The channel led to a landlocked pool, maybe a mile around, and this was as full of shipping as a town's harbour.

The water was but a pit of darkness, but I could make out the masts rising into the half light, and I counted more than twenty vessels in that port.

No light was shown, and the whole place was quiet as a grave.
We entered a wood of small hemlocks, and I felt rather than saw the ground slope in front of us.

About two hundred feet above the water the glen of a little stream shaped itself into a flat cup, which was invisible from below, and girdled on three sides by dark forest.

Here we walked more freely, till we came to the lip of the cup, and there, not twenty paces below me, I saw a wonderful sight.