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The town is situated in a valley, with pretty gardens on every side, while in front is a lake-like expanse of water apparently surrounded by granite cliffs, the entrance being completely shut out from view. Vessels of considerable size were at anchor, showing that the water was deep.
Mandalay is at the upper end of this lake-like part of the Irrawaddy; it lies back and behind the river bank or bunda, so it is not visible from the river. Our steamer pulls up against a flat that lies against the sandy shore, exposed, at this time of year, by the lowness of the river. There are no wharfs as I had expected, only two or three floating sheds, and two or three steamers like our own.
But even after it becomes narrower the river frequently widens into broad, open, lake-like expanses, which are studded with lovely islands, and wherever the shore lowers you see, beyond, grand mountain ranges snow-clad and amazingly fine. The banks are precipitous nearly all the way to the junction of the Willamette, and there is singularly little farming country on the immediate river.
We had now performed the greater part of our journey home, and had reached the bank of the larger river, where it extended into lake-like dimensions, narrowing again shortly to its former width.
Through the centre of this the Little Creek warbled on its course; now circling round some wooded knoll, until it almost formed an island; anon dropping, in a quiet cascade, over the edge of a flat rock; in some places sweeping close under the base of a perpendicular cliff; in others shooting out into a lake-like expanse of shallow water across a bright-green meadow, as it murmured on over its golden bed towards the Sacramento.
The succession of grand natural pictures, which I had been gazing upon since my departure from Mentz and the district of the Rheingau, are undoubtedly similar, but not the same; there is alternately the long noble reach, the sudden bend, the lake-like expanse, the shores on both sides lined with towns whose antique fortifications rise in distant view, and villages whose tapering spires of blue slate peer above the embosoming foliage; the mountains clothed with vines and forests, their sides bristled and their summits crowned with the relics of feudal residences, or of cloistered fanes: but the varieties in the shape and character of all these are inexhaustible; it is this circumstance that enhances the pleasure of contemplating, scenery, in which there is, as Lord Byron says,
I agreed to pay the damages if he were late in returning for these gentlemen, and soon he was shooting me with pulsing strokes across the lake-like expanse towards the landing at Fort Finney. Louisville and the fort were just above the head of the Falls, and the little town of Clarksville, which Clark had founded, at the foot of them.
Though the danger was great, though Death lurked in those jagged stones and in those black waits Isaac felt no fear, he knew the strength of that arm, now rigid and again moving with lightning swiftness; he knew the power of the eye which guided them. Once more out under the starry sky; rifts, shallows, narrows, and lake-like basins were passed swiftly.
Here and there may be seen, projecting from the cliffs, huge skeletons of the toxodon, megatherium, mylodon, and other monsters which once in countless numbers inhabited the plains of South America. Now the river expands into lake-like proportions, its surface dotted with numerous low and wooded islands.
Standing on a mountain height one morning and looking away down over wooded hills and valleys and the lake-like terraces of the rice-fields, Mackay repeated to his students a line of the old hymn: Every prospect pleases and only man is vile. Around them the stately tree-fern lifted its lovely fronds and the orchids dotted the green earth like a flock of gorgeous butterflies just settled.
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