Chapter II
The ancient community of Tukhlia was one of the largest settlements in the Carpathian Ranges consisting of, besides Tukhlia proper, two or three surrounding hamlets, the whole comprising a total population of about 3,000. This village and its environs were located not where lies the present Tukhlia but higher up towards the middle section of the ranges, in a distended, spacious valley now covered over by a dense forest of giant spruce and hemlocks, which is called “The Lost Valley”.
Long ago, when this story was enacted, “The Lost Valley” was a richly productive area of land supplying its inhabitants with an abundance of the necessities of life. About three miles long and one and a half wide, the smoothly rolling valley was encompassed by immense, precipitous walls of rock so that it resembled a huge kettle from which the water had been emptied. That probably was exactly what had happened. High up from a crevice in the hard rock of the eastern wall, a cataract catapulted down into the valley and wound its serpentine way across it and out through another narrow outlet in the opposite wall of rock, hurtling down between its smooth rocky banks, breaking into several cascades for about three-quarters of a mile before it emptied into the Opir river.
The high, steep banks of the Tukholian basin were rimmed with a murky forest of giant pines which when viewed from below seemed to give the kettle-shaped valley even a greater depth and an indescribable, silent desolation, as if it were a
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