“I’m all right now,” he said. “But—for a moment or two there—I felt as if I still were on the brink and just toppling over. I tell you, that was no joke. There wasn’t even a stunted bush to grab at as I slid down.”
Day succeeded day, sometimes sudden storms forcing them to seek shelter in mid-day, before they contemplated going into camp. These storms in the mountains come up suddenly. The sky would darken, thunder roll reverberatingly along the hills, lightning flash, and then would come a tremendous downpour of rain. Quickly as the storm arose, however, it went as quickly.
Always as they pushed ahead, they climbed higher into the mountains.
“But, Dad,” protested Jack one day, “can it be the Enchanted City was among these lofty peaks? Would de Arguello’s expedition, for instance, have gotten so high?”
“Patience, Jack,” explained Mr. Hampton. “Tomorrow, I believe, we start descending. We are almost at the top of a range of mountains now. Today, several times, I caught glimpses of a snow-clad range beyond—so far away, indeed, that I believe there must be a great central valley between. Somewhere in there, if our vague directions left by de Pereira are of any value, lies the Enchanted City.”
That a great central valley did intervene between that range and the next was proven next day when, coming through a pass, they discerned a tossing, forest-clad wilderness of scarp and mountain, lake and river, cut up by mountains irregularly scattered about, spread out below them. The next regular chain of mountains, paralleling that through which they had been making their way, lay far beyond, and their peaks were white with snows.
“We shall have difficulty exploring this wilderness below us,” said Don Ernesto. “This is beyond any regions where white men go. There are hostile branches of the Auraucanos down there—somewhere. Somewhere down there, too, lies the Enchanted City, however. And if it is to be found, we shall find it. Game and water, at least, shall not be wanting. Come.”
They set off as into a promised land.