On the Open Highway
And Khalid, packing his few worldly belongings in one of his reed baskets, gives the rest to his neighbours, leaves his booth in the pines to the swallows, and bids the monks and his friend the Hermit farewell. The joy of the wayfaring! Now, where is the jubbah, the black jubbah of coarse wool, which we bought from one of the monks? He wraps himself in it, tightens well his shoestrings, draws his fur cap over his ears, carries his basket on his back, takes up his staff, lights his cigarette, and resolutely sets forth. The joy of the wayfaring! We accompany him on the open highway, through the rocky wilderness, down to the fertile plains, back to the city. For the account he gives us of his journey enables us to fill up the lacuna in Shakib’s Histoire Intime , before we can have recourse to it again.
“From the cliffs ’neath which the lily blooms,” he muses as he issues out of the forest and reaches the top of the mountain, “to the cliffs round which the eagles flit—what a glorious promontory! What a contrast at this height, in this immensity, between the arid rocky haunts of the mountain bear and eagle and the spreading, vivifying verdure surrounding the haunts of man. On one side are the sylvan valleys, the thick grown ravines, the meandering rivulets, the fertile plains, the silent villages, and on the distant horizon, the sea, rising like a blue wall, standing like a stage scene; on the other, a howling immensity of boulders and prickly shrubs and plants, an arid wilderness—the haunt of the eagle, the mountain bear, and the goatherd. One step in this direction, and the entire panorama of verdant hills and valleys is lost to view. Its spreading, riant beauty is hidden behind that little cliff. I penetrate through this forest of rocks, where the brigands, I am told, lie in ambush for the caravans traveling between the valley of the Leontes