"Rest a minute," said Mr. Smith, "and we will see if it is possible
to make our way around the base of this cliff."
"At any rate," said Harry Horn, "the great block must have fallen
from this part of the cliff; and it has left no breach for entering."
They were both right; we must seek entrance elsewhere. After a rest
of ten minutes, we clambered up close to the foot of the wall, and
began to make a circuit of its base.
Assuredly the Great Eyrie now took on to my eyes an aspect absolutely
fantastic. Its heights seemed peopled by dragons and huge monsters.
If chimeras, griffins, and all the creations of mythology had
appeared to guard it, I should have been scarcely surprised.
With great difficulty and not without danger we continued our tour of
this circumvallation, where it seemed that nature had worked as man
does, with careful regularity. Nowhere was there any break in the
fortification; nowhere a fault in the strata by which one might
clamber up. Always this mighty wall, a hundred feet in height!
After an hour and a half of this laborious circuit, we regained our
starting-place. I could not conceal my disappointment, and Mr. Smith
was not less chagrined than I.
"A thousand devils!" cried he, "we know no better than before what is
inside this confounded Great Eyrie, nor even if it is a crater.
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