It issues out of a
gateway, hitherto unrevealed; and here you may turn aside from the plain
and enter into the heart of the mountains, into a world of nightmare
effects. This very portal is fantastic, theatrical; it leads into an arena
of riven rocks that might serve as council-chamber for a cloud of Ifrits,
and is closed at the further end. There is a second gateway to be passed
before you can enter the gorge itself.
The track winds upwards--the whole length of the defile is about three
miles--sometimes between walls of rock which are chiselled so smoothly by
the gentle waters that one can hardly believe them to be of natural
workmanship (and at these points, as a rule, your only path is the
stream-bed itself); opening out again into wide amphitheatres, rose-tinted
cirques of desolation, where masses of debris, slipped down from the
heights, lie prone in Dantesque confusion. There are rock-doves and
falcons fluttering about the sunny precipices; cliff-swallows build
precarious habitations against the roof of yawning caverns; sandpipers and
wagtails skim over the streamlet that glides in a smiling flood across
reaches of yellow sand.
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