IV 



My Log 365 



Another beautiful efifect of rolling we get on the 

 main-deck after dark. Look across to the ports on 

 the opposite side. At the moment they look up to 

 the sky they are as black as the guns that peer out 

 of them, and then, plunging downwards into the 

 wake of moonlight, they become filled with a sheet 

 of molten silver flecked with black, and there starts 

 out a long silver line along the black back of the 

 gun. It is strange to watch the regular alternations 

 of brilliancy and dulness, of opaque darkness and 

 opaque light, as the ship swings with the regularity 

 of a pendulum. 



Sunday. — More lovely and warm, if possible, than 

 ever. Between three and four we sighted land and ran 

 rapidly down to it, A long line of cliffs about two 

 hundred feet high, apparently limestone with very 

 regular horizontal strata, the land rising from them 

 inland, looking barren and baked, of a yellowish 

 brown, but of a tender pleasant colour on the whole. 

 Numerous villages and little towns and scattered 

 farm-houses, all and each of the most brilliant white ; 

 a mighty building, once a convent, now nothing ; 

 Mafra looming gigantic in the desolation. Then 

 south, a fine granite sierra thrusts up through the 

 limestone, its summit wreathed in tumbled masses of 

 violet and purple cloud, which gradually rise and 

 show the long serrated ridge of Mont Serrat, on one 

 pinnacle of which is perched the Pena, once a con- 

 vent, now a royal hunting-box. With the glass one 

 makes out a wilderness of granite rocks with a little 



