Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
On one side may be seen green meadows, fruit trees, flowing water, cornfields, beechwoods, &c.; on the other, olive groves, thickets of arbutus, hedge plants the height of a tree, myrtles, and bay; on the naked rock aloes grow and the opuntia; in gardens, dwarf and date-palms, unprotected cycas revoluta, and orange and lemon trees; and wide valleys are filled with lofty carob trees so close are the boundaries between the flora of middle Europe and of the Mediterranean.
They were marching through a kind of large passage bordered by two chains of reddish coloured hillocks, when their nostrils were greeted with a nauseous odour, and they thought that they could see something extraordinary on the top of a carob tree: a lion's head reared itself above the leaves. They ran thither. It was a lion with his four limbs fastened to a cross like a criminal.
Protected from the high winds, these trees yield abundantly; and, in the fertile soil of these plots, two or three crops of vegetables are raised each year. Much of the land was rocky and uncultivated. Very few trees were seen and those were dwarfed. One species of evergreen tree, called the Carob, grew only ten feet in height, but spread to three times that in breadth.
Wide acres of young wheat and barley glistened in the light, as the wind-waves rippled through their short, silken blades. There were few trees, except now and then an olive-orchard or a round-topped carob with its withered pods.
The tree is the carob tree, of which you have here a picture a fine large tree bearing a sweet pod containing the seeds. I have seen these pods for sale in this country, and foolishly called St. John's bread, as if the 'locusts' eaten by John the Baptist were pods of a locust tree, and not insect locusts."
I heard not a word of all this at the time, for Mr Englefield was secret as the grave as to the affairs of his employers. To soothe and amuse him was my province; so I pulled out a budget of cheerful home letters, and read them aloud, with comments, while he partook of breakfast under the shade of our carob tree.
True, the broad field was exposed to the burning sun, and its soil was covered only with sand and pitiably scorched turf, but three palm trees, a few sunt acacias, two carob trees, a small clump of fig trees, and the superb, wide-branched sycamore on the extreme outer edge had won for it the proud name of a "garden."
"Judas, he japed With Jewen silver, And sithen on an eller, Hanged himselve." Gerarde makes it the wild carob, a tree which, as already stated, was formerly known as "St. John's bread," from a popular belief that the Baptist fed upon it while in the wilderness.
But take any characteristic series of pictures or incidents from Salammbo: take the passing of the children through the fire to Moloch, or the description of the leprous Hanno, or the physical surrender of the priestess to her country's enemy, or the following picture of the crucified lion: "They were marching through a wide defile, hedged in by two chains of reddish hillocks, when a nauseous odor struck their nostrils, and they believed that they saw something extraordinary at the top of a carob tree; a lion's head stood up above the foliage.
The carob, which grows here in abundance, is almost the only handsome tree; it has a beautiful leaf, scarcely larger than that of a rose-tree, of an oval form, as thick as the back of a knife, and of a beautiful bright green colour. Mount Carmel lies on the sea-shore.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking