Erewhon, or, Over the range / by Samuel Butler with introduction and notes by Kenji Ishida.

  • Samuel Butler
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Erewhon, or, Over the range / by Samuel Butler with introduction and notes by Kenji Ishida. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    side and watched the waving downs, with the two white specks of huts in the distance, and the little square of garden behind them ; the paddock with a patch of bright green oats above the huts, and the yards and wool-sheds down on the flat below; all seen as through the wrong end of a telescope, so clear and brilliant was the air, or as upon a colossal model or map spread out beneath me* Beyond the downs was a plain, going down to a river of great size, on the farther side of which there were other high mountains, with the winter’s snow still not quite melted ; up the river, which ran winding in many streams over a bed some two miles broad, * looked upon the second great chain, and could see a narrow gorge where the river retired and was lost. I knew that there was a range still farther back ; but except from one place near the very top of my own mountain, no part of it was visible : from this point, however, I saw, whenever there were no clouds, a single snow-clad peak, many miles away, and I should think about as high as any mountain in the world. Never shall I forget the utter loneliness of the prospect—only the little far-away homestead giving sign of human handiwork;—the vastness of mountain and plain, of river and sky ; the marvellous atmospheric effects—sometimes black mountains against a white sky, and then again, after cold weather, white mountains against a black sky— sometimes seen through breaks and swirls of cloud— and sometimes, which was best of all,I went up my mountain in a fog, and then got above the mist;
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