a gloomy chasm, there towered aloft a mighty and awful precipice.

But the scene of

scenes burst upon them after they had threaded a gloomy maze of trees and
intertangled bamboos. Two immense walls of sombre rock, several hundred yards
in height, enclosed a broad ravine, which, at [54] the further extremity, opened on a
bare and shining plain. On the left, the wall extended to a great distance, forming a
long line, decreasing in elevation through the natural effect of the perspective. That
on the right towered above a pile of enormous rocks, heaped together in the wildest
confusion; it seemed to turn like the enceinte of a strong fortification, and was
terminated abruptly by a vertical line, broken by numerous gaps. Between these
lofty barriers lay a barren plain; afar, some miniature pools glittered with a magical
effect in the pale moonlight. The prospect was closed in the distance by the steep
declivities of lofty mountains, surrounding and shutting up, as it were, this gigantic
cirque or amphitheatre. About three hundred yards from the entrance rose two
vertical rocks, like a couple of slender spires, or rather like two enormous tapers
rose to a prodigious height, isolated, and emerging from a clump of luxuriant
verdure which flourished at their feet. One of these rocks was fully nine hundred
feet in elevation. The other was not so lofty, and seemed to have partially fallen, the
ground being everywhere strewn with its wreck.