Sign of presence, human or animal, was none--smoke or dust or shadow of cultivation.

Not a cloud floated in the clear heaven; no thinnest haze curtained any segment of its circling rim.
I descended, and set out for the imaginable forest: something alive might be there; on this side of it could not well be anything! When I reached the plain, I found it, as far as my sight could go, of rock, here flat and channeled, there humped and pinnacled--evidently the wide bed of a vanished river, scored by innumerable water-runs, without a trace of moisture in them.

Some of the channels bore a dry moss, and some of the rocks a few lichens almost as hard as themselves.

The air, once "filled with pleasant noise of waters," was silent as death.
It took me the whole day to reach the patch,--which I found indeed a forest--but not a rudiment of brook or runnel had I crossed! Yet through the glowing noon I seemed haunted by an aural mirage, hearing so plainly the voice of many waters that I could hardly believe the opposing testimony of my eyes.
The sun was approaching the horizon when I left the river-bed, and entered the forest.

Sunk below the tree-tops, and sending his rays between their pillar-like boles, he revealed a world of blessed shadows waiting to receive me.