He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over
them to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever!
He thought of that great free world that he was parted from,
the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those further
slopes, distance beyond distance, with Bogota, a place of
multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery
by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white
houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought how
for a day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever
nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of the
river journey, day by day, from great Bogota to the still vaster
world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places,
the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded, and the big
steamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea--the
limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands,
and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings
round and about that greater world. And there, unpent by
mountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc as one saw it
here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which
the circling stars were floating . . . .
His eyes began to scrutinise the great curtain of the
mountains with a keener inquiry.
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