The servants jabbered, chewed betel, spit, then jabbered a little more, and at last everything and everybody was fast asleep within the cave.
The next morning we had an early breakfast and started, the village people marching off in good spirits with the loads.

I was now en route for Bertram's patinas, which lay exactly over the mountain on the opposite side of the river.

This being perpendicular, I was obliged to make a great circuit by keeping the old Newera Ellia path along the river for two or three miles, and then, turning off at right angles, I knew an old native trace over the ridge.

Altogether, it was a round of about six miles, although the patinas were not a mile from the cave in a straight line.
The path in fact terminates upon the high peak, exactly opposite the cave, looking down upon my hunting-ground of the day before, and on the other side the ridge lie Bertram's patinas.
The extreme point of the ridge which I had now gained forms one end of a horse-shoe or amphitheatre; the other extremity is formed by a high mountain exactly opposite at about two miles' distance.

The bend of the horse-shoe forms a circuit of about six miles, the rim of which is a wall of precipices and steep patina mountains, which are about six or seven hundred feet above the basin or the bottom of the amphitheatre.
The tops of the mountains are covered with good open forest, and ribbon-like strips descend to the base.