amt of in your Swiss tour; the bottomless valley at
your feet is misty and gloomy with blackness, streaked with mist, while
the peaks above shoot gladly to the sun and catch his broadside rays
like majestic white standards. Between you, as you stand leaning
cautiously against the hill behind you, and the wonderful background far
away in front, floats a strange vision, scarcely moving, but yet not
still. A great golden shield sails steadily in vast circles, sending
back the sunlight in every tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of
the Himalayas hangs in mid-air, a sheet of polished metal to the eye,
pausing sometimes in the full blaze of reflection, as ages ago the sun
and the moon stood still in the valley of Ajalon; too magnificent for
description, as he is too dazzling to look at. The whole scene, if no
greater name can be given to it, is on a scale so Titanic in its massive
length and breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling and weak
and foolish as you look for the first time. You have never seen such
masses of the world before.

It was in such a spot as this that, nearly at noon on the appointed day,
my dooly-bearers set me down and warned me I was at my journey's end. I
stepped out and stood on the narrow way, pausing to look and to enjoy
all that I saw. I had been in other parts of the lower Himalayas before,
and the first sensations I had experienced had given way to those of a
contemplative admiration. No longer awed or overpowered or oppressed by
the sense of physical insignificance in my own person, I could endure to
look on the stupendous panorama before me, and could even analyse what I
felt. But before long my pardonable reverie was disturbed by a
well-known voice. The clear tones rang like a trumpet along the
mountain-side in a glad shout of welcome. I turned and saw Isaacs coming
quickly towards me, bounding along the edge of the precipice as if his
life had been passed in tending goats and robbing eagles' nests. I, too,
moved on to meet him, and in a moment we clasped hands in unfeigned
delight at being again together. What was Ghyrkins or his party to me?
Here was the man I sought; the one man on earth who seemed worth having
for a friend. And yet it was but three weeks since we first met, and I
am not enthusiastic by temperament.

"What news, friend Griggs?"

"She greets you and sends you this," I said, taking from my bosom the
parcel she had thrust into my hand as I left in the dark.