"He dwells in the heart of a bleak mountain where the glad sun never penetrates, and whence the foot of man is shut out. But his wisdom and power are so great that he can by his one word perform any of nature's operations. In the blazing heat and dazzling light of noonday he can cover the heavens with the darkness of night. When the sky is one even blue, without assistance of wind or clouds, he can draw rain from a barren heaven. He can arrest the course of the bounding rivers, and of the birds in the midst of their flight. The burnt-up grasses of August at his word raise their withered blades, and resume their verdant hues; the tides of the sea obey his voice, and forget the commands of the moon. And, much more than all this, he can tell the destinies of men, and foresee the fate of nations. It would be impossible for words of mine to overstate his mighty and irresistible power."
While he had been speaking they had passed through a long tract of forest, where the trees grew so thickly, and were so encumbered with brushwood, that Don Ercilla was obliged to tie his horse up and proceed on foot. At last they reached a low opening in a rock, through which was a long dark passage, where they could hardly walk upright, and at the end of it a door garnished all round with heads of wild beasts. Guaticolo opened the door, and led Don Ercilla by the hand into a spacious vault, in the centre of which burnt a strange and perpetual light; in the walls of the cave were cut many stone shelves, on which were ranged jars of ointments, essences, and herbs. There were preserved the far-piercing eyes of the lynx and that of the venomous basilisk; red gore of angry men, and foam from the mouth of rabid dogs; parts of the wing of the harpy, the venom of the amphisbena, and the tail of the treacherous asp, which gives death wrapt up in a pleasant dream; mould off a truncated head unworthy of burial, and the tongue of the horrid hemorreo, whose puncture can never be staunched, but whosoever it wounds must bleed to death. In a huge transparent vase was a griffin's heart, pierced through with an arrow, and the ashes of an eastern phoenix. Stings of serpents, and tails of scorpions, and whatsoever is deadly and venomous in nature.