Incessantly
winding, often doubling upon itself, the road crept up the sides of
profound gorges, and skirted many a precipice; bridges innumerable
spanned the dry ravines which at another season are filled with
furious torrents. From the zone of orange and olive and cactus we
passed that of beech and oak, noble trees now shedding their
rich-hued foliage on bracken crisped and brown; here I noticed the
feathery bowers of wild clematis ("old man's beard"), and many a
spike of the great mullein, strange to me because so familiar in
English lanes. Through mists that floated far below I looked over
miles of shore, and outward to the ever-rising limit of sea and sky.
Very lovely were the effects of light, the gradations of colour;
from the blue-black abysses, where no shape could be distinguished,
to those violet hues upon the furrowed heights which had a
transparency, a softness, an indefiniteness, unlike anything to be
seen in northern landscape.
The driver was accompanied by a half-naked lad, who, at certain
points, suddenly disappeared, and came into view again after a few
minutes, having made a short cut up some rugged footway between the
loops of the road.
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