The Fall Of Damascus - A Historical Novel (1878) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII. AT HOME. The house in which lived the maiden rescued by Jonas stood on a small hill or large mound, and was, as may be remembered, in the northeast corner of the city. It fronted westward. Immense walnuts rose and overshadowed it on the south side; poplars on the north side met the branches of the walnuts. When the sun was at the zenith, only small clots of light penetrated through the leaves to the roof; but the front of the pretty building glowed brightly (notwithstanding two large weeping-willows which stood on either side of the door) as soon as the sun hung with diminished power over the gorge of the Abana. On all sides, bright green turf gently descended, and dainty flowers, like stars, shone in it, here a Milky Way, there a Pleiad group. Each corner of the house was covered with sweet-scented jessamine. At the foot of the declivity were airy- looking acacias, and clumps of violets, gladioluses, poppies, amaranths, lilies, acanthuses, narcissuses, hyacinths, irises, crocuses, rhododendrons, and many other flowers, native and exotic; and grape-vines were clambering over oleanders. Further off in the garden grew figs, the purple-tinted pomegranate, mulberries, apples, apricots, and graceful palms. The long arbor supported grape-vines and various thicklyintertwined flowering creepers. Its ceiling was of beautiful trailing roses. Midway between the arbor and the portico, which was granite, red and gray, half hidden in jessamine, played a fountain exquisitely carved of white marble with blue streaks in it like those on the maiden's forehead. The spray of this fountain was almost invisible, and so light that but little of it fell until the air had borne it to the distant flowers and trees, filling the whole garden with delicious coolness. A couple of negl...