promontories, the hills far down on the
right beyond the sand dunes, looked like stupendous waves of lava that
had cooled into every gracious line and fold within the art of
relenting Nature; granted ages after, a light coat of verdure to clothe
the terrible mystery of birth. The great bay, as blue and tranquil as
a high mountain lake, as silent as if the planet still slept after the
agonies of labor, looked to be broken by a number of promontories,
rising from their points far out in the water to the high back of the
land; but as the Juno pursued her slanting way down the channel Rezanov
saw that the most imposing of these was but the end of a large island,
and that scattered near were other islands, masses of rock like the
castellated heights that rise abruptly from the plains of Italy and
Spain; far away, narrow straits, with a glittering expanse beyond;
while bounding the whole eastern rim of this splendid sheet of water
was a chain of violet hills, with the pale green mist of new grass here
and there, and purple hollows that might mean groves of trees crouching
low against the cold winds of summer; in the soft pale blue haze above
and beyond, the lofty volcanic peak of a mountain range. Not a human
being, not a boat, not even a herd of cattle was to be seen, and
Rezanov, for a moment forgetting to exult in the length of Russia's
arm, yielded himself to the subtle influence abroad in the air, and
felt that he could dream as he had dreamed in a youth when the courts
of Europe to the boy were as fabulous as El Dorado in the immensity of
ancestral seclusions.

"It is like the approach to paradise, is it not, Excellency?" a
deferential voice murmured at his elbow.

The plenipotentiary frowned without turning his head. Dr. Langsdorff,
surgeon and naturalist, had accompanied the Embassy to Japan, and
although Rezanov had never found any man more of a bore and would
willingly have seen the last of him at Kamchatka, a skilful dispenser
of drugs and mender of bones was necessary in his hazardous voyages,
and he retained him in his suite. Langsdorff returned his polite
tolerance with all the hidden resources of his spleen; but his
curiosity and scientific enthusiasm would have sustained him through
greater trials than the exactions of an autocrat, whom at least he had
never ceased to respect in the most trying moments at Nagasaki.

"Yes," said Rezanov. "But I wonder you find anything to admire in such
unportable object