We crossed the bush-grown plains, and entered a gently rising long cañon
flanked on either side by towering ranges that grew higher and higher
the farther we proceeded. In the very centre of the mountains,
apparently, this cañon ended in a small round valley. There appeared to
be no possible exit, save by the way we had come, or over the almost
perpendicular ridges a thousand feet or more above. Nevertheless, we
discovered a narrow ravine that slanted up into the hills to the left.
Following it we found ourselves very shortly in a great forest on the
side of a mountain. Hanging creepers brushed our faces, tangled vines
hung across our view, strange and unexpected openings offered themselves
as a means through which we could see a little closer into the heart of
mystery. The air was cool and damp and dark. The occasional shafts of
sunlight or glimpses of blue sky served merely to accentuate the soft
gloom. Save that we climbed always, we could not tell where we were
going.

The ascent occupied a little over an hour. Then through the tree trunks
and undergrowth we caught the sky-line of the crest. When we topped this
we took a breath, and prepared ourselves for a corresponding descent.
But in a hundred yards we popped out of the forest to find ourselves on
a new level. The Fourth Bench had been attained.

It was a grass country of many low, rounded hills and dipping valleys,
with fine isolated oaklike trees here and there in the depressions, and
compact, beautiful oaklike groves thrown over the hills like blankets.
Well-kept, green, trim, intimate, it should have had church spires and
gray roofs in appropriate spots. It was a refreshment to the eye after
the great and austere spaces among which we had been dwelling, repose to
the spirit after the alert and dangerous lands. The dark-curtained
forest seemed, fancifully, an enchantment through which we had gained to