rear and immitigable despair.

In the midst of this I awoke. It was with a sudden start, and I looked
all around in speechless bewilderment. The first thing of which I
was conscious was a great blaze of light--light so lately lost, and
supposed to be lost forever, but now filling all the universe--bright,
brilliant, glowing bringing hope and joy and gladness, with all the
splendor of deep blue skies and the multitudinous laughter of ocean
waves that danced and sparkled in the sun. I flung up my arms and
laughed aloud. Then I burst into tears, and falling on my knees,
I thanked the Almighty Ruler of the skies for this marvellous
deliverance.

Rising from my knees I looked around, and once more amazement
overwhelmed me. I saw a long line of mountains towering up to
immeasurable heights, their summits covered with eternal ice and
snow. There the sun blazed low in the sky, elevated but a few degrees
above the mountain crests, which gleamed in gold and purple under its
fiery rays. The sun seemed enlarged to unusual dimensions, and the
mountains ran away on every side like the segment of some infinite
circle. At the base of the mountains lay a land all green with
vegetation, where cultivated fields were visible, and vineyards and
orchards and groves, together with forests of palm and all manner
of trees of every variety of hue, which ran up the sides of the
mountains till they reached the limits of vegetation and the regions
of snow and ice.

Here in all directions there were unmistakable signs of human
life--the outlines of populous cities and busy towns and hamlets;
roads winding far away along the plain or up the mountain-sides, and
mighty works of industry in the shape of massive structures, terraced
slopes, long rows of arches, ponderous pyramids, and battlemented
walls.

From the land I turned to the sea. I saw before me an expanse of water
intensely blue--an extent so vast that never before in all my ocean
voyages had anything appeared at all comparable with it. Out at sea,
wherever I had been, the water had always limited the view; the
horizon had never seemed far away; ships soon sank below it, and the
visible surface of the earth was thus always contracted; but here, to
my bewilderment, the horizon appeared to be removed to an immeasurable
distance and raised high in the air, while the waters were prolonged
endlessly. Starting from where I was, they went away to inconceivable
distances, and the view before me