Dr. Nikola Returns by Guy Boothby

We stood and looked across the valley, hardly able to believe that we had at last arrived at the place of which we had heard so much. There it stood gaunt and lonely, on the edge of the ravine, a dark grey collection of roofs and towers, and surrounded by a lofty wall. But, though we could see it plainly enough before us, the chief question was "How were we to reach it?" The cañon, to employ an American term, stretched to right and left of us, as far as the eye could reach, in unbroken grandeur. Certainly, on the side upon which we stood, the cliff sloped enough for an experienced mountaineer to clamber down, but across the ravine it rose a sheer precipice for fully 1, 500 feet, and though I examined it carefully I could not see a single place where even a goat could find a footing.

"It would take us a week to go round," said Nikola, when he had examined it with his usual care; "and starving as we are we should be dead before we got half way."