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mind from the frivolities of practical business. Above me the mountains rose for a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet, and below me for three thousand they plunged, at one descent, down to their base in a tor-rent of rocks and firs and myrtles. Their base was formed by a level belt of country, wooded and culti-vated, about a mile in breadth. Against its indented edge the white ripples were breaking, and some miles to the westward, glittering on a miniature promontory, was a little seaport, the name of which I knew to be Kyrenia, flanked by a large square fortress, which I remembered to have heard of as mediaeval. In spite of the view, however, I soon recovered my energies ; and being duly armed with a geologist's hammer, I struggled along the side of the slope, through bushes and over boulders, hitting and chipping in all directions. But nowhere did my blows lay bare anything green below. I did not even find any more of the green fragments. I was not unnaturally to a certain extent disappointed ; but one half of my mind was again playing truant, and amusing itself with fancies which had little connection with reality. What set these fancies going was a cluster of oleanders, which, together with some myrtles close to them, looked as if they belonged to a garden, and suggested some solitary fragment of luxurious European life. With the eye of fancy I saw above the myrtles the corner of a pale balustrade, and a marble vase with an aloe in 96 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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