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I took my seat upon the top of the coach, above the driver, that I might enjoy a last lingering look at this Nature's paradise, before the mountain-ridge should intervene between the world I had left behind, and the great salt desert that we were soon to traverse. The prospect from the coach-top, as we traveled onward, was even more beautiful than that I have already described.
When he found time to look for them, they had gone by to some other part of the forest. No one had thought to look for their prey on the bald mountain-ridge. No one had raised his eyes to the clouds to see him practising boyish tricks and sleep-walking feats while his life was in the greatest danger. The man trembled when he found that he was paved.
The evening of the first day's march brought them to the base of the mountain-ridge, down whose rocky flank the stream poured with the strength and velocity of a torrent. No boat could have further ascended it.
The shifting figures on the mountain-ridge, having the sky for their background, appeared to move in the air. The dogs, impatient of their restraint, and maddened with the baying beneath, sprung here and there, and strained at the slips, which prevented them from joining their companions. Looking down, the view was equally striking.
Dismissing the people of Quarequa with some gifts, the Spaniards, under the guidance of the people of Chiapes and accompanied by the cacique himself, made the descent from the mountain-ridge to the shores of the much-desired ocean in four days.
Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel.
From where they were it could be distinguished to a pointy without any variation; and after a good night's rest upon the mountain-ridge, they commenced descending its western slope. For a time they lost sight of the sun's orb, that, rising behind their backs, was hidden by the mountain mass, and casting a purple shadow over the forest-clad country before them.
But from the contemplation of these and many other interesting sights and phenomena we must pass to an event which seriously affected the future plans of the travellers. One beautiful evening such an evening as, from its deep quiet and unusual softness, leaves a lasting impression on the memory the two horsemen found themselves slowly toiling up the steep acclivity of a mountain-ridge.
Here, in some tremendous convulsion of Nature, the mountain-ridge seems to have been suddenly rent and burst through towards its summit, and we look down over a precipice some five hundred feet deep. It is possible to wind down the face of the rock by a narrow path; but, having no mind to make the descent, we rest and admire the magnificent prospect before and below us.
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