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MEDIAEVAL SPLENDO UBS 78 with gold. In some of the households were as many as two hundred retainers. In the markets were the finest wines, and the rarest and most delicate provi-sions. Ice in the heats of summer was on sale always ; and the monopoly of it yielded a handsome revenue to the State. In the jewellers' shops were treasures unrivalled throughout the world, and the rich bazaars exhaled the perfumes of the farthest East. Outside the gates, where the wide plains extended, gay and gallant parties would daily ride out hawking. Farther off, near the wuods where Adonis died, and where the wild boars still roamed, hounds were kept by the nobles, with huntsmen in brilliant liveries ; and the notes of the horn were daily sounding amongst the valleys. And surrounding and pene-trating this pageant of Western mediasval life was the local colour and flavour, not only of an alien Christianity, but, stranger still, of old classical pagan-ism. In the recesses of the forests-were still to be seen gleaming the milk-white columns of many a deserted temple, where the old deities were still believed to linger, metamorphosed into saints or demons. The air was haunted with traditions of Venus. Holy hermits praying high in mountain grottos found that the hills were hollow, and that within was the Goddess of the Horsel. This is what I gathered about the island before I went to sleep ; and my mind was full of it next morning, when, giving my camera to Scotty, I went out to see what I could photograph. I did not believe

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