The eye
fell in succession down the stages of a vast and various descent, on
the bazaars and tall minarets of the town, on jagged rocks and
precipices, on slopes of oak forest and slopes of olive woods, on
blue hills dropping away beyond blue hills to the coast. And behind
them when they turned they saw great mountains, sullenly
magnificent, cleft into vast irregular masses, dense with woods
below and grim and desolate above. . . .
These were unforgettable scenes, and so too was the wild lonely
valley through which they rode to Ochrida amidst walnut and chestnut
trees and scattered rocks, and the first vision of that place
itself, with its fertile levels dotted with sheep and cattle, its
castle and clustering mosques, its spacious blue lake and the great
mountains rising up towards Olympus under the sun. And there was
the first view of the blue Lake of Presba seen between silvery beech
stems, and that too had Olympus in the far background, plain now and
clear and unexpectedly snowy. And there were midday moments when
they sat and ate under vines and heard voices singing very
pleasantly, and there were forest glades and forest tracks in a
great variety of beauty with mountains appearing through their
parted branches, there were ilex woods, chestnut woods, beech woods,
and there were strings of heavily-laden mules staggering up torrent-
worn tracks, and strings of blue-swathed mysterious-eyed women with
burthens on their heads passing silently, and white remote houses
and ruins and deep gorges and precipices and ancient half-ruinous
bridges over unruly streams.
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