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Updated: May 15, 2025
But, as though nature were protesting against all this disorder and neglect, the cherry-trees were placidly blossoming; the almond-trees, with their delicate pink flowers, filled the air with perfume: everything, in short, doing its part in spite of war and bloodshed. Your heart would ache if you could see the place as it is now.
In the last days of March a plum-tree hung its robe of white blossoms over the wall of the Capuchin convent from the garden within; but the almond-trees had been in bloom for six weeks before, and the deeper pink of the peach had more warmly flushed the suburbs for fully a fortnight.
The budding spring entered into alliance with her. The dream of new life was teeming in the warmth of the slumbering air. The young green was wedding with the silver-gray of the olive-trees. Beneath the dark red arches of the ruined aqueducts flowered the white almond-trees. In the awakening Campagna waved the seas of grass and the triumphant flames of the poppies.
We made the hedge a rampart and reached the enclosure, where we were soon at a good distance from the count in an alley of almond-trees.
Tuesday, August 22nd. We were called at half-past five, and, after a hasty breakfast, started on horseback by seven o'clock for the Virgin Forest, about six miles from Petropolis. After leaving the town and its suburbs, we pursued our way by rough winding paths, across which huge moths and butterflies flitted, and humming-birds buzzed in the almond-trees.
Here and there palm-trees, almond-trees, and the ubiquitous camelthorn are seen interspersed amongst the houses; women in red and yellow garments, with turquoise rings in their ears and noses, peep at you furtively from behind their flimsy doors, and as you proceed up the valley you find several towers constructed to protect the gardens from Bedouin incursions, and a few comfortable little villas built by Banyan merchants, where they can retire from the heat and dust of Maskat.
Now and again Miette accused Silvere of having taken her the wrong way; for, at times for a quarter of an hour at a stretch they lost all sight of the surrounding country, seeing above the walls and hedges nothing but long rows of almond-trees whose slender branches showed sharply against the pale sky. All at once, however, they came out just in front of Orcheres.
Having taken an hour's rest and a light meal in the village, I commenced the ascent towards the 'Devil's City. A mule-path wound up the steep side of the gorge, which had been partly reclaimed from the desert by means of terraces where many almond-trees flourished, safe from the north wind.
The growth of the soft fern on the mouldering old stones seems like the sad, sweet smile of Nature over a decay with which she sympathises, but which she cannot share. The same feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the Palaces of the Cæsars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees.
Descending the path by steps cut in the rock, I again reached the margin of the Tarn. Gradually the gorge opened, slopes appeared, and upon these were almond-trees and vines planted on terraces. Flowers, too, which had little courage to bloom in the dim depths where the cliffs seemed ready to join again, and the sunbeam vanished before it dried the dew, now took heart under the broader sky.
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