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It was evident that they had been dispatched to follow and bring back this party, and that the signal from the bank was one that had been determined upon before they left the village. In a few moments the dugouts drew up to the verdure-clad bank. The native warriors filed out, and with them a half-dozen white men.
The prospect from this point embraces three-fourths of the island; majestic mountains clothed in virgin forests almost to their very crests; wide-spreading plains, green with the sugar-cane plantations; rich verdure-clad valleys where the shadows drowsily linger; and beyond, and all around, the dark blue shining sea with a fringe of pearly foam indicating the broken outline of the coast.
The barren and rocky highlands, terminated by the wild bluffs that so courageously plunge themselves into the waves, become gradually softened and verdure-clad as they slope downward, while the narrow valley itself is studded with trees and pretty homesteads. The people of "The Glens" are peculiar, primitive, and distinct.
The night was bright with the light of shining stars, and the sea, although the breeze was brisk, was smooth as a mountain lake, only the rip, ripy rip of the barque's cutwater and the bubbling sounds of her eddying wake broke the silence of the night. Ten miles away the verdure-clad peaks and spurs of lofty Bougainville stood clearly out, silhouetted against the sea-rim on the starboard hand.
The fantastic carvings, imitating architectural forms and suggesting rude but weird statuary, with the bright and varied colors of the rocks, conspire to make a scene such as the dweller in verdure-clad hills can scarcely appreciate. Standing on a high point, I can look off in every direction over a vast landscape, with salient rocks and cliffs glittering in the evening sun.
One prominent feature of this district has already attracted our attention; the number of deep ravines with which the whole plain is intersected. These natural clefts are marvellously lovely in their rich luxuriance of foliage, and with their precipitous sides and verdure-clad depths will recall the wonderful latomiè, the ancient stone-quarries of Syracuse.
As I lost sight of Villeneuve-la-Guiard, I forgot the sad drama of human misery; methought it was happiness enough to live, sensitive the while of the beauty of the verdure-clad earth, the star-bespangled sky, and the tameless wind that lent animation to the whole. My horse grew tired and I, forgetful of his fatigue, still as he lagged, cheered him with my voice, and urged him with the spur.
The belt of destruction was about half a mile wide and three miles long. When the present writer last saw it, a quarter of a century ago, it was still a wilderness of great rocks, but here and there the process of their decay was giving a foothold for herbage, and in a few centuries the field will doubtless be so verdure-clad that its story will not be told on its face.
As we watch the verdure-clad sunlit space there descends, delicately fluttering, one of those splendid pale yellow brimstone butterflies of the South with flame-coloured blushes on its wings, and after some moments of graceful hesitation, this new visitor settles upon the purple head of an iris bloom.
Unbroken forests bounded this hidden Lake Profundis, out of whose placid waters rose that mountain-crowned, verdure-clad Island of Peace, with its picturesque home, and its cultured owner, who had brought into this best of the wilderness the best of civilization. "What is this mystery? How am I concerned in it? For I am, and mystery there is.
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