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Never shall I forget the exceeding beauty of that valley, the foliage of the trees round us, the delicate wreaths and festoons of climbing plants, the graceful delicate plumes of the palm trees, interlacing among each other, and showing through all a background of soft, pale, purple-blue mountains and forest, not really far away, as the practised eye knew, but only made to look so by the mist, which has this trick of giving suggestion of immense space without destroying the beauty of detail.
An illimitable forest stretching in grand waves far beyond the ken of vision ridges, forest-clad, rising gently one above another until they receded in the dim purple-blue distance with a warm haze floating above them, which, though clear enough in our neighbourhood, became impenetrably blue in the far distance.
This is without doubt the finest portion of the Dorset coast, not only for the striking outline of the cliffs and hills themselves but for the beautiful colouring of the strata and the contrasting emerald of the dells that break down to the purple-blue of the water. Neither drawing nor photograph can give any idea of this exquisite blend of the stern and the beautiful.
The country spreads before me a lovely valley encompassed by purple-blue mountains. Mount Talagouga looks splendid in a soft, infinitely deep blue, although it is quite close, just the other side of the river. The road goes on into the valley, as pleasantly as ever and more so.
All the long glowing days on the hot stones of the water-side, the glitter of the Mediterranean purple-blue under the sun, the coming of night and the sudden twinkling of lights in the cave-dwellings above Almeria and across the bay from Aguilas, the plunge into the warm sea at midnight, the glorious evenings at water-side cafés when he had half a dozen coppers in his pocket; the good nature of the people!
It lay over the walk in broad golden patches, broken by soft, purple-blue shadows from the elms, which had just put out their light leaves and looked like fountains of green spray tossed high in air. There was a sweet smell of hyacinths and growing grass and cherry-blossoms; altogether it was not an afternoon to spend in the house, and the children felt the fact.
It was heaped with great yellow peaches, each with a crimson cheek, while, flung carelessly among them, were clusters of grapes in their perfection, purple-blue and whitish-green, promising rare sweetness and flavor. "They were the best I could find, but scarcely good enough for you," he remarked deprecatingly, as he placed the basket in her hand. "Oh, beautiful! What delicious fruit!
And from white they grew into silver, sparkling like innumerable diamonds, and then slowly altered into a sort of silver-grey, gradually rising into grey-blue, then into a more purple-blue, till they reached the richest corn-flower shade.
"But you must have something to break the white," said she, smiling, "or it will look too like a bride's bouquet;" and with that almost in the twinkling of an eye she had put a circular line of dark purple-blue through the cream-white blossoms. It was a splendid rose that lay in the midst of all that beauty. "What price would you like to give, sir?" the gentle Phyllis had said at the very outset.
Within an hour the wind had ceased and the slush in the lagoon had pancaked into flakes of forming ice that bid fair to become solid within a short time, for the day was bitterly cold and tremendously bright. The sky rose from filmy silver-azure to richest sapphire, and the rolling waters between the floes were darkest purple-blue.
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