Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/37

Rh extensive view of the sea, which is also most impressive by reason of the character of the approach to it. This window in the rock can only be reached through a long, dark gallery, at the end of which the visitor is suddenly met by an almost blinding light that flows in, a silent, azure stream, through the large opening in the wall. Sky and sea—two blue worlds of calm and restive power—lavishly send here into the interior of the old Spanish castle their reflected streams of the sun's nectar, soft, appeasing and full of happy serenity, floating in with it the life-giving ozone, the aroma of resin from the pines without and the mingled odors of the sea.

Later we made a motor trip from Murjajo Mountain along a highway cut in the rocks well above the sea, which was blue as a sapphire one moment and green as the purest emerald another. Following this shore road we passed through numerous summer resorts of the inhabitants of Oran and small fishing hamlets, where they bring in large flounders and enormous langoustes, the well-known clawless lobster of the Mediterranean.

But along this road to Cape Falcon and in other localities near Oran one can find something more curious and scientific than the fish and the hotels and restaurants incident to sea resorts, for here among the rocks are extensive caverns wherein hanging stalactites have joined with their opposing stalagmites to form the colonnades of mysterious temples of unknown or forgotten gods—more likely forgotten ones, as man already lived in these regions while the gods still walked with men upon this sinful earth. In these ledges one can find innumerable caves and grottoes, forming whole cavern cities,