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One brilliant Saturday morning, the second in the session, the ground hard with an early frost, the filmy ice making fairy caverns and grottos in the cart-ruts, and the air so condensed with cold that every breath, to those who ate and slept well, had the life of two, Mrs. Sclater rang the said bell. Mr. Galbraith peeping from the window, saw a lady's bonnet, and went.
The vistas of the innumerable mighty cypresses ranged themselves, in their files and companies, like beaten heroes for their captain's, review; the great artificial "works" of every description, cascades, hemicycles, all graded and grassed and stone-seated as for floral games, mazes and bowers and alcoves and grottos, brave indissoluble unions of the planted and the builded symmetry, with the terraces and staircases that overhang and the arcades and cloisters that underspread, made common cause together as for one's taking up a little, in kindly lingering wonder, the "feeling" out of which they have sprung.
Many of these are of vast extent, and were doubtless formed by quarrying the rocks and mountains for building materials. They consist of grottos, galleries, and chambers, penetrating often to a considerable distance, the superincumbent mass being supported by huge pillars of rock; or the galleries running parallel, with masses of solid rock intervening for supports.
From each side stretched the velvety green with its fountains, its trees, its arbors, its flowers, its grottos and its red-legged soldiers. The park was probably a mile square, and was surrounded by a high wall, on the top of which were little guard-houses and several masked cannon.
He assured me that they led a jovial life there; had plenty of good cheer; slept on beds of moss, and were waited upon by young and beautiful females, whom I might take for models. I confess I felt my curiosity roused by his descriptions of these grottos and their inhabitants; they realized those scenes in robber-story which I had always looked upon as mere creations of the fancy.
I have myself seen grottos appropriated to this purpose. You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway.
A strong, swift current sets in from the southwest, and being lashed into a giddy fury by the lightest southwest wind, it has hewn out of the rock a series of cells, and grottos, and alcoves, some of them running far inland, in long, vaulted passages and corridors, with now and then a shaft or funnel in the rocky roof, through which the light streams down into recesses far from the low porches, which open from the sea.
We moored our boat at the foot of a flight of steps, hewn from the solid rock. On reaching the top, the scene spread out like a beautiful painting. Grottos, fountains, and cascades, winding walks and vine-covered bowers charmed us as we wandered about. In the center stood a medium-sized residence of white marble. We entered through a door opening on a wide piazza.
In the midst of these hills lay a large lake, containing two or three islands, on which were picturesque buildings, the islands being reached by quaint and beautiful stone bridges. On one side of the lake ran the favorite walk of the emperor and his court, winding in and out for more than two miles among grottos and flower-gardens, roofed in by flowering creepers.
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