The lower slopes of the seemingly impassable mountains were terraced into gardens which glowed with a hundred shades of green and gold, azure and scarlet. The broad plain which lay along the centre was sprinkled with villas and temples and palaces bright with colours and glittering with gold and silver, and through the midst of them rolled a broad, winding river, glittering like a wide band of molten silver in the rays of the sun, now streaming into the valley from the eastward. All along the two sides rose ridge after ridge of bare, brown mountains, apparently without a break for miles and miles, and high above these towered into the sky, one to right and one to left, two mighty snow-crowned peaks like twin Titans guarding this enchanted realm. But the keen eyes of the Spaniards soon discovered that the valley had other guardians than these. At every bend of the river a dark fortress rose tier above tier jutting out from the hillside and completely commanding it. All along the heights there were watch-towers on which, as the light grew stronger, they could see the sun glinting on polished arms and waving plumes, and soon shrill, wailing cries rose to right and left of them and ran along the ridges until they died away in the distance, telling that the sun shining on their own armour had already betrayed their presence and that the whole valley was alert. “A glorious spot, by the Saints!” said de Soto, as his eye ranged delighted over the lovely prospect. “A very Garden of Eden, if such might be in a heathen land, but well guarded. Methinks it would fare badly with us even if we attacked it with all our forces. Still it is our present business to find a way into it, if such there be, and that can only be where the river flows out of it. Come, let us try the sloping ground down here to the right.” “Ay,” replied de Candia, “it were well to keep moving lest we find ourselves surrounded, but for all that I doubt not that the Inca will find a way of showing his gratitude for what we did for him last night. He must have reached the army by this time.” “That is certain,” said de Molina, “and I for one would so far trust him that I would ride unarmed through his whole host. Ah, look yonder,” he went on, pointing ahead past a spur of rock which they had just cleared. “Yonder is the gate of Eden.” “And the mouth of the River of Paradise!” said ben-Alcazar. “But methinks for all that the mouth of Hell for the enemy that should seek to get into it. Were those forts guarded by well-served artillery not all the Spaniards in Peru could force the entrance.” “I, for one,” added de Candia grimly, “would pledge my life on holding it with a dozen culverins against a thousand men.”