Beautiful Clouds. 15 



CHAPTER II. 



A DROUGHT ANCIENT GARRISON OF THE ENTRENCH- 

 MENT TRADITIONS OF FOREST CURIOUS- PONDS 



A MIRAGE. 



Once now and then in the cycle of the years there 

 comes a summer which to the hills is almost like a 

 fever to the blood, wasting and drying up with its 

 heat the green things upon which animal life depends, 

 so that drought and famine go hand in hand. The 

 da3's go by and grow to weeks, the weeks lengthen 

 to months, and still no rain. The sun pours down 

 his burning rays, which become hotter as the season 

 advances ; the sky is blue and beautiful over the 

 hills — beautiful, but pitiless to the bleating flocks 

 beneath. The breeze comes up from the south, 

 bringing with it white clouds sailing at an immense 

 height, with openings between like azure lakes or 

 aerial Mediterraneans landlocked by banks of 

 vapor. 



These, if you watch them from the rampart, slowly 

 dissolve ; fragments break away from the mass as 

 the edges of the polar glaciers shp oft" the ice-chff 

 into the sea, only these are noiseless. The fragment 

 detached grows A^sibly thinner and more translucent, 

 its margin stretching out in an uneven fringe : the 

 process is almost exactly like the unravelling of a 



