28. It reflected the glory of the three worlds (in the everlasting snows), which are clapped as a cap of hairs on its top. 29. At a great distance from it, is a great forest, untrodden by the feet of any living being; and then proceeding upward, they saw the great northern ocean encompassing the pole on all sides. 30. Further on they beheld the flaming light of the aurora borealis, which threatened to melt the snowy mountain to water. 31. Proceeding onward, they met with the fierce Boreas or north winds, blowing with all their fury and force. 32. They threatened to blow away and uproot the mountains, as if they were dust or grass; and traversed the empty vacuum with their noiseless motion. 33. Afar from these they saw the empty space of vacuum, stretching wide all about them. 34. It spreads around to an unlimited extent, and encompasses the worlds as a golden circlet encircles the wrist (_i.e._ the belt of the zodiac). 35. Thus Lílá, having seen the seas and mountains, the regents of the worlds, the city of the gods, the sky above and the earth below in the unlimited concavity of the universe, returned on a sudden to her own land, and found herself in her closet again. CHAPTER XXVI. MEETING THE SIDDHAS Vasishtha said:—After the excellent ladies had returned from their visit of the mundane sphere, they entered the abode where the Bráhman had lived before. 2. There the holy ladies saw in that dwelling, and unseen by any body, the tomb or tope of the Bráhman. 3. Here the maid servants were dejected with sorrow, and the faces of the women were soiled with tears. Their countenances had faded away, like lotuses with their withered leaves. 4. All joy had fled from the house, and left it as the dry bed of the dead sea, after its waters were sucked by the scorching sun (Agastya). It was as a garden parched in summer, or a tree struck by lightening. 5. It was as joyless as the dried lotus, torn by a blast or withering under the frost; and as faint as the light of a lamp, without its wick or oil; and as dim as the eyeball without its light. 6. The house without its master, was as doleful as the countenance of a dying person, or as a forest with its falling and withered leaves, and as the dry and dusty ground for want of rain. 7. Vasishtha continued:—Then the lady with her gracefulness of divine knowledge, and the elegance of her perfections, and her devotedness to and desire of truth, thought within herself, that the inmates of the house might behold her and the goddess, in their ordinary forms of human beings. 9. The dwellers of the house then beheld the two ladies as Laxmí and Gaurí together, and brightening the house with the effulgence of their persons. 10. They were adorned from head to foot, with wreaths of unfading flowers of various kinds; and they seemed like Flora—the genius of spring, perfuming the house with the fragrance of a flower garden.