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The Garden of Allah by Robert Smythe Hichens
page 22 of 775 (02%)
boulders its tortured strength, and the pale and fantastic evolutions
of its unnatural foliage. Stones lay everywhere upon the pale yellow or
grey-brown earth. Crystals glittered in the sun like shallow jewels, and
far away, under clouds that were dark and feathery, appeared hard and
relentless mountains, which looked as if they were made of iron carved
into horrible and jagged shapes. Where they fell into ravines they
became black. Their swelling bosses and flanks, sharp sometimes as
the spines of animals, were steel coloured. Their summits were purple,
deepening where the clouds came down to ebony.

Journeying towards these terrible fastnesses were caravans on which
Domini looked with a heavy and lethargic interest. Many Kabyles, fairer
than she was, moved slowly on foot towards their rock villages.

Over the withered earth they went towards the distant mountains and the
clouds. The sun was hidden. The wind continued to rise. Sand found its
way in through the carriage windows. The mountains, as Domini saw them
more clearly, looked more gloomy, more unearthly. There was something
unnatural in their hard outlines, in the rigid mystery of their
innumerable clefts. That all these people should be journeying towards
them was pathetic, and grieved the imagination.

The wind seemed so cold, now the sun was hidden, that she had drawn both
the windows up and thrown a rug over her. She put her feet up on the
opposite seat, and half closed her eyes. But she still turned them
towards the glass on her left, and watched. It seemed to her
quite impossible that this shaking and slowly moving train had any
destination. The desolation of the country had become so absolute that
she could not conceive of anything but still greater desolation lying
beyond. She had no feeling that she was merely traversing a tract of
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