You would note that it is of a regular oval shape; and that instead of being bounded by sloping declivities, it is girt by an almost vertical cliff that appears to be continuous all around it.

This cliff of dark granitic rock you might guess with your eye to rise several hundred feet sheer from the bottom of the valley.

If it were in the season of summer, you might further observe, that receding from its brow a dark-coloured declivity of the mountain rises still higher, terminating all around in peaks and ridges--which, being above the snow-line are continually covered with the pale white mantle that has fallen upon them from the heavens.
These details would be taken in at the first glance; and then your eye would wander into the valley below, and rest there--fixed by the singularity of the scene, and charmed by its soft loveliness--so strongly contrasting with the rude surroundings on which you had been hitherto gazing.
The form of the valley would suggest the existence of the grand elliptical crater of some extinct volcano.

But instead of the black sulphuric _scoria_, that you might expect to see strewed over its base, you behold a verdant landscape of smiling loveliness, park-like plains interposed with groves and copses, here and there a mound of rock-work, as if piled artificially and for ornament.

Around the cliffs appears a belt of forest of darker green; and occupying the centre a limpid lake, on whose silver surface at a certain hour of the day you might see reflected part of the snow-crowned summit on which you are standing--the cone of Chumulari itself.
With a good glass you might distinguish quadrupeds of several _species_ straying over the verdant pastures; birds of many kinds upon the wing, and others disporting themselves upon the surface of the lake.
You would be tempted to look for a grand mansion.