DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0482
170
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.
[chap, xvi
green cloak that Nature, like Sir Walter Raleigh, had strewn
upon her path. A rich and varied foliage made a grateful shade,
and rustled in pleasant harmony with the bees that hummed
among the wild flowers. Then would start up some high pro-
jecting cliff, the summit of which, when won, commanded a wide
view of the beautiful valley. So ne went on, ever diving into
shady valleys, or emerging on some rocky platform where the
breeze blew free, and the eye could wander far over Cselesyria.
Gradually the flowering shrubs ceased, the forest trees gave way
to the pine or the prickly oak, and at last we wound along the
side of a naked mountain, where our horses could scarce find
footing. Then again descending, we came to a ruined village
named Ainete, the cause of whose desolation we vainly inquired
from a party of mountaineers, who joined us here. From Ainete
the path becomes very difficult and dangerous: our horses even
seemed to tread hurriedly and fearfully along a path that none
but a lizard or a mountaineer would have considered safe. Then
we passed into a region of snow, and I looked my last upon the
valley of Baalbec*
* As the history and statistics of the Tribes of the Mountain are only in-
teresting to the scholar or the traveller, I have transferred such particulars as I
could gather concerning them to note E, in Appendix.
i
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.
[chap, xvi
green cloak that Nature, like Sir Walter Raleigh, had strewn
upon her path. A rich and varied foliage made a grateful shade,
and rustled in pleasant harmony with the bees that hummed
among the wild flowers. Then would start up some high pro-
jecting cliff, the summit of which, when won, commanded a wide
view of the beautiful valley. So ne went on, ever diving into
shady valleys, or emerging on some rocky platform where the
breeze blew free, and the eye could wander far over Cselesyria.
Gradually the flowering shrubs ceased, the forest trees gave way
to the pine or the prickly oak, and at last we wound along the
side of a naked mountain, where our horses could scarce find
footing. Then again descending, we came to a ruined village
named Ainete, the cause of whose desolation we vainly inquired
from a party of mountaineers, who joined us here. From Ainete
the path becomes very difficult and dangerous: our horses even
seemed to tread hurriedly and fearfully along a path that none
but a lizard or a mountaineer would have considered safe. Then
we passed into a region of snow, and I looked my last upon the
valley of Baalbec*
* As the history and statistics of the Tribes of the Mountain are only in-
teresting to the scholar or the traveller, I have transferred such particulars as I
could gather concerning them to note E, in Appendix.
i