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The Marchioness of Isola Bella, that was the name of the story; and if Flibbertigibbet and Freckles on their narrow cots in the bare upper dormitory of the Orphan Asylum on nd Street, did not dream of sapphire lakes and snow-crowned mountains, of marble palaces and turtledoves, of lovely ladies and lordly men, of serenades and guitars and ropes of pearl, it was not the fault either of Luigi Poggi or the Marchioness of Isola Bella.
The night was dark outside of Ascalon, save when the flashes of lightning in the storm that rolled down from the mountains to the sea lit it up, showing the thousands of white tents set round the city, the walls and the sentries who watched upon them, the feathery palms that stood against the sky, the mighty, snow-crowned range of Lebanon, and encircling all the black breast of the troubled ocean.
The sun gilded the lofty, giant mountain and irradiated its snow-crowned top with shifting and many- colored light; it appeared like a giant lily, luminous and odorous. The air was so clear and pure, that even in the far distance this range of mountains looked grand and sublime. The spectator was deluded by the hope of reaching their green and smiling summits in a few moments.
There are little, rounded, green-clad hillocks that might, like their scriptural sisters, "skip with joy"; and there are grand, rocky hills tufted with gaunt pine trees these leading the eye to the splendid heights of a neighbor State, where snow-crowned peaks tower in the blue distance, sweeping the horizon in a long line of majesty.
On the second day we saw before us seven snow-crowned peaks as sharp and regular as the teeth of a saw rising above the mouth of the stream where it spreads like a fan over a sandy delta and empties into the Yangtze.
We are on the montaña of the eastern Cordillera, a mountain land of amazing fertility, well wooded, yet not so thickly as to render progress difficult; the wayside is bordered with brilliant flowers, cascades tumble from rocky heights, and far away to the west rise in the clear air the glorious Andes, alps on alps, a vast range of stately snow-crowned peaks, endless and solemn, veiled yet not hidden by fleecy clouds, and as cold and mysterious as winter stars looking down on a sleeping world.
Then they crossed the Aruwimi River an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun.
Even so they had chanted when the early free-booters burst upon the scene and beheld the valley with its frame-work of mountains and two guardian volcanoes, the Gog and Magog of the table-land. Now again, from the towering column of Montezuma's cypress, to the city marked by spires, the thunder rolled and echoed onward even to the pine-clad cliffs and snow-crowned summits of the rocky giants.
The defile bore traces of having been a thoroughfare for countless herds of buffaloes, though not one was to be seen. The hunters succeeded in killing an elk and several black-tailed deer. They were now in the bosom of the second Bighorn ridge, with another lofty and snow-crowned mountain full in view to the west.
Reflected, too, were the serrated ridges of Awa's and Kasusa's mountain-peaks and their ravines, dark and mysterious, with little villages of grey huts surmounted by high-pitched roofs of thatch clustering here and there along the beach to starboard, while, to port, dominating all else, towered high in air the majestic, snow-crowned peak of Fujisan, its summit blushing a delicate rosy pink in the first light of dawn.
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