern mountains withdrawing and the Lost River Range looming larger as its lofty sky-line was struck out sharply against the sunset horizon.
They had not noticed the wind much as they drove along; but now, when they went out on to the high table-land of rock, it seemed to be blowing half a gale across the sea. The sunlight sparkled on the glass of the lighthouse, and the great yellow shaft of stone stretched away upward into a perfect blue.
On the grass table-land at its summit is ample camping-ground, which had been utilised as a military cantonment of no mean strength. Its ordinary garrison was one regiment of three thousand men, but as we toiled up the steep side of the mountain in the returning moonlight we perceived that there were several of such regiments encamped there.
The view from the Imposible is finer and more extensive than that from the table-land of Quetepe. The rocky coast of the peninsula of Araya was discernible in its whole length. We were particularly struck with the extraordinary configuration of a port, known by the name of Laguna Grande, or Laguna del Obispo.
This "Chaumes" was a sort of table-land composed of a single stone, and this rock, which undulated slightly, was covered with a carpet of short, dry fragrant plants that snapped under our feet; and a whole world of tiny gayly-colored butterflies and tinier moths fluttered among the rare and delicate flowers growing there.
The colours have grown faint by action of insweeping wind and weather; but this lends a pathos to the light-hearted, highly-artificial art, emphasising the contrast between it and its immediate surroundings. For the Temple stands on a platform of turf at the extreme point of the spur of table-land.
Had they received them from the north, that is, from the country pointed out by the Indians of the Rio Negro, which extends from the mountains of Cayenne towards the sources of the Essequibo, the Carony, the Orinoco, the Parime, and the Rio Trombetas? or did they come from the south by the Rio Topayos, which descends from the vast table-land of the Campos Parecis?
On the north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of Persia rise abruptly to great heights; on the south-western side, a more gradual ascent leads to a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad in the south, where it is occupied by the deserts of Arabia and of Southern Syria, narrows, northwards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is continued by the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antilebanon, and the Taurus, into the highlands of Armenia.
Thus strengthened, the French army marched towards the Portuguese frontier, and Lord Wellington, who had determined not to hazard much by his blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo, fell back upon the large table-land beyond the Turones and the Dos Casas, with his left at Fort Conception, and his right resting upon Fuentes d'Onoro.
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