At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra and Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of mountains and valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled, making at the north, with its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a perfect paradise for bees, though, strange to say, scarcely a single regular bee-ranch has yet been established in it.

Its minute filaments spread at last over the inner walls of the membranous labyrinth in two branches,one going to the vestibule and the ampullæ at the ends of the semicircular canals, the other leading to the cochlea.

[Illustration: Rosamond's Well and Labyrinth at Woodstock.]

"I am lost," he thought; lost among goblins, marooned in the age of barbarism, shut in a labyrinth with a Black Death at once actual and mediaeval: he dared not think of Home, but flung his arms on the littered desk, and buried his face.

The travellers wandered from one grotto to another until they came to a fountain of pure water, by the side of which they lingered some time, till, observing that their torches were wasting, they resolved to return; but after exploring the labyrinth for a few minutes, they found themselves again close beside this mysterious spring.

Cruel Elinor, Your savage mother, my uncivil queen: The tigress, that hath drunk the purple blood Of three times twenty thousand valiant men; Washing her red chaps in the weeping tears Of widows, virgins, nurses, sucking babes; And lastly, sorted with her damn'd consorts, Ent'red a labyrinth to murther love.

All this forms such a perfect labyrinth from the multiplicity and similarity of the alleys and bridges, that it is impossible for any stranger to find his way without a guide.

He generally ranged himself on the losing side; and had rather an ill-natured delight in contradiction, and in perplexing the understandings of others, without leaving them any clue to guide them out of the labyrinth into which he had led them.

The deceased gentleman had, with inexplicable rashness, made his way into this labyrinth without, as far as can be discovered, taking with him either candles or matches, so that his sad fate was the natural result of his own temerity.

Even the signal lamps on the distant railway line rose out of the labyrinth like a lighthouse in mid-ocean, making the illusion complete.

False Minos now may knit his baffled brows, And in the labyrinth by thee devised His brutish horns in angry search may toss The Minotaur,but

Young visionariesto whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around themcame to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment.

Here we breakfasted, picturesquely enough, and, resuming our course, soon emerged from the hilly labyrinth on a series of terraces, falling off like steps to the river on our left.

Pursuing our way through turnings and windings the most perplexing, we found ourselves to be on the overhanging brow of a hill, the descent of which was so precipitous, that we were under the necessity of dismounting; and by a winding path, hollowed out in its side, descended through a sort of labyrinth towards the valley, whose sides were clothed with lofty woods, rising one above the other.