that makes bathing the most desirable mid-day pastime, and over land and
sea a solemn sense of peace is brooding. From where the tents are set no
other human habitation is in sight. A great spur of rock, with the green
and scarlet of cactus sprawling over it at will, shuts off lighthouse and
telegraph station, while the towering hills above hide the village of
Mediunah, whence our supplies are brought each day at dawn and
sun-setting.

Two fishermen, clinging to the steep side of the rock, cast their lines
into the water. They are from the hills, and as far removed from our
twentieth century as their prototypes who were fishing in the sparkling
blue not so very far away when, the world being young, Theocritus passed
and gave them immortality. In the valley to the right, the atmosphere of
the Sicilian Idylls is preserved by two half-clad goatherds who have
brought their flock to pasture from hillside Mediunah, in whose pens they
are kept safe from thieves at night. As though he were a reincarnation of
Daphnis or Menalcas, one of the brown-skinned boys leans over a little
promontory and plays a tuneless ghaitah, while his companion, a younger
lad, gives his eyes to the flock and his ears to the music. The last rains
of this favoured land's brief winter have passed; beyond the plateau the
sun has called flowers to life in every nook and cranny. Soon the light
will grow too strong and blinding, the flowers will fade beneath it, the
shepherds will seek the shade, but in these glad March days there is no
suggestion of the intolerable heat to come.

[Illustration: THE COURT-YARD OF THE LIGHTHOUSE, CAPE SPARTEL]

On the plot of level ground that Nature herself has set in position for a
camp, the tents are pitched. Two hold the impedimenta of travel; in the
third Salam and his assistant work in leisurely fashion, as befits the