Saliron balze, e traversar torrenti.


One day Mr. Chainmail traced upwards the course of a mountain
stream to a spot where a small waterfall threw itself over a slab
of perpendicular rock, which seemed to bar his farther progress.
On a nearer view, he discovered a flight of steps, roughly hewn in
the rock, on one side of the fall. Ascending these steps, he
entered a narrow winding pass, between high and naked rocks, that
afforded only space for a rough footpath, carved on one side, at
some height above the torrent.

The pass opened on a lake, from which the stream issued, and which
lay like a dark mirror, set in a gigantic frame of mountain
precipices. Fragments of rock lay scattered on the edge of the
lake, some half-buried in the water: Mr. Chainmail scrambled some
way over these fragments, till the base of a rock sinking abruptly
in the water, effectually barred his progress. He sat down on a
large smooth stone; the faint murmur of the stream he had quitted,
the occasional flapping of the wings of the heron, and at long
intervals, the solitary springing of a trout, were the only sounds
that came to his ear. The sun shone brightly half-way down the
opposite rocks, presenting, on their irregular faces, strong masses
of light and shade. Suddenly he heard the dash of a paddle, and,
turning his eyes, saw a solitary and beautiful girl gliding over
the lake in a coracle: she was proceeding from the vicinity of the
point he had quitted, towards the upper end of the lake. Her
apparel was rustic, but there was in its style something more
recherchee, in its arrangement something more of elegance and
precision, than was common to the mountain peasant girl. It had