quil 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 slant-
ing 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 be-
yond; 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 be-
yond, 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 im-
mensity of ancestral seclusions.

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