Upward still, to black terraces of lava, standing out hard and black against the grey cloud, gleaming like iron in the moonlight, stair above stair, like those over which Vathek and the Princess climbed up to the halls of Eblis.

Over their crumbling steps, up through their cracks and crannies, out upon a dreary slope of broken stones, and then,-- before he dives upward into the cloud ten yards above his head,--one breathless look back upon the world.
The horizontal curtain of mist; gauzy below, fringed with white tufts and streamers, deepening above into the blackness of utter night.

Below it a long gulf of soft yellow haze in which, as in a bath of gold, lie delicate bars of far-off western cloud; and the faint glimmer of the western sea, above long knotted spurs of hill, in deepest shades, like a bunch of purple grapes flecked here and there from behind with gleams of golden light; and beneath them again, the dark woods sleeping over Gwynnant, and their dark double sleeping in the bright lake below.
On the right hand Snowdon rises.

Vast sheets of utter blackness--vast sheets of shining light.

He can see every crag which juts from the green walls of Galt-y-Wennalt; and far past it into the Great Valley of Cwn Dyli; and then the red peak, now as black as night, shuts out the world with its huge mist-topped cone.