Passing Over The Higher Ground With The Sea In
View Upon Our Right, We Descended After A March Of About Three Miles To
The Shore, Where The Path Skirted The Sea Along Broken Rocks, Against
Which In Bad Weather The Waves Would Dash With Sufficient Violence To
Bar The Road.
The white cliffs and hill-tops to our left were covered
with dwarf-cypress, and formed a lovely foreground above the sea,
perfectly calm beneath.
The ride was apparently short, although we had
been in the saddle three hours, as the eye had been gratified by a
constant change of scenery;--from rocks washed by the blue water to
hills covered with a dense foliage of evergreens, and deep sequestered
valleys, with occasional gaps in the range of heights through which
glimpses of the sea in rocky coves burst suddenly into view. Some of
these inlets were exceedingly picturesque, as reefs extended from the
shore, overhanging cliffs having from time to time fallen in huge crags
and formed natural breakwaters to the beach. These narrow gaps between
the hills were generally occupied by a streamlet in the centre, which
had cut its way far below the level of the ground, the steep banks of
which were fringed with oleanders, myrtles, mastic, and other
evergreens, down to within a few yards of the breaking waves. Nothing
could be prettier, and upon arrival within sight of Volokalida, about a
mile and a half distant in the extreme end of a narrow valley, I
directed my wife to a camping-place near the village, beneath some large
and prominent caroub-trees, while I dismounted, and with my delighted
dogs commenced a ramble over the low woods which covered the sides and
hill-tops to our right and left.
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