the effect was this: the
crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the
direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture
of a wide and peculiar countryside. It was not dream-like at all: it
produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the
more real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture: that is to say,
certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real
things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision
changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like
looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to
get at different aspects.

Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely
circumstantial, and entirely free from any of that emotional quality
that taints hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that
all the efforts of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint
opalescence of the crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would.
The difference in intensity of the impressions received by the two men
was very great, and it is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr.
Cave was a mere blurred nebulosity to Mr. Wace.

The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive
plain, and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable
height, as if from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the
plain was bounded at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which
reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but what the picture
was Mr. Wace was unable to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and
south--he could tell the points of the compass by the stars that were
visible of a night--receding in an almost illimitable perspective and
fading into the mists of the distance before they met. He was nearer the
eastern set of cliffs, on the occasion of his first vision the sun was
rising over them, and black against the sunlight and pale against their
shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that Mr. Cave regarded as
birds. A vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to be
looking down upon them; and, as they approached the blurred and
refracted edge of the picture, they became indistinct. There were also
trees curious in shape, and in colouring, a deep mossy green and an
exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And something great and
brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But the first time Mr