Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/77

 the bosom of blue seas, its margin flashing with beryl and pearl where rocks and breakers touch, its rounded ridges white and green again with the granite of which it is built and the verdure with which it is clothed. Over it all bends the blue of the summer sky, and as you look up to this from the little garden it seems to lean lovingly upon the hill which is the island's highest part, heaven so near that the scent of the flowers may easily pass to it by way of the little winding path. To climb this path yourself is to find the sky not so near after all. Standing on the summit, you realize first the depth of its great dome and the wide sweep of sea that rims the islands round. Here are but gray ledges that rise out of an immensity which dwarfs them. Far to the north and west is a thin, blue line of land that lifts in the farthest distance the peaks of the White Mountains. All else is but a vast expanse of sea that seems as if it might rise in a storm and overwhelm these rocks that it has washed so white and smooth. Somewhere to the eastward of our coast lies, they tell us, the lost Atlantis, submerged beneath this great sweep of blue that smiles beryl