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He had climbed down the slippery stairs through that dank couloir or funnel in the rock overhung with drooping maidenhair and ivy and umbrageous carobs. He had rested on the little platform outside the cavern's vineyard far below, and upwards, at the narrow ribbon of sky overhead. Then he had gone within, to examine what was left of the old masonry, the phallic column and other relics of the past.
Very early the next morning the intrepid Tartarin and the no less intrepid prince Gregory, followed by half a dozen negro porters, left Milianah and descended towards the plain of the Chetiff by a steep pathway, delightfully shaded by jasmine, carobs and wild olives, between the hedges of little native gardens where a thousand bubbling springs trickled melodiously from rock to rock, a veritable Eden.
And the pound of wheat cost a maravedi and a half, and that of barley a maravedi, and that of painick a maravedi and a quarter, and of pulse a maravedi, and of flax-seed three parts of a maravedi, and of cheese three dineros, and of honey three, and of figs one; and the panilla of oil was eight dineros, and the pound of colewort five, and the ounce of carobs three parts of a dinero, and the ounce of onions the same, and the head of garlick the same; and a pound of beast's flesh was six maravedis, and grape-stones were half a dinero the pound, and the skins of kine and of beasts five dineros; the dinero was silver, for there was no money current save silver and gold.
To the warmest zone of olives, lemons and carobs succeeds that of the chestnuts, some of them of gigantic dimensions and yielding a sure though moderate return in fruit, others cut down periodically as coppice for vine-props and scaffoldings.
The verdure of the country was lost in places beneath long sheets of yellow; carobs were shining like knobs of coral; vine branches drooped from the tops of the sycamores; the murmuring of the water could be heard; crested larks were hopping about, and the sun's latest fires gilded the carapaces of the tortoises as they came forth from the reeds to inhale the breeze. Matho would heave deep sighs.
Sancho ate without requiring to be pressed, and in the dark bolted mouthfuls like the knots on a tether, and said he, "You are a proper trusty squire, one of the right sort, sumptuous and grand, as this banquet shows, which, if it has not come here by magic art, at any rate has the look of it; not like me, unlucky beggar, that have nothing more in my alforjas than a scrap of cheese, so hard that one might brain a giant with it, and, to keep it company, a few dozen carobs and as many more filberts and walnuts; thanks to the austerity of my master, and the idea he has and the rule he follows, that knights-errant must not live or sustain themselves on anything except dried fruits and the herbs of the field."
A man passed walking heavily like an ox. "Come up beside me," said the Suffet, suspecting some fraud; "how many years have you served?" "Twelve," replied the Libyan. Gisco slipped his fingers under his chin, for the chin-piece of the helmet used in course of time to occasion two callosities there; these were called carobs, and "to have the carobs" was an expression used to denote a veteran.
Sancho ate without requiring to be pressed, and in the dark bolted mouthfuls like the knots on a tether, and said he, "You are a proper trusty squire, one of the right sort, sumptuous and grand, as this banquet shows, which, if it has not come here by magic art, at any rate has the look of it; not like me, unlucky beggar, that have nothing more in my alforjas than a scrap of cheese, so hard that one might brain a giant with it, and, to keep it company, a few dozen carobs and as many more filberts and walnuts; thanks to the austerity of my master, and the idea he has and the rule he follows, that knights-errant must not live or sustain themselves on anything except dried fruits and the herbs of the field."
Olives, figs, carobs, junipers, oleanders, cypresses, cedars, myrtles, arbutus-trees, cover the flanks of the plateau and the hollows which break its surface, while the remainder is suitable alike for the cultivation of cereals and for pasturage.
"The island has about the same productions as Egypt. Carobs, or locust beans, figure up to about $300,000. But I fear you will not remember any more figures if I should give them; and I see there is something like a movement on board of the pirate." "You must repeat that lecture on board of the ship when we get back to her," added the captain. "It was telling us just what I wanted to know."
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