Many leagues from the base of its peak the ground began to rise in brown and rugged hillocks, from which sprang the holy Mountain itself, a white and dazzling point that soared full twenty thousand feet into the heavens.
Yes, and there upon the nether lip of its crater stood the gigantic pillar, surmounted by a yet more gigantic loop of virgin rock, whereof the blackness stood out grimly against the blue of the sky beyond and the blinding snow beneath.
We gazed at it with awe, as well we might, this beacon of our hopes that for aught we knew might also prove their monument, feeling even then that yonder our fate would declare itself.

I noted further that all those with us did it reverence by bowing their heads as they caught sight of the peak, and by laying the first finger of the right hand across the first finger of the left, a gesture, as we afterwards discovered, designed to avert its evil influence.

Yes, even Simbri bowed, a yielding to inherited superstition of which I should scarcely have suspected him.
"Have you ever journeyed to that Mountain ?" asked Leo of him.
Simbri shook his head and answered evasively.
"The people of the Plain do not set foot upon the Mountain.

Among its slopes beyond the river which washes them, live hordes of brave and most savage men, with whom we are oftentimes at war; for when they are hungry they raid our cattle and our crops.

Moreover, there, when the Mountain labours, run red streams of molten rock, and now and again hot ashes fall that slay the traveller." "Do the ashes ever fall in your country ?" asked Leo.
"They have been known to do so when the Spirit of the Mountain is angry, and that is why we fear her." "Who is this Spirit ?" said Leo eagerly.
"I do not know, lord," he answered with impatience.