The road is infinitely and charmingly crooked. It goes winding in and
out under lofty cliffs that are smothered in vines and foliage, and
around the edges of bottomless chasms; and all the way one glides by
files of picturesque natives, some carrying burdens up, others going down
from their work in the tea-gardens; and once there was a gaudy wedding
procession, all bright tinsel and color, and a bride, comely and girlish,
who peeped out from the curtains of her palanquin, exposing her face with
that pure delight which the young and happy take in sin for sin's own
sake.
By and by we were well up in the region of the clouds, and from that
breezy height we looked down and afar over a wonderful picture--the
Plains of India, stretching to the horizon, soft and fair, level as a
floor, shimmering with heat, mottled with cloud-shadows, and cloven with
shining rivers. Immediately below us, and receding down, down, down,
toward the valley, was a shaven confusion of hilltops, with ribbony roads
and paths squirming and snaking cream-yellow all over them and about
them, every curve and twist sharply distinct.
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