We found the stream navigable for several miles. Then we reached the uplands, and the water began tumbling amongst rocky boulders in a way that made farther progress dangerous. So we took to the land, gaining the left bank with ease and then rolling along in a southerly direction.
And now we had occasion to blame the map-maker again, for instead of the single fork in the stream which he had depicted we found a dozen branches leading down from the mountains and forming a regular network on this part of the plain. Several we forded, losing more and more our sense of location, until finally we came to a high embankment that barred our way and were forced to follow its course up to the forest, which we reached about the middle of the afternoon.
The grandeur of this immense woodland, as we approached its border, both awed and amazed us. The wood we had passed at the north was nothing more than a grove of trees when compared with the grand primeval forest that covered the mountain as far as the eye could reach.
We hardly knew whether to turn to the east or west from this point, and so we asked Ilalah if she had any idea in which direction lay the valley where the “white pebbles” were found.
She had none at all. The law forbidding the Techlas to gather these pebbles was passed by the king her father years ago, when she was but a child. No one had ever mentioned in her hearing where they had been found.
Fairly bewildered as to our whereabouts, by this time, we turned to the left and, easily fording now the shallow streams we encountered, visited several valleys without having a notion whether any of them was the one we sought, or not.
Finally I said to the princess:
“The place we seek has a great rock of red granite stone in the center, and a part of the rock points like an arm directly at the forest.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed; “that place I remember well, for I have visited it often as a girl.”
Here was cheering news, indeed.