"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

passage with difficulty through the vast fleets of deeply- burthened
ships that far and wide encountered its surface. Beyond the limits
of the city arose, in frequent majestic groups, the palm and the
cocoa, with other gigantic and weird trees of vast age, and here and
there might be seen a field of rice, the thatched hut of a peasant,
a tank, a stray temple, a gypsy camp, or a solitary graceful maiden
taking her way, with a pitcher upon her head, to the banks of the
magnificent river.
"You will say now, of course, that I dreamed; but not so. What I
saw- what I heard- what I felt- what I thought- had about it nothing
of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream. All was rigorously
self-consistent. At first, doubting that I was really awake, I entered
into a series of tests, which soon convinced me that I really was.
Now, when one dreams, and, in the dream, suspects that he dreams,
the suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and the sleeper is almost
immediately aroused. Thus Novalis errs not in saying that 'we are near
waking when we dream that we dream.' Had the vision occurred to me
as I describe it, without my suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it
might absolutely have been, but, occurring as it did, and suspected
and tested as it was, I am forced to class it among other phenomena."
"In this I am not sure that you are wrong," observed Dr.
Templeton, "but proceed. You arose and descended into the city."
"I arose," continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of
profound astonishment "I arose, as you say, and descended into the
city. On my way I fell in with an immense populace, crowding through
every avenue, all in the same direction, and exhibiting in every
action the wildest excitement. Very suddenly, and by some
inconceivable impulse, I became intensely imbued with personal
interest in what was going on. I seemed to feel that I had an
important part to play, without exactly understanding what it was.
Against the crowd which environed me, however, I experienced a deep
sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid them, and, swiftly, by a
circuitous path, reached and entered the city. Here all was the
wildest tumult and contention. A small party of men, clad in
garments half-Indian, half-European, and officered by gentlemen in a
uniform partly British, were engaged, at great odds, with the swarming
rabble of the alleys. I joined the weaker party, arming myself with
the weapons of a fallen officer, and fighting I knew not whom with the
nervous ferocity of despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers,
and driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk. Here we barricaded
ourselves, and, for the present were secure. From a loop-hole near the
summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation,
surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river.
Presently, from an upper window of this place, there descended an
effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made of the turbans of
his attendants. A boat was at hand, in which he escaped to the
opposite bank of the river.
"And now a new object took possession of my soul. I spoke a few
hurried but energetic words to my companions, and, having succeeded in
gaining over a few of them to my purpose made a frantic sally from the