And yet the wonderfully peculiar character
of this desolate world imparted to it a weird attraction as strangely
fascinating as ever.
Over this chaotic region the travellers were now sweeping, as if borne
on the wings of a storm; the peaks defiled beneath them; the yawning
chasms revealed their ruin-strewn floors; the fissured cracks untwisted
themselves; the ramparts showed all their sides; the mysterious holes
presented their impenetrable depths; the clustered mountain summits and
rings rapidly decomposed themselves: but in a moment again all had
become more inextricably entangled than ever. Everything appeared to be
the finished handiwork of volcanic agency, in the utmost purity and
highest perfection. None of the mollifying effects of air or water could
here be noticed. No smooth-capped mountains, no gently winding river
channels, no vast prairie-lands of deposited sediment, no traces of
vegetation, no signs of agriculture, no vestiges of a great city.
Nothing but vast beds of glistering lava, now rough like immense piles
of scoriae and clinker, now smooth like crystal mirrors, and reflecting
the Sun's rays with the same intolerable glare. Not the faintest speck
of life.
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