From the bridge the narrow yet perfectly paved and smoothed road ran ever upward round huge mountain buttresses overhanging fearful abysses, out of which the voices of the torrents rose like the whispering of spirits guarding these gloomy and lifeless regions. They rose higher and higher into wildernesses ever bleaker and bleaker, till at length they reached the beginning of the topmost pass of the journey, running between two colossal mountains which rose, snow-capped, and glacier-clad, many thousands of feet on either hand, fitting sentinels to guard the enchanted realm into which they were about to enter. On the eighth night they rested at a tambo about three leagues to the southward of the pass, and about a league farther on they could see that the road rose up again on to a broad broken plateau, but beyond this they could see no other hills or mountains. They were roused very early the next morning, and found their first meal prepared for them, although it was barely yet dawn. But they had been so well treated, and the journey had been made with such marvellous expedition, that they thought it best to ask no questions, and getting into their litters, they were well on their way again before sunrise. It was plain to them that their bearers and attendants were making unusual haste for some reason, for they swung up the long, steep, winding path at a marvellous speed. Then suddenly on the crest of the ridge they stopped and set the litters down. “How now!” exclaimed de Soto, leaping to his feet and looking about him. “Ah! madre de Dios! was ever such a sight seen in the world before?” “By Allah!--that is, I should say, all the Saints!” said ben-Alcazar, coming to his side. “It might be one of the valleys of Paradise itself. Are the wonders of this land never to cease for us? I, for one, am beginning to doubt whether I am still on earth.” “This, then,” said de Molina, ranging his eyes over the vast and lovely prospect before them, and drawing in a deep breath of the keen, fresh morning air--“this can be nothing else than Cuzco itself, the City of the Sun!” “Ay, that is so, comrade,” said de Candia; “and look you, yonder comes the Sun himself to show us his royal city in all its splendour.” As he spoke the swiftly rising sun blazed out suddenly over the peaks of the huge mountain wall that stretched along to the eastward of the valley, and in an instant earth and sky were blazing with light. All their retinue faced with one movement to the east, and, spreading their arms wide apart, gazed upward for a moment with raptured eyes and then bowed low in worship of the rising symbol of their Father and their God, and in the midst of them the four Christians stood erect, gazing in speechless wonder at the glory of the scene spread out below them, and looking, for the first time Christian eyes had ever looked, upon the visible and splendid reality of the long-sought, long-dreamed of El-Dorado, the Place of Gold.