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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 77 View PDF version of this page that all my historical impressions were accurate. I thought that nothing accurate would be nearly so pleasing to the imagination. Still I felt that they gave the place the same kind of interest that might ha\'e been given to it by an historical novel. What was my delight, then, when passing along some of the alleys, which here and there I recognised as part of the sights of yesterday, my eye was caught first by a scutcheon let into a wall, and presently by another surmounting a crumbling doorway ! Then I detected others, broken or half obliterated. They started from their obscurity, and showed themselves in quick succession. What I fancied had been romance was reality after all. I was actually walk-ing through the remains of the medireval palaces I had been reading about ; and the existing houses were built upon their foundations.
But the wonder of the morning was yet to come. The special object of my walk was a mosque, which had once been the cathedral—the only important structure of which I had as yet heard anything definite. Nothing that I had heard, however, had at all prepared me for the reality. After many turns and windings I arrived, under Scotty's guidance, at an open square, with old stone buildings surrounding it and a Gothic fountain in the middle ; and close to one of the sides, with pinnacles and flying buttresses, was a mass of windowed masonry which impressed me like York Minster. As it suddenly burst on one its entire aspect was English. It was not till a little
74
IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND
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