OF ELWUND. 
119 
best; since it presents rock, mountain, and desert, a brazen soil, 
with a sky of fire. 
In descending, I ordered my guide, who had confessed total 
ignorance respecting the inscribed stone, to make inquiries of 
some of the mountaineers, where it might be found. After 
some rambling about, we met a peasant, who told us that it lay 
in a valley of the mountain, considerably to the southward, and 
to gain which, we were literally obliged to descend wholly into 
the plain, ere we could reach the point whence we were to re¬ 
commence the search. In leaving the region of the peak, I 
observed its ravines yet deep in snow; which, my guide told me, 
were a source of great luxury to the people of the town, when 
the store in their ice-repositories failed. Having reached the 
edge of the plain, we entered a wretched stony road, winding 
southerly between steep declivities formed by projecting masses 
of granite; and, at the bottom of the glen, lower in its hollow 
than the rough footing we had found for our horses, rolled a 
rapid and clear stream, the kindly influence of which spread its 
immediate banks with a variegated verdure. The power of 
water, certainly, is no where so apparent as in oriental countries ; 
the transitions there, being so great between the bare arid rock, 
shooting up into the cloudless flaming sky, and the sheltered 
valley at its base, traversed by some little rill, which, like a ray 
of light dispersing darkness, seems at once to melt the stone into 
genial mould and fragrant herbage. Wherever these springs 
trickle from the heights, tracks of green follow their course; and, 
collecting in the winding glens, they flow onward, fertilizing 
the ground. On their margins, the straggling goats and cows of 
the Nomade tribes find sufficient and safe pasture. Small com¬ 
panies of these people scatter themselves through most of the 
