he weather, blistering in the sun, the scarified faces of the cliffs
worn at the summits into pinnacles of gaunt stone. No mark of humanity,
except the single red path, suggested that civilization ever troubled
these heights, and there was hardly anything worth the notice of a goat
in the shape of fodder.

The path rose and fell, skirting now this shoulder and now a gully, but
keeping for the most part on high ground, here and there winding upwards
across the sharp spine of a ridge, and, by way of some awkward staircase,
once more landing us on the level. More often than not, the donkey had
only himself to carry; the boy probably thought us mad, but there was no
understanding what the other would fain have said. Except for the
wind--and even that dropped--a great silence lay on the proud heights;
they defied man to interfere with their grizzled _debris_: the birds had
forgotten to sing: all around was that certain awed solemnity, always to
be found, in the companionship of the everlasting hills. But the air was
champagne; the heather was mad in the breeze; the sky where it met the
rocks, an intoxicating blue. And how the clouds "travelled"! Though, in
spite of that, the hills never spoke: like the Sphinx, whose repose no
dance of lizards nor flashes of sunlight can disturb, they are "too great
to appease, too high to appal, too far to call." Occasionally a dip in
the hollow back of a mountain showed the sea beyond: there are few seas
bluer than the blue Mediterranean can be, and this was one of its days.

The polished track led us on: still no sign of a village, nor any
evidences of civilization. At last from the top of a ridge we looked over
and down into a calm green oasis, "a lodge in some vast wilderness,"
secluded, sheltered, where it would have been good to pitch a tent and
camp for many moons. We swung along downwards, dropped under the lee of
the hill, and our path skirted the fringe of the green oasis. It was not
many acres in extent; it was covered with short scant grass; it would
have made an ideal polo-ground.

Water lay over a small corner of it, and beyond a shadow of doubt it had
once been the bottom of a lake; indeed, the Beni Salam tribe believe that
water still lies underneath the turf. Here the first sign of humanity
showed itself: two goatherds drove their flock down to the water, and one
of them carried in the hood of his brown jellab a few hours' old kid;
they soon passed on and disappeared among