I was so lost in my own thoughts, that I walked along scarcely knowing how or where.  I was calculating the chances of my reaching the mine by the evening, and considering how I should introduce myself.  I had not gone two hundred steps, when I perceived I was not in the right road.  I looked round, and found myself in a wild-looking forest of ancient firs, where apparently the stroke of the axe had never been heard.  A few steps more brought me amid huge rocks covered with moss and saxifragous plants, between which whole fields of snow and ice were extended.  The air was intensely cold.  I looked round, and the forest had disappeared behind me; a few steps more, and there was the stillness of death itself.  The icy plain on which I stood stretched to an immeasurable distance, and a thick cloud rested upon it; the sun was of a red blood-colour at the verge of the horizon; the cold was insupportable.  I could not imagine what had happened to me.  The benumbing frost made me quicken my pace.  I heard a distant sound of waters; and, at one step more, I stood on the icy shore of some ocean.  Innumerable droves of sea-dogs rushed past me and plunged into the waves.  I continued my way along this coast, and again met with rocks, plains, birch and fir forests, and yet only a few minutes had elapsed.  It was now intensely hot.  I looked around, and suddenly found myself between some fertile rice-fields and mulberry-trees; I sat down under their shade, and found by my watch that it was just one quarter of an hour since I had left the village market.  I fancied it was a dream; but no, I was indeed awake, as I felt by the experiment I made of biting my tongue.  I closed my eyes in order to collect my scattered thoughts.  Presently I heard unintelligible words uttered in a nasal tone; and I beheld two Chinese, whose Asiatic physiognomies were not to be mistaken, even had their costume not betrayed their origin.  They were addressing me in the language and with the salutations of their country.  I rose, and drew back a couple of steps.  They had disappeared; the landscape was entirely changed; the rice-fields had given place to trees and woods.  I examined some of the trees and plants around me, and ascertained such of them as I was acquainted with to be productions of the southern part of Asia.  I made one step towards a particular tree, and again all was changed.  I now moved on like a recruit at drill, taking slow and measured steps, gazing with astonished eyes at the wonderful variety of regions, plains, meadows, mountains, steppes, and sandy deserts, which passed in succession before me.  I had now no doubt that I had seven-leagued boots on my feet.