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uses Google technology and indexes
only and selectively internet - libraries
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MALLOCK W.
In an enchanted island
page 219 View PDF version of this page traceried windows, the cloisters, and the flying but-tresses of Bella Pais.
The Abbey of Happy Peace ! If peace of any kind were an affair of locality, never was name more aptly bestowed than this. · On the slopes behind it, also thick with cypresses, a village of white houses shone, embowered in gardens, which crept caress-ingly close to the abbey walls. The abbey itself stood on the brink of a cliff some hundred feet in height ; and below it was a valley of palms, acacias, and oleanders. Our way lay through a straggling lane of the village. The houses were of stone and were neatly whitewashed, and many of them were fronted with picturesque arcades. The whole look of the place was somehow inexplicably superior to that of the mud-built villages in the neighbourhood of Nicosia. In all directions was a babble of running conduits, and women were passing with jars of water on their heads. One of these, of whom Scotty enquired the way, pointed an old man out to us, who kept the keys of the building, and we presently reached it through an alley between two orchards. We entered by a gateway in a square Gothic tower, the upper part of which had disappeared and had been replaced by a tall Greek campanile. Within was a sunny orange garden and a dark fraternity of cypresses, and through the leaves and stems was a glimpse of pillars and pointed arches. Prom each side of the entrance-tower lofty and massive walls had evidently once extended, surrounding the whole
216 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND
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