ch
some magnificent trees shot up--their gnarled trunks and twisted
branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating
the fast falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of
nature; and there we floated, in the deep shadow of the cliff and
trees--Dragon-flies and Water-sprites, motionless and silent, and the
boats floating so lightly that they scarcely seemed to touch the water,
the men resting on their oars, and all of us wrapped with the
magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath us, and above us.

The left or western bank of the narrow entrance to the harbour, from
which we were now debouching, ran out in all its precipitousness and
beauty, (with its dark evergreen bushes overshadowing the deep blue
waters, and its gigantic trees shooting forth high into the glowing
western sky, their topmost branches gold-tipped in the flood of radiance
shed by the rapidly sinking sun, while all below where we lay was grey
cold shade,) until it joined the northern shore, when it sloped away
gradually towards the east; the higher parts of the town sparkling in
the evening sun, on this dun ridge, like a golden tower on the back
of an elephant, while the houses that were in the shade covered the
declivity, until it sank down to the water's edge. On the right hand the
haven opened boldly out into a basin about four miles broad by seven
long, in which the placid waters spread out beyond the shadow of the
western bank into one vast sheet of molten gold, with the canoe tearing
along the shining surface, her side glancing in the sun, and her paddles
flashing back his rays, and leaving a long train of living fire
sparkling in her wake.--It was now about six o'clock in the evening; the
sun had set to us, as we pulled along under the frowning brow of the
cliff, where the birds were fast settling on their nightly perches, with
small happy twitterings, and the lizards and numberless other chirping
things began to send forth their evening hymn to the great Being who
made them and us, and a solitary white-sailing owl would every now and
then flit spectrelike from one green tuft, across the bald face of the
cliff, to another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the
black surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished
for their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but
the level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance
upon the lovely city, and