e leaf and curly leaf,
pressings of enormous bladder caps (Physcomitrium), immense splashes
of what seemed to be the scarlet-crested Cladonia, traceries of huge
moss veils, crushings of teeth (peristome) gigantic; spore cases brown
and white, saffron and ivory, hot vermilions and cerulean blues,
pressed into an astounding mosaic by some titanic force.

"Hurry!" It was Rador calling. I had lagged behind.

He quickened the pace to a half-run; we were climbing; panting. The
amber light grew stronger; the rift above us wider. The tunnel curved;
on the left a narrow cleft appeared. The green dwarf leaped toward it,
thrust us within, pushed us ahead of him up a steep rocky
fissure--well-nigh, indeed, a chimney. Up and up this we scrambled
until my lungs were bursting and I thought I could climb no more. The
crevice ended; we crawled out and sank, even Rador, upon a little
leaf-carpeted clearing circled by lacy tree ferns.

Gasping, legs aching, we lay prone, relaxed, drawing back strength and
breath. Rador was first to rise. Thrice he bent low as in homage,
then--

"Give thanks to the Silent Ones--for their power has been over us!" he
exclaimed.

Dimly I wondered what he meant. Something about the fern leaf at
which I had been staring aroused me. I leaped to my feet and ran to
its base. This was no fern, no! It was fern _moss_! The largest of its
species I had ever found in tropic jungles had not been more than two
inches high, and this was--twenty feet! The scientific fire I had
experienced in the tunnel returned uncontrollable. I parted the
fronds, gazed out--

My outlook commanded a vista of miles--and that vista! A _Fata
Morgana_ of plantdom! A land of flowered sorcery!

Forests of tree-high mosses spangled over with blooms of every
conceivable shape and colour; cataracts and clusters, avalanches and
nets of blossoms in pastels, in dulled metallics, in gorgeous
flamboyant hues; some of them phosphorescent and shining like living
jewels; some sparkling as though with dust of opals, of sapphires, of
rubies and topazes and emeralds; thickets of convolvuli like the
trumpets of the seven archangels of Mara, king of illusion, which are
shaped from the bows of splendours arching his highest heaven!

And moss veils like banners of a marching host of Titans; pennons and
bannerets of the sunset; gonfalons of the Jinn; webs of faery;
oriflammes of elfland!

Springing up through that polychromatic flood myriads of
ped