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flowers and kitchen vegetables. Violets, hyacinths, and anemones made borders along the paths, and the soil enclosed by them, though it was yet in the depth of winter, showed beans and potatoes sprouting into exuberant life, huge cauliflowers, spikes of matured asparagus, and rows upon rows of peas, whose pods had been full at Christmas. By-and-by we came to the secret of all this fertility—to a well half hidden by foliage, with a date-palm standing over it, whose deep waters were raised by a rude Persian wheel. This primitive contrivance in every detail of its structure is probably the same to-day as it was three thousand years ago. The principal wheel is horizontal, turned by an ox or mule, which communicates its motion by another to an endless chain of pitchers—red clay pitchers, fastened by bands of straw to ropes, apparently twisted out of lithe brown twigs ; and each of these child-like vessels as it comes to a particular place spills its tribute into a broad wooden shoot. Had the house been out of the question, the garden and well together would have formed a scene in which Ulysses might have found Laertes. Indeed, I felt that the spot was full of the possibilities of classical idylls. There was something idyllic too—at least I was pleased to think there was—in the golden butter and the cream which were presently offered to us at tea, and which our host and hostess produced from their own farm. At tea, too, I met one of the principal 78 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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