264 DESOLATION. 



mitted, over impending obstacles which would have been 

 formidable to the strongest frame. In place of verdant herb- 

 age and fragrant flowers, the ground was thickly bestrewn 

 and the air infected by relics of destroyed life, both vegetable 

 and animal. Dry stubble, skeleton leaves, stripped branches, 

 and over these, thick as the slain upon a field of battle, the 

 remains of herbivorous insect giants, which had fallen a prey 

 to their carnivorous fellows. These consisted of prodigious 

 pinions and enormous empty carcases of butterfly, moth, and 

 bee, and fly vacant armour-pieces of many a mail-clad beetle 

 of the gentler tribes, such as in magnitude would have matched 

 the helmet of Otranto, and, here and there, scattered amongst 

 them (of all these relics most insignificant in point of size) the 

 closely-picked skeletons of sheep, horse, or ox, with others 

 which we shuddered to behold. The further we advanced the 

 more our heart sickened, for though the ruddy sunset was fast 

 giving place to the gloom of evening, no cheering light was 

 discernible through the leafless trees in the windows of the 

 cottage we were approaching, or those of any other adjacent 

 habitations. Our remaining strength and resolution were on 

 the point of utterly failing, when there suddenly appeared 

 against the sky, on the brow of the eminence we were ascend- 

 ing, two moving figures of (as it seemed to us) human size 

 and proportions. Were they indeed human ? or only some 

 frightful variety of that once despicable crew, displaced, sim- 

 ply by augmented size, from their former place in creation's 



