CHAPTER XII
AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN ENGLISHMAN
Between Hassan Kaif and Jezireh, a distance of thirty-five miles, the scenery is very fine. The river winds through narrow gorges with steep walls of limestone rock riddled with rock tombs. Here and there in the black gorges the high turreted rocks would be skirted below with bands of vegetation; little spurts of glistening water shooting over the rocky tops, as they dashed down to join the river, shot between masses of ferns or trickled through beds of green moss. It was months since we had seen anything green, and we feasted our eyes and senses on the unaccustomed luxuriance. All the grim bareness and desolation of the stone and mud country through which we had passed seemed to serve a purpose now in heightening the intoxication of this scene. Reluctantly I had been compelled to admit, on more than one occasion, that Nature could be positively revolting in places where absence of life and colour were not relieved by any sense of stern ruggedness or the freedom of space; where day after day we had journeyed through a country of little meaningless hillocks strewn with grey stones, only getting round the corner of one to be confronted with another of the same appearance; where it seemed as if Nature had chosen a spot, far from the eye of man, to dump all the clinkers of life, all the stony refuse which even she could not turn to any profitable account—she, the great mother, of whom men say she knows no waste. We had discovered her ugly secret hidden away in this far corner; and now she was using her chief weapon, contrast, to make us feel the true extent of her power. She had wearied and revolted us, and now she seemed to make use of this very fact to give us an intenser appreciation of her best.
"Pretty view, isn't it?" said a voice in the native tongue at my side. Startled from another world, I turned round. Arten was rubbing some spoons with a dirty cloth and waved his hands towards the banks.
"Got anything like this in London?" he asked affably.
I looked at him in silence. He dived into the hut with a scared look, and complained later on to X that the other Pasha had an uncertain temper.
The spell of enchantment was broken; but sentiment was in the air with the smell of wet earth and the sound of drinking vegetation; oleander bushes with bright red blossoms stood out against the dark rock, water-birds darted in and out and vultures hovered overhead. I had a sudden desire, awakened by Arten's interruption, to share the emotions called up by the surrounding scene. I glanced at X. She looked fairly sentimental, I thought, lying motionless in her favourite place at the extreme end of the raft, with a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes.
"X," I murmured softly, "what does this make you think about?"
X was one of those rare people who always know what they are thinking about. She did not fail me on this occasion.
"It reminds me of Scotland," she said without hesitation. "Why, what does it make you think about?"