More often a threatening cliff faced us, or an endless slope closed in the view, only to give way to another and yet another as we climbed their weary length.
"Yet our speed was not trifling.

We had passed a train of white-clothed pilgrims in the morning soon after leaving Ratnapoora.
Since then we had seen no man except one poor old priest at the ruined resting-house where we ate our mid-day meal.

The shadow of the forest allowed us to travel through the heat of the day, and the thirst of discovery would have hurried me on even had the guides protested.

But they were both sturdy, well-built men, and suffered from the heat far less than I did.

So we hardly paused until, in the first swift gloom of sunset, we emerged on the grassy lawn of Diabetne, beneath the very face of the cone.
"We had to rest for the night in the ruined _Ambulam_, as it is called; and here, thoroughly tired but sleepless, I lay for some hours and watched the innumerable stars creep out and crown that sublime head which rose at first into a fathomless blue that was almost black, and then as the moon swept up, flashed into unutterable radiance.