read, or write; they had no worldly life to occupy them--there was no
means for it. They could gossip--yes, but I doubt if they even did
that. Assuredly here the Middle Ages slept.

* * * * *

Round the monastery, behold, the ruins of a great fort, slowly
crumbling away under the hand of Time. No fleets now sail against
Pitius, no pirates land on the barren cape--there is nothing to steal.
Even the monastery is without gold.


VI

I cannot forget this walk of gloom and mystery, and my stay in this
strange, sleeping monastery of the Middle Ages. But over and against
it stands the bright morning of Gudaout, four days later.

Gudaout is encompassed by the highest Caucasus--its only refuge is the
sea. It is a place most wonderful in the pageantry of dawn. Picture
my life of one evening and morning. I left Gudaout at the dusk, and
having bought myself a pound of purple grapes, strolled out along the
dusty high road eating them. I made my bed on the seashore, and slept
away the aches and pains of a heavy day's tramping. Next day, in that
sort of reflection of last evening which comes before the morning, I
rose, for the coldest of October breezes had come down to me from the
mountains. The dawn was all gold--a new dawn, I thought. But when I
stood on my feet I saw below the gold the lovely bosom of the East,
a beautiful, soft bed of creamy rose. It was an elemental sunrise, a
veritable _first_ morning.