CRENELLATED TOWERS OF THE INNER CITY.
We, that is the young Prince Somdetch Chow Fa, my boy, and I, made the most of our visit to this delightful region, rambling over the hills and forests, gathering wild flowers, and visiting the hot springs, caves, and grottos, which form some of the more interesting features of the neighborhood. In the foreground, near the school-house, stood a clump of ferns full of pictures; a little farther on was a cave, over the mouth of which trailed huge convolvuli; and immediately above it an overhanging rock variegated with natural tints and colors, the effect of which was most wonderful.
From this spot there were tempting walks through groves of dark green trees, opening upon wide terraces which commanded exquisite views of the country, rich with cultivation or dotted with houses and gardens, or the still more fertile valleys, winding amongst which might be traced the silvery thread of the Diamond River.
Not far from the Royal Mountain are several grottos, two of which are of surprising extent and great beauty, an exact painting of which would be looked upon with incredulity, or as an invention of fairy land.
Whatever may have been the origin of these grottos, owing to the moisture continually dropping through the damp soil of the rocks they have been clothed with the richest and most harmonious colors, and adorned with magnificent stalactites, which rise in innumerable slender shafts and columns to support the roof and walls. The setting sun reveals a gorgeous mass of coloring, ending in dark blue and purple shadows in the distant chambers and hollows.
I never witnessed such wonderfully illusive transformations as the sunlight effected wherever it penetrated these subterranean halls. No human hands have as yet touched their marvellous walls and roofs and pillars. All that has been done by man is to cut a staircase in the rock, to aid the descent into the grottos, and enable the visitor to see them in all their regal beauty.
The largest grotto has been converted into a Buddhist temple; all along the richly tinted rock-walls are contemplative images of the Buddha, and in the centre, just where is concentrated the richest depth of coloring, lying on a horizontal bed of rock, is a large sleeping idol of the same inevitable figure, with the same mysterious expression about the closed eyelids, as if he were in the habit, even in sleep, of penetrating distant worlds, in his longing to gaze upon the Infinite.
Lower down the mountain lies a calm lake, with its smooth silvery surface ever and anon broken by the leaping of a fish, as if to prove that it is water and not glass, and beyond the lake are more mountains rolling up into the sky in purple and green folds, with the faintest of blue borders and crimson-tipped edges, for they are many miles off.