It might wake the dead, but they would probably think they were in hell.
Halfway down the slope the hills had taken on a certain pallor which had about it something primitive, as if the colours were not yet created.
There was only a kind of cold and wan blue in the level skies which contrasted with wild sky-line.

Perhaps we are accustomed to the contrary condition of the clouds moving and mutable and the hills solid and serene; but anyhow there seemed something of the making of a new world about the quiet of the skies and the cold convulsion of the landscape.
But if it was between chaos and creation, it was creation by God or at least by the gods, something with an aim in its anarchy.
It was very different in the final stage of the descent, where my mind woke up from its meditations.

One can only say that the whole landscape was like a leper.

It was of a wasting white and silver and grey, with mere dots of decadent vegetation like the green spots of a plague.
In shape it not only rose into horns and crests like waves or clouds, but I believe it actually alters like waves or clouds, visibly but with a loathsome slowness.

The swamp is alive.
And I found again a certain advantage in forgetfulness; for I saw all this incredible country before I even remembered its name, or the ancient tradition about its nature.
Then even the green plague-spots failed, and everything seemed to fall away into a universal blank under the staring sun, as I came, in the great spaces of the circle of a lifeless sea, into the silence of Sodom and Gomorrah.
For these are the foundations of a fallen world, and a sea below the seas on which men sail.