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Updated: June 28, 2025
On the far side of the deep, sombre vale a towering craig rose wall-like, sheer up, overshadowing the soft, green pasture deep down at the bottom of the yawning gulch. Dense patches of dark, relentless pinewoods lined its base, and, over all, in spite of the broad daylight, a peculiar shadow, as of evening, added mystery to the haunting view.
On the north it is bordered by the western ranges of the Himalayas, which reach to the Amu Daria; by the wall-like range of the Hindu Kush, some of whose peaks are 19,000 feet high; and by several smaller ridges. Between the Kabul and Kuram rivers rises the snow-capped Sufeid Koh, the principal peak of which, to the south of Jelalabad, attains an altitude of 15,000 feet.
A plain of pure sand, glaring red-yellow under the first rays of the rising sun; towards the east and west apparently illimitable, but interrupted northward by a chain of table-topped hills, and along its southern edge by a continuous cliff, rising wall-like to the height of several hundred feet, and trending each way beyond the verge of vision.
Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely intermixed. The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and winding passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles together unscalable by man.
Give this ship-shaped chasm a longer dimension of two miles or more, and a breadth of somewhat less than half its length; bound it with a wall-like line of cliffs falling sheer to steep, forested slopes below; prick out a silver ribbon of a stream winding through grassy savannas and well-set groves of lordly trees from end to end of the sunken valley; and you will have some picture of the scene we looked upon.
The rough and unfinished appearance of this wall-like heap of stones was heightened by the quantity of large and small pieces of granite which were piled on the top of it, and which had been collected by the anchorites, in case of an incursion, to roll and hurl down on the invading robbers.
We turned again, and were almost forced to shield our eyes as we gazed on the gentle orb which had now surmounted the intervening ridge. The whole fjord was now transformed into a sea of silver almost as bright as midday. Each nestling village was distinct, even to the tiniest window; each tree and shrub on the wall-like mountain, and even the grim forts, were softened in that sweet radiance.
The hot summer sun stretched like a fiery cloth over the mountains, over the long expanses of sand, and over the motionless, apparently solid blue sea. The train went on through the tunnels, along the slopes, above the water, on straight, wall-like viaducts, and a soft, vague, saltish smell, a smell of drying seaweed, mingled at times with the strong, heavy perfume of the flowers.
We went first to a hill a good deal south of east, and crossed the dry bed of a broad, sandy, and stony creek running north. I called it the Rebecca. From it we went to a low saddle between two hills, all the while having a continuous range to the north; this was the extension beyond the pinnacle of the wall-like crescent.
At Vanikoro, the lagoon-channel is remarkably deep, scarcely any alluvial soil has accumulated at the foot of the lofty included mountains, and remarkably few islets have been formed by the heaping of fragments and sand on the wall-like barrier reef; these facts, and some analogous ones, led me to believe that this island must lately have subsided and the reef grown upwards: here again earthquakes are frequent and very severe.
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