Beautiful Clouds. 17 
CHAPTER II. 
A DROUGHT—ANCIENT GARRISON OF THE ENTRENCHMENT— 
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 
days 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 vapour. 
These, if you watch them from the rampart, 
slowly dissolve ; fragments break away from the mass 
as the edges of the polar glaciers slip off the ice-cliff 
into the sea, only these are noiseless. The fragment 
detached grows visibly thinner and more translucent, 
Cc 
