Birds were as tame as they were in the Great Beginning;
they came under the table as I ate, and picked up the crumbs without
fear. Peasant people sat under great cedars, planted to give shade to
the travelers, and bade one feel at home in his lonely pilgrimage. Then
one felt a peculiar feeling--this feeling will arise in any
traveler--when, surmounting some hill range in the desert road, one
descries, lying far below, embosomed in its natural bulwarks, the fair
village, the resting-place, the little dwelling-place of men, where one
is to sleep. But when towards nightfall, as the good red sun went down,
I was led, weary and done-up, into one of the worst inns it had been my
misfortune to encounter, a thousand other thoughts and feelings united
in common anathema to the unenterprising community.
Tea was bad, rice we could not get, and all night long the detestable
smells from the wood fires choked our throats and blinded our eyes;
glad, therefore, was I, despite the heavy rain, to take a hurried and
early departure the next morning, descending a thousand feet to a river,
rising quite as suddenly to a height of 8,500 feet.
Now the road went over a mountain broad and flat, where traveling in the
sun was extremely pleasant--or, rather, would have been had I been fit.
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