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THE UNFOUND TREASURE AGAIN 125 made a series of shining idyllic pictures. The women had gay jackets and gayer petticoats, and in their hair tiaras of brilliant beads. The waists of the men were bound with gaudy sashes. The horses, sheep, and cattle stood, as formerly, knee-deep in the green grass under the olive trees. Our ascent through the mountains had only two new features, neither of which was apparent till Ave were nearing our destination. One of them was the fact that, instead of being close to Pentedactylon, the place in question was at least three miles away from it. The other was that during the last half-hour of our walk the rude path which we followed was littered with small fragments of the very stone I was in search of. On the red ground, and amongst the grey pebbles, they caught the eye with their green-ness as if they were dusty leaves. Elated by this, we welcomed in good spirits another mass of green-ness which soon made itself visible. This was the solitary cypress tree of which we had heard so much. It stood there, just as it had been described to me, large as a churchyard yew ; and the other details of the scene equally answered my expectations. We ate our luncheon in front of the cave and the foun-tain ; the orange-coloured precipice rose like a wall opposite to us, and above us the ruined church showed its splinters of desolate masonry. Our luncheon over, we instantly set to work with our geologist's hammers, and began to look again for the green marble masses. Our search was,

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