As the journey proceeded the gloom increased. Added to the natural mists the atmosphere took on a yellow tint, which suggested an overhanging pall of smoke. There was no joy in the aspect anywhere. The end of the passage came at last, and the pilot boat dropped astern. Its work was finished, and it raced back to its watching-post. Now a complete change came over the scene. But it was scarcely a change for the better. It was only that Nature, having done her worst, left the rest in the safe hands of human ingenuity. The frowning cliffs abandoned their threat. They ended as abruptly as they had arisen out of the sea. They fell back on either hand, carrying the shore with them, and merged into a mist-crowned hinterland of dark woods and wide ravines, with a wide-stretching foreshore, upon which was built a great city, entirely surrounding what had developed into a miniature, landlocked sea. Nature had certainly left her incomplete effort in capable hands. Whatever beauty a brilliant sunshine, accompanied by a smart breeze, might have discovered upon the inhospitable shores of Borga in their pristine state, man's hand had contrived to destroy it. The whole prospect was sordid, uncouth, and suggested something of a nether world of lugubrious fancy. All that could be said for it was the suggestion of feverish industry on every hand. The buildings looked all unfinished, yet they were in full work under a great strain of pressure. Borga had been built in a hurry, and all connected with it suggested only haste and industry. There were no public buildings of classic model. There were no roads and avenues beautified by Nature's decorations. Just alleys and thoroughfares there were, and only sufficiently paved for the needs of the work in hand. The quays and docks were solid--only. The great machine shops, staring-eyed and baldly angular, suggested only the barest necessity. And though their hundreds of floors sheltered thousands of human workers, and acres of elaborate machinery, not even a cornice, or coping, or variation of brickwork had been permitted to make sightly a structure purely for utilitarian purposes. The slipways at the water's edge, and the gaunt steel skeletons they contained, were merely slipways, without other pretensions. A thousand smokestacks belched out of their fetid bowels an endless flow of yellow, sulphurous smoke upon an already overladen atmosphere. They stood up like the teeth of a broken comb, and added to the sordidness of the picture.