“He’s on the other side of the great cliff,” said Richard,—“the cliff no man can climb. But you can come.”
He got on the Mouldiwarp’s back and put his arms round its Polar-bear-like neck, and it began to climb. That was a climb. Even the cats, which Edred and Elfrida now could not help seeing that they were, found it as much as they could do to keep their footing on those little, smooth, shelving ledges. If it had not been that they had cat’s eyes, and so could see in the dark, they never could have done it. And it was such a long, long climb too; it seemed as though it would last for ever.
“I’ve heard of foreign climbs,” said Elfrida, “but I never thought they would be like this. I suppose it is foreign?”
“South American,” said Richard. “You can look for it on the map when you get home—but you won’t find it. Come on!”
And then when they had climbed to the top of the cliff they had to go down on the other side. For the cliff rose like a wall between the forest and a wide plain, and by the time they reached that plain the sun was looking down at them over the cliff.
The plain was very large and very wonderful, and a towering wall of cliff ran all round it. The plain was all laid out in roads and avenues and fields and parks. Towns and palaces were dotted about it—a tall aqueduct on hundreds of pillars brought water from an arch in the face of the cliff to the middle of the plain, and from these canals ran out to the cliff wall that bounded the plain all round, even and straight, like the spokes of a wheel, and disappeared under low arches of stone, back under the cliff. There were lakes, there were gardens, there were great stone buildings whose roofs shone like gold where the rising sun struck them.
In the fields were long-horned cattle and strange, high-shouldered sheep, which Richard said were llamas.
“I know,” he explained, “from seeing them on the postage stamps.”
They advanced into the plain and sat down under a spreading tree.
“We must just wait till we’re found,” said Richard. He had assumed entire command of the expedition, and Edred and Elfrida, being cats, had to submit, but they did not like it.