And yet the guerdon of our struggle was rich indeed. An hour or so from our starting-point the sides of our ravine became more rocky, and started up sheerly on either side of the stream, which, dashing between these ‘iron gates,’ leapt from a rocky platform, and plunged some sixty feet below in a magnificent cascade. We were forced to make a tedious détour by climbing up the steep; but the rocky walls, the overhanging beeches, the snow-white foam veiling the abysmal gloom, gave us glimpses of a beautiful picture. The vegetation, too, of our valley was marvellous in its luxuriance. Here, where the rays of the meridian sun scarcely pierce, stately sunflowers would raise their great flaming crowns as if to light up the shades of fell and forest. Drooping gentians—those weeping willows among flowers!—hung lovingly over the stream: methought they were its guardian nymphs, swelling its waters with tributary dew from a myriad azure urns! The dimensions taken by some of the ferns were certainly extraordinary; the lady-fern waved feather-like sprays near five feet in length, the hart’s tongue put forth fronds like small palm-leaves, three feet long and about three inches broad. Even the tree-like moss[187] that cushioned the damp crevices between the rocks rose to an abnormal stature. [Illustration: Rocky Gorge of the Jasenica.] After many weary hours the valley began to open out a little, and the stream allowed us room for passage on its margin. Further on we came to little patches of meadow land by its side, and even, here and there, to traces of a path, and another sign of man, the ashes of an old camp-fire. Beyond this, again, the mountains grew more rocky, the trees smaller and more scanty, and scenery of a bolder kind broke upon us. First, as if to prepare us for what was to follow, a tall obelisk of rock started up in the middle of the gorge; and having passed, as it were, Cleopatra’s Needle, the rock-architecture took an appropriately Egyptian character, and we found ourselves among what it only required a slight exercise of imagination to transform into the ruins of the Pharaohs. Colossal walls and columns towered on each side of the torrent, and scarcely allowed it a passage; and, looking through these antique portals, the top of a pyramid appeared in the distance—the limestone peak or Vlašić.