The halt would continue until the sun had reached its meridian. The mind of one of the Leaders would remain receptive to any report I might send it. Even if I had not undertaken this duty, and recognised its importance in a land which was as potentially hostile to my companions as to myself, and which was even stranger in some of its aspects to themselves than to me, I could hardly have failed, for a time at least, to remain awake and aware of the strange beauty of the scene which was extended beneath me. My companion sank at once oblivious in the deep moss, which yielded to our weight when we halted, and in which I took a sitting position, enabling me to look out from beneath the boughs which spread low overhead, and were sufficient to screen me from the outside observation of anything which did not approach very closely. The ground before me sloped gently down to a deep and very wide valley. Far to the left were low hills; to the right front was a distance of wilder mountains, with snowy sides, height beyond height, with a suggestion of the foothills of the Himalayas. The valley undulated, and was heavily wooded in some places. It had wide plains, but without sign of cultivation, or of moving life. The sky above us was the unclouded blue I had seen previously, very deep now in the strong sunlight. Far off,--and sight went far in the clear air, across the lower land,--there was a wide low forest with a silver hint of lake beyond it. In colour, the whole scene gave me a first impression of a splendour of gold and blue, with dark hills around, and snowy mountains above them, but as I looked more closely I saw that there was an undertone of green, as in the old familiar landscapes, but with this difference, that where I had been used to the dark blue-green of trees and hedges breaking the yellow-green of the corn and grass-lands, here yellow-green, deepening to many shades of gold, was the prevailing tone of the woodlands, while open slopes and plains were covered with a blue-green verdure, in some places with no more hint of blue than in the leaves of a rhododendron, at others brighter than a peacock’s neck. This was the general impression of a wide stretch of country, which might show differently at a closer view, or with a change of season. When I looked immediately in front of me I saw that the moss extended for two or three feet only from the forest-shade, and beyond this was a blue-green growth, of an orchis-like kind, which covered the ground where it sloped gently before me. Here and there, other plants struggled for existence among it, including one of a trailing habit which I noticed for a very fragile and beautiful flower shaped like a campanula, and approaching a very deep orange shade, but different from anything I had seen, and I have therefore no word by which to describe it.