But we are once more on our way, and as we descend the Narenta valley, about an hour from Jablanica, the mountains close in upon us and scenery of the most stupendous character engrosses our attention. The view at this point is recognised as the most magnificent in the whole of Bosnia. The road itself[284] is hewn out along the face of a precipice, and the magnesian-limestone and dolomitic cliffs on either side of the gorge rise in places three thousand feet[285] sheer above the Narenta, which, chafing and foaming, hurries passionately through the narrow mountain portal below. The whole was seen at a time of day when everything looks most fresh and lovely, lit up with the slanting rays of the rising sun, throwing into alto relievo the vast rock-sculptures of Nature, and glorifying her heroic forms. Above, peak after peak of topaz stood out against the pale azure of this cloudless Southern sky; but no intrusive shaft of gold—even from a Phœbean quiver—could penetrate the twilight of the gorge itself. Here all was softened into a pervading lilac, veined with an intenser purple by infinite striations of strata, till the bare mountain-walls—bathed in this floating light—seemed to be hewn out of amethystine agate, and afforded the most exquisite contrasts to the liquid emerald of the river below. The cliffs along whose surface we were now making our way were veiled in darker shadow, snow-white against which expanded a living fan of feathery spray from a stream that gushed forth in full volume, and of glacier coolness, from a cavern in the rock. We crossed over to the left steep of the river by an iron bridge—another English importation—and for many hours were still threading this wondrous pass. We had indeed passed the _Iron Gates_ of the Narenta, but there was still much to admire in the scenery. The high mountains continued, though they ceased to frown abruptly over the river. Lean naked giants they were: ribbed skeletons, thinly clad with stunted foliage, though in places still yellow with dwarf laburnum shrubs. The rocks were perpetually starting up into castles and towers, sometimes a quaint mediæval castle suggesting a background of Albert Dürer, but oftener more Roman in their architecture; towers, square and round, which from the narrow horizontal laminations of the rocks reproduced with surprising exactness the appearance of ruined masonry, and rugged lines of ancient brickwork that called up visions of the time-scarred walls of Anderida. About these ruins of an older world clustered, in place of ivy, the tender sprays of wild vine laden with unripe beads, or here and there a beautiful bind-weed with capacious chalices of pink, as large as Convolvulus major.