Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/36

14 or into the eyes of the inhabitants, according to the direction of the wind or the character of the fuel. At this fire all the cooking takes place; the inmates of the khan and the guests all sit round and warm themselves till their beds are ready, when everybody turns in. The brass lamp lit with oil is extinguished, and the weary traveller looking upwards from his pillow through the tiles, sees a star twinkle here and there, or feels the dripping of the shower, according to the weather. The bed is a kind of wooden settle or dresser, with a quilting generally well peopled with aborigines. After the dirt and discomfort of such a night's lodging, for which our host demanded an exorbitant sum, we rejoiced to find ourselves in our saddles in the fresh morning air. To me, who had been so long pent up in the close and murky atmosphere of London, the silence and solitude of the route, occasionally interrupted by meeting a string of mules, or a party of shepherds driving their herds with fierce wolf-like dogs; the space of the sky around, and the combination of the wildest mountain scenery with the richest and most delicate colouring, had an ineflable charm. To my unagricultural eye, it was a relief to look at a country still very much as nature made it, and which tillage had not yet cut up into those plats and patches which so distiu'b the breadth and repose of the landscape. On approaching the isthmus, we saw in the distance the steep rock of the Acro-Corinthus, which towers above the plain in majestic isolation, and from the summit of which a large part of Greece is seen