isn't all water.

MAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear about
the valley.

L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only such
numbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostling
each other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back,
and never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: but
perhaps they are none the worse in the end.

MAY. And when one gets in, what is it like?

L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road stops directly;
and there are great dark rocks, covered all over with wild gourds and
wild vines; the gourds, if you cut them, are red, with black seeds, like
water-melons, and look ever so nice; and the people of the place make a
red pottage of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you ever
want to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of meal in it
makes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have clusters of the colour of
amber; and the people of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol;
and sweeter than honey; but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, they
are like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that they
would be cut away directly, anywhere else; but here they are covered
with little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, for berries,
they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you only see are red
after gathering them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties the
children have! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn.

LILY. But rubies can't spot one's frocks as blackberries do?

L. No; but I'll tell you what spots them--the mulberries. There are
great forests of them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, some
munching the leaves so loud that it is like mills at work; and some
spinning. But the berries are the blackest you ever saw; and, wherever
they fall, they stain a deep red; and nothing ever washes it out again.
And it is their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the river
so red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the boughs of the
trees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive branches; and their
leaves are dark. And it is in these forests that the serpents are; but
nobody is afraid of them. They have fine crimson crests, and they are
wreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and they
are singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what birds
are in ours.

FLORRIE.