The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some trouble to cross. However, we all got over, although one servant boy with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent. I ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had come within an inch of being drowned. At length we turned aside into a byroad leading up a steep hill, slippery with mud, and left this pleasant valley. I passed through it many a time afterwards, and never lost the impression of its peaceful richness. We now found ourselves in the wild country in which our missionary stations lie. Hills rose around on every side; their surfaces broken and furrowed into every fantastic variety of shape, with only distance enough between their bases for the mountain streams to flow. In our latitude such a country would be much of the time a bleak desolation. But here the mantle of glorious and everlasting green softens and enriches the broken and fluctuating surfaces into luxuriant and cloying beauty. In such an ocean of verdure we now found ourselves, its emerald waves rolling above, below, and around us. Our road, when once we had surmounted the short hill, was a narrow, winding bridle path, which kept along almost upon a level over a continual succession of natural causeways, spanning the gullies with such an appearance of art as I have never seen elsewhere. I afterward learned that these are dikes of trap, from which the softer rock has been gradually disintegrated, leaving them thus happily arranged for human convenience.