Its foliage was of a dark, glossy green, particularly dense, and its height, as I should judge, some sixty feet.
"Taking out my compass, I started from the left-hand side of the narrow track, and at a right angle to it.

The undergrowth gave me much trouble, and once I had to make a circuit round a huge rhododendron; but I fought my way through, and after going, as I reckoned, thirty-two paces, pulled up full in front of--another rhododendron.
"There must be some mistake.

My father had spoken of a 'stone shaped like a man's head,' but said nothing of a rhododendron tree, and indeed this particular tree was in nowise different from its companions.

I looked around; took a few steps to the right, then to the left; went round the tree; walked back a few paces; returned to the tree to see if it concealed anything; then sought the track to begin my measurement afresh.
"I was just starting again in a very discomposed mood, when a thought struck me.

I had been behaving like a fool.