reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign.  I had not accordingly advanced far over every sort of debris, when I found my eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness:  whereupon I said:  ’I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the Foundoucli quay, and so reach the Speranza.’

Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond the limits of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland, somewhat scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as the jungle.  This cooled and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach the ship, I was led on and on, in a somewhat north-western direction, I fancy.  Somewhere hereabouts, I thought, was the place they called ’The Sweet Waters,’ and I went on with the vague notion of coming upon them, thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in the forest.  Here nature, in only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig.  Once I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in boscage.  With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or an olive, though I could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous to any soil so northern:  yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, though elementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day being immense beyond anything I ever heard of:  and the thought, I remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon.  After a long time I penetrated into a very sombre grove.  The day outside the wood was brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all motionless.  I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the world, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols.  I presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses.  I had stopped—­why I do not recollect—­perhaps thinking that if I was not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my way out.  And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising insect trawled near my ear its lonely drone.