The mist cleared away from before my eyes, and I saw below me an immense
plain. But already, by the mere breath of the warm soft air upon my cheeks,
I could tell I was not in Russia; and the plain, too, was not like our
Russian plains. It was a vast dark expanse, apparently desert and not
overgrown with grass; here and there over its whole extent gleamed pools of
water, like broken pieces of looking-glass; in the distance could be dimly
descried a noiseless motionless sea. Great stars shone bright in the spaces
between the big beautiful clouds; the murmur of thousands, subdued but
never-ceasing, rose on all sides, and very strange was this shrill but
drowsy chorus, this voice of the darkness and the desert....
‘The Pontine marshes,’ said Alice. ‘Do you hear the frogs? do you smell the
sulphur?’
‘The Pontine marshes....’ I repeated, and a sense of grandeur and of
desolation came upon me. ‘But why have you brought me here, to this gloomy
forsaken place? Let us fly to Rome instead.’
‘Rome is near,’ answered Alice.... ‘Prepare yourself!’
We sank lower, and flew along an ancient Roman road. A bullock slowly
lifted from the slimy mud its shaggy monstrous head, with short tufts of
bristles between its crooked backward-bent horns. It turned the whites of
its dull malignant eyes askance, and sniffed a heavy snorting breath into
its wet nostrils, as though scenting us.
‘Rome, Rome is near...’ whispered Alice. ‘Look, look in front....’