Inlet succeeds inlet, deep, calm, and winding far in amongst the steep and towering mountains.

The lower slopes of these are clothed with a thick tangle of forest, where foliage is kept eternally fresh and vivid by rain and mist.

White torrents and waterfalls everywhere seam the verdure and break the stillness.
Cross to the east coast.
Scarcely is the watershed passed when the traveller begins to enter a new landscape and a distinct climate.

The mountains, stripped of their robe of forest, seem piled in ruined, wasting heaps, or stand out bleak and bare-ribbed, "The skeletons of Alps whose death began Far in the multitudinous centuries." Little is left them but a kind of dreary grandeur.

The sunshine falls on patches of gleaming snow and trailing mist, and lights up the grey crags which start out like mushrooms on the barren slopes.