Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/122

 gorge, the dizzy precipices, the escarpments spotted here and there with laurels, terebinths, scrub oaks, the broad slope on the other side of the river, decked with olives and mulberries and terraced homes, and the hill-tops fringed with pines rising behind and above each other,—all this is beautiful to heholdbehold [sic], especially through half-shut eyes. Thus seen, the grey of the rugged ridges seems to melt and fuse in the bright green of the fields and the sable of the heaths. And between the brown soil on the breast of the hill and the barren cliffs below there is a bond of common sympathy and mutual affection. Yes, under the soil I can see barren cliffs, and under the barren cliffs I behold arable stretches of land. So with Nature, so with Man and the races of Man. In this sense, at least, my native horizon, methinks, is the horizon of my race, and under the seasons of the year are the seasons of my country. Nor are the monuments and temples lacking. For right behind Mt. Sanneen is the Acropolis of Baalbek, and farther East