Two years had passed with their changes, and of those I shall speak hereafter. Suns had set and risen, day and night had been, months had succeeded weeks, hearts were cold that were then warm, eyes were dim that were then bright, the shade of gray had come upon the glossy hair, sickness and health had changed places in many a frame, states had seen revolutions, men had perished and been born, vice and virtue had triumphed or had failed, monarchs had died, and good and wise men passed away; shipwreck and flame, and war and pestilence, and accident and sorrow, had done their part; and bursting forth again from a thousand different sources, the teeming life of earth had sprung up and glittered in the sun, as if but the more abundant for that which had been abstracted from it. The world had grown older, but not less full; and those who had aided the work, and had undergone the change, were hardly conscious that it had taken place. Two years had passed. CHAPTER XXVII. It was evening. The sky was of a deep purple, seldom seen in any part of the northern hemisphere. There was a line of light upon the western sky, not yellow, not red: I know not the name of the colour; it was dying-day colour; the last gleam of the eyes of expiring light. Everything was solemn and grand. There was a deep stillness in the air, a vastness in the wide expanse, a profundity in the hues of every object, a silence and a grandeur in the whole, that sank into the soul, and filled the mind with imaginings melancholy though grand. One might stand there, and fancy one-self the first or the last of created beings upon earth, with the first or the last sunset before him. It was a mountain-top, high over the flat lands around, starting up from the scrub abrupt and precipitous, and wherever the eye turned there was neither road, nor living thing, nor human habitation. Not an insect was heard, there was no wind in the heavens, the trees rested motionless, not a lizard was seen upon the rocks. Dark waves of magnificent vegetation flowed away like a sea from the feet, and a distant glimpse of the Austral Ocean, with the light of the sinking sun skipping along over its vast, solitary bosom, was the only thing that relieved the magnificent monotony; and yet it was a sea without a sail, without an oar. Ten steps farther, and the summit will be gained! The ten steps were taken, and then all was changed. Another scene broke upon the view, infinite in its variety, magnificent in its colouring, and varied by life. But what life? Not that of man; not that of any creature which holds familiar intercourse with him. The savage beast and the wild bird of the wilderness were there; but neither flocks, nor herds, nor but, nor mansion, nor anything to show that the human foot had ever pressed before that beautiful and awful scene.