ON THE COAST OF AEEAN 



sitting on the bench under the little window 

 waiting for breakfast. No antidote could have 

 more efficaciously ministered to a mind diseased 

 by fume and fret and worry than this strange 

 quiet strange when contrasted with the vast- 

 ness of our horizon. Although the sea is near 

 enough for me to fling a stone into it from 

 where I sit, there are cows feeding on the grass 

 between me and the water, and the only sounds 

 which rise out of all the great area over which 

 the eye travels are the soft wash of the tide, 

 and the crunching sound which the cattle make 

 in cropping the short herbage. The wind is 

 north-west, and, as is usual here, that turns 

 everything into the brightest blue. The sea has 

 many shades, but all of them are shades of blue, 

 and the last is a line of deep sapphire under the 

 opposite coast of Ayr. The islands are also blue, 

 for their natural green is overborne ; the sky 

 is blue ; and even the white clouds as they sail 

 along seem to catch a tinge of the same colour. 



B 2 



