THE SOURCE

I

In the middle of the land that is called by its inhabitants
Koorma, and by strangers the Land of the Half-forgotten, I was
toiling all day long through heavy sand and grass as hard as
wire. Suddenly, toward evening, I came upon a place where a
gate opened in the wall of mountains, and the plain ran in
through the gate, making a little bay of level country among
the hills.

Now this bay was not brown and hard and dry, like the
mountains above me, neither was it covered with tawny billows
of sand like the desert along the edge of which I had wearily
coasted. But the surface of it was smooth and green; and as
the winds of twilight breathed across it they were followed by
soft waves of verdure, with silvery turnings of the under
sides of many leaves, like ripples on a quiet harbour. There
were fields of corn, filled with silken rustling, and
vineyards with long rows of trimmed maple-trees standing
each one like an emerald goblet wreathed with vines, and
flower-gardens as bright as if the earth had been embroidered
with threads of blue and scarlet and gold, and olive-orchards
frosted over with delicate and fragrant blossoms. Red-roofed
cottages were scattered everywhere through the sea of