eight o’clock in the evening
In the elbow thus formed the country is of varied character , sometimes luxuriantly fertile , and sometimes extremely bare ; fields of maize succeeded by wide spaces covered with broom-corn and uncultivated plains . All kinds of aquatic birds -- pelicans , wild-duck , kingfishers , and the rest -- were seen in numerous flocks hovering about the borders of the pools and torrents . From time to time there appeared an encampment of Touaregs , the men sheltered under their leather tents , while their women were busied with the domestic toil outside , milking their camels and smoking their huge-bowled pipes . By eight o'clock in the evening the Victoria had advanced more than two hundred miles to the westward , and our aeronauts became the spectators of a magnificent scene . A mass of moonbeams forcing their way through an opening in the clouds , and gliding between the long lines of falling rain , descended in a golden shower on the ridges of the Hombori Mountains . Nothing could be more weird than the appearance of these seemingly basaltic summits ; they stood out in fantastic profile against the sombre sky , and the beholder might have fancied them to be the legendary ruins of some vast city of the middle ages , such as the icebergs of the polar seas sometimes mimic them in nights of gloom . `` An admirable landscape for the ` Mysteries of Udolpho ' ! ''