Beyond, stretching westward and to the south, were green fields, meadows, pastures, reaching to the shoulders of the mountains. Far down the valley out of these mountains the great road leading from the sea emerged, wound through the meadow land, ascended west of the terraces, from which it was separated by a wall, and entered the court through bronze gates swinging to stone pillars. These pillars were surmounted by a figure having the face and bust of a woman and the body of a monster—such a figure as the Latin sculptors have sometimes called "La Chimera."
Eastward, the lands were forests; north, the rising lands were orchards, vineyards, formal trees, shrubs, vines. And the whole of it rimmed in by the far-off hazy, mysterious mountains fading into the sky line, like some blue wall of the world. It was such a thing as that jinn—slave of the lamp—might have lifted out of the baked earth of Arabia.
The mountaineer, standing beside the Duke of Dorset, broke the first silence.
"Hit air Childers agin God Almighty," he said, "hit air all made," and he pointed with his big finger directly down the ridge on which they stood.
The Duke, following the finger, realized that the whole thing was indeed made. The entire shoulder of the mountain, on which they now stood, had been cut down, leveled and formed into these great terraces. The face of this vast cut fell sheer below him. It was walled up almost to his feet with that yellow stone—a vast perpendicular wall festooned with vines.
The mountaineer, having spoken this word of explanation, turned back to his mule, cut the rope, and began to take down the leather boxes. The Duke remained striving to comprehend the magnitude of this labor—a labor colossal and appalling. A mountain pared down, a wilderness parked, graded, landscaped, and no mark of it visible to the eye. Human cleverness, patient, tireless, bad obscured here every trace of this vast labor as beautifully, as subtly, as the wilderness back yonder bad adorned and bidden the road cut through her dominions to the sea. The whole estate lay before him, unreal, like the work of a magician—made by no stroke of the pick, no clatter of the hammer. Those two strange, impressive, sinister figures, mounted on the stone posts, where the road entered the court, looking out over this enchantment, were mysteriously suggestive. This scene, lying before him in the sun, was some illusion of the fancy, some mirage, some chimera.
The Duke of Dorset was awakened from this reverie by the mountaineer speaking behind him.
"I guess I'll be a-movin' along," he said, "you'll find somebody down there to pack in your traps."
The Duke turned, thrusting his hand into his pocket, but the band remained there when his eyes rested on the circuit rider's face. The man's big stooping body was straight now, his features firm and composed, his head set with a certain dignity on his shoulders.
"No, stranger," he said, "me an' Jezebel works fur God Almighty, an' we don't take pay."