It was like the end of the world.

Far down there was a dark, dreadful drop into a sort of deep valley below.

You couldn't see the bottom of it.
The trees on the mountain side looked like bushes, and they were big ironbarks and messmates too.

On three sides of us was this awful, desolate-looking precipice--a dreary, gloomy, God-forsaken kind of spot.
The sky got cloudy, and the breeze turned cold and began to murmur and whistle in an odd, unnatural kind of way, while father, seeing how scared and puzzled I was, began to laugh.

I shuddered.