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The graceful hills are studded with trees and waving corn-fields; here and there a rock peeps picturesquely forth; cottages and distant châteaux are betrayed by their glittering slate roofs; islets as wild as those of the South Sea rise on the bosom of the waters like verdure-clad rafts, and no Captain Cook has ever mentioned these Otaheites a half-day's journey from Paris.

Finally we decided to go to Geneva and then choose some resting place in the Alps. Brigitte was enthusiastic about the lake; I thought I could already breathe the air which floats over its surface, and the odor of the verdure-clad valley; already I beheld Lausanne, Vevey, Oberland, and in the distance the summits of Monte Rosa and the immense plain of Lombardy.

In some ways they are important, for the reason that they serve to carry the desert sand into regions previously verdure-clad, and thus to extend the bounds of the desolate fields in which they originate.

Imagine that from beneath the shade of feathery palms and broad-leaved bananas through a network of ferns and creepers you are looking upon the Staubbach, in Switzerland, magnified in height, and with a background of verdure-clad mountains, and you will have some idea of the fall of Fuatawah."

His glance wandered from the shore over the surface of the pool. It was a long sheet of water, more an exaggerated reach in a stream than a lake, for except along the sandy margin below him, the water everywhere rippled right up to the dense verdure-clad slopes of the hills. A curious discolouration appeared in a streak across the pool at the far end.

Imagine that from beneath the shade of feathery palms and broad-leaved bananas through a network of ferns and creepers you are looking upon the Staubbach, in Switzerland, magnified in height, and with a background of verdure-clad mountains, and you will have some idea of the fall of Faataua as we beheld it.

It resembled the letter L. Along the sea line it stretched high and ugly for nearly a mile, a solid wall, he imagined, some three hundred feet above the water, narrow at the top, like a great backbone. The little cove below him was perhaps a mile across. The opposite shore was low and verdure-clad.

Presently he vanished among the trees that grew about two-thirds of the way up, and Thad saw only occasional glimpses of him from that moment onward; as the flying figure flashed across some little gap in the verdure-clad hillside; never failing to wave his arms reassuringly to the watcher.

It was a circular sheet of water, five miles in diameter, rimmed with white coral beaches, from which the verdure-clad slopes rose swiftly to the frowning crater walls. The crests of the walls were saw-toothed, volcanic peaks, capped and halo'd with captive trade-wind clouds.

Here were green valleys and verdure-clad mountains, here charming rural scenes and richly-yielding fields, here all that seems necessary to make life serene and happy. But here also dwelt uneasy man, and hither came devastating war, bringing with it the shadow of a frightful tragedy from which the people of Lesbos barely escaped.