Up the winding road they take you, with
the bay at your back and the gorge at your right, to the crest of
a narrow ridge where the chapel stands. Once there, you overlook
the fairest sight in all Christendom--"the loveliest valley in the
world," as Humboldt called it--for the Yumuri nestles right at
your feet, a vale of pure delight, a glimpse of Paradise that
bewilders the eye and fills the soul with ecstasy.
It is larger than it seems at first sight; through it meanders the
river, coiling and uncoiling, hidden here and there by jungle
growths, and seeking final outlet through a cleft in the wall not
unlike a crack in the side of a painted bowl. The place seems to
have been fashioned as a dwelling for dryads and hamadryads, for
nixies and pixies, and all the fabled spirits of forest and
stream. Fairy hands tinted its steep slopes and carpeted its level
floor with the richest of green brocades. Nowhere is there a clash
of color; nowhere does a naked hillside or monstrous jut of rock
obtrude to mar its placid beauty; nowhere can you see a crude,
disfiguring mark of man's handiwork--there are only fields, and
bowers, with an occasional thatched roof faded gray by the sun.
Royal palms, most perfect of trees, are scattered everywhere. They
stand alone or in stately groves, their lush fronds drooping like
gigantic ostrich plumes, their slim trunks as smooth and regular
and white as if turned in a giant lathe and then rubbed with pipe-
clay.
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