its lips had not kissed a garden in high air without the perfume
lingering, if only to betray them.

Even this strip of meadow marsh had a character peculiar to itself;
half of it belonged to earth and half to the sea. You might have
thought it an inland pasture, with its herds of cattle, its flocks
of sheep, and its colonies of geese patrolled by ragged urchins. But
behold somewhere out yonder the pasture was lost in high sea-waves;
ships with bulging sails replaced the curve of the cattle's sides and
instead of bending necks of sheep, there were sea-gulls swooping down
upon the foamy waves.

As the incarnation of this dual life of sea and land, the rock
stands. It also is both of the sea and the land. Its feet are of the
waters--rocks and stones the sea-waves have used as playthings these
millions of years. But earth regains possession as the rocks pile
themselves into a mountain. Even from this distance, one can see the
moving of great trees, the masses of yellow flower-tips that dye the
sides of the stony hill, and the strips of green grass here and there.

So much has nature done for this wonderful pyramid in the sea. Then
man came and fashioned it to his liking. He piled the stones at its
base into titanic walls; he carved about its sides the rounded breasts
of bastions; he piled higher and higher up the dizzy heights a medley
of palaces, convents, abbeys, cloisters, to lay at the very top the
fitting crown of all, a jewelled Norman-Gothic cathedral.

Earth and man have thrown their gauntlet down to the sea--this rock is
theirs, they cry to the waves and the might of the oceans. And the sea
laughs--as strong men laugh when boys are angry or insistent. She has