CHAPTER XX. 



THE TOUR CONCLUDED 



AFTER breakfast, while the tents were being struck 

 ■^"^ and the baggage laden, I climbed to the summit 

 of one of the adjacent peaks. The peak was not very 

 high, but it was sufficiently so to enable me to get a 

 rather extended view of the small ranges and valleys 

 around. I have spoken already of the wildness of 

 these mountains, but I do not think that till now I 

 had ever fully appreciated it. The scene I looked on 

 resembled nothing so much as a stormy ocean of a 

 sudden turned to stone. It was a very chaos of 

 narrow, winding ridges, deep clefts of valleys between 

 them, and at short interv^als tall, sharp, craggy peaks. 



I need not describe the pass, except that it was 

 slightly shorter and generally narrower ; it did not 

 much differ from the pass by which we had entered 

 the Doon. There were the same perpendicular cliffs, 

 and behind and above them the same miniature peaks 

 and ridges and the same small green slopes and 

 patches of forest. In these peaks and sandy precipices 

 was to be read the history of the mountains and the 

 abyss of time which that history discloses. These 



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