the massive, towering pile of
rocks ever had taken place.

My first cursory inspection of the face of the cliffs filled my heart
with forebodings, since nowhere could I discern, except where the weird
herald stood still shrieking his shrill summons, the faintest
indication of even a bare foothold upon the lofty escarpment.

To my right the bottom of the cliff was lost in the dense foliage of
the forest, which terminated at its very foot, rearing its gorgeous
foliage fully a thousand feet against its stern and forbidding
neighbour.

To the left the cliff ran, apparently unbroken, across the head of the
broad valley, to be lost in the outlines of what appeared to be a range
of mighty mountains that skirted and confined the valley in every
direction.

Perhaps a thousand feet from me the river broke, as it seemed, directly
from the base of the cliffs, and as there seemed not the remotest
chance for escape in that direction I turned my attention again toward
the forest.

The cliffs towered above me a good five thousand feet. The sun was not
quite upon them and they loomed a dull yellow in their own shade. Here
and there they were broken with streaks and patches of dusky red,
green, and occasional areas of white quartz.

Altogether they were very beautiful, but I fear that I did not regard
them with a particularly appreciative eye on this, my first inspection
of them.

Just then I was absorbed in them only as a medium of escape, and so, as
my gaze ran quickly, time and again, over their vast expanse in search
of some cranny or crevice, I came suddenly to loathe them as the
prisoner must loathe the cruel and impregnable walls of his dungeon.

Tars Tarkas was approaching me rapidly, and still more rapidly came the
awful horde at his heels.

It seemed the forest now or nothing, and I was just on the point of
motioning Tars Tarkas to follow me in that direction when the sun
passed the cliff's zenith, and as the bright rays touched the dull
surface it burst out into a million scintillant lights of burnished
gold, of flaming red, of soft greens, and gleaming whites--a more
gorgeous and inspiring spectacle human eye has never rested upon.

The face of the entire cliff was, as later inspection conclusively
proved, so shot with veins and patches of solid gold as to quite
present the appearance of a solid wall of that precious metal except
where it was broken by outcroppings of ruby, emerald, and diamond
boulders--a fa