344 
WE ARRIVE AT A CONCLUSION. 
game, and finally visiting tlie village on our return. 
So -we left this latter on our right and the coal-mine in 
our rear, and trudged along through the soft and spongy 
turf and over the rugged tails of ridges that ran down 
and terminated at the river, until we had pretty well tired 
ourselves out, and arrived, not at the mountains, but at 
the conclusion that we had ivalked along the boggy bank 
quite far enough, and that if we expected to visit the 
village and regain the ship before night it was full time 
for us to he turning hack and “stirring our stumps.” 
So we took advantage of the first fordable part of the 
river to wade across, and soon found ourselves climbing 
the hills on the opposite side. 
From the top of these hills we now looked toward the 
village over a treeless expanse of undulating land, ivhose 
broken surface was covered with a dense hut dry turf, in 
wdiich the foot sank over the ankle at every step, and 
whose occasional ravines were hidden by groves of dwarf 
pines, under which a long and iviry grass grew, and 
twisted, and turned, and retwisted itself, in such a man- 
ner as to render it any thing hut an easy matter to Avork 
our way down, over, and up to the opposite heights. Still, 
even that was better than the muddy, spongy walking 
along the river’s bank ; and so we continued on over the 
yielding turf and through the tangled grass until we had 
crossed the last ravine and ascended to the extensive 
prairie-like plain upon the sea-edge of which the mound- 
like houses of the village were located. 
We had not walked many hundred yards over this 
beautiful carpeting of grass before our attention was 
attracted by a shout upon our left, and, as we turned in 
