For thence the mountains beyond Whiteness, even those that they had just ridden, were clear to be seen like the wall of the plain country.

But here, looking adown, the land below them seemed but a great spreading plain with no hills rising from it, save that far away they could see a certain break in it, and amidst that, something that was brighter than the face of the land elsewhere.

Clement told Ralph that this was Goldburg and that it was built on a gathering of hills, not great, but going up steep from the plain.

And the plain, said he, was not so wholly flat and even as it looked from up there, but swelled at whiles into downs and low hills.

He told him that Goldburg was an exceeding fair town to behold; that the lord who had built it had brought from over the mountains masons and wood-wrights and artificers of all kinds, that they might make it as fair as might be, and that he spared on it neither wealth nor toil nor pains.