"And now let us be off, young man," said he to the Wallach, who hastily took his cap and a small axe from the ground, and went out without once looking behind him.
His mother seized him by the hand—
"Wilt thou not first kiss thy dead sweetheart?"
Sange Moarte did not even turn his head round, but drew his hand out of his mother's and went with the two strange men towards the darkening woods.
All that night the adventurers were traversing a deep dell. Gigantic perpendicular rocks rose up on each side of them, only above their heads shimmered a narrow streak of starry sky.
Towards morning they found themselves among the Carpathian Alps.
It was a dazzling spectacle. In the distance diamond-peaked crystal mountains covered with white snow-fields, striped here and there by dark-green lines of pine forest. Close beside them is a basalt rock, consisting of angular columns as large as towers, standing side by side like the pipes of a gigantic organ, with their summits crowned by wreaths of round trees. A white, semi-transparent cloud floats across this rock, hiding all but its summit and its base. From time to time a lightning-flash darts from this cloud, and the reverberated echoes of the thunder-peals resound like long-drawn-out chords from this majestic organ of Nature's own workmanship.
Over yonder, a mountain chasm suddenly comes into view, where two rocky fragments, whose rugged surfaces seem to exactly correspond, stand face to face. Through this rocky chasm, many hundred feet below, rushes a stray branch of the icy Szamos, disappearing among the thick oak woods which cover its banks.
In one place the rocks form a flight of steps, steps never fashioned for the foot of man, for each of them is as high as a tower; in another place the rocky boulders are piled one on the top of the other, in such a way that if the undermost block were disturbed, the whole of the enormous mass would fall into a differently-shaped group.
Everything indicates that here the dominion of the world and of man ends. Not a single human habitation is visible from the dizzy heights; even vegetation is rare and scanty; on every side bald rocks and gaping chasms, among which the mountain torrents toss and tumble; only the wild goat is there to be seen leaping from crag to crag.