re was no murmur of the ocean, not even was
there saltness in the air. I was out of the sight of the sea and had
been so for several days. But this afternoon I climbed by a long road
where were many berberry bushes vermilion with their berries, up to
the pass over the hills, and there all at once by surprise, without
the least expecting it, at a turn of the road I had a revelation of
the whole sea.

It was a ravishment of the eyes, a scene on which one looks, at which
one stares. The road came suddenly to a precipice, and sheer down, two
thousand feet below, the waves foamed forward on the rocks, and from
the foam to the remote horizon lay the mysterious sleeping sea--no,
not sleeping, but rather causing all else to sleep in its presence,
for it was full of serpent lines all moving toward the shore. The
whole wild mountainous Crimean shore sat before the sea and dreamed.

And I realised slowly all that was in the evening. Below me lay the
white tortuous road leading downward to the shore in coils, and
clothing the road, the many woods, all hoary white because the sharp
sea-breeze had breathed on them. Evening had long since settled on the
road and on the wintry trees; it lay also about the grey temple which
the Russians have put up on one of the platforms of the lower cliffs.
The church looked so compact and small down below me that it seemed
one could have held it in the palm of the hand. It was sunset, but the
sky was full of blue-grey colour. The whole South caught a radiance
from the hidden West and the sea was grey.

In a moment it is noticeable that the south is becoming rosier. The
sea is now alight from the increase of sunset hues. In the shadow the
lines of the sea are a sequence of wavings like the smoke of the snow
blown over the steppes. In the hurrying clouds a great space clears,
and along the south-west runs a great rosy fleece of sunset. It is
rapidly darkening. The sea in the western corner is crimson, but all
the vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seen
from a balloon--pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where clouds
and sky mingle, one sees fantastically as it were the sides of giant,
shadowy fish.

The motor-coach, with its passengers from Sebastopol to Yalta, comes
rushing and grumbling up behind me and stops five minutes, this being
its half-way point. The passengers adjourn into the inn to drink
vodka: "Remember, gentlemen, five minutes only," says the chauffeur.
"