Cebes

“ The nature of the mountains through and by which flows the Orb differs greatly from that of the schisty Cevennes—the Cevennes proper—and the limestone of the causses and of the garigues. They are a ripple rather than a billow, and being sheltered from the north winds by the high range at their back form a sort of natural hothouse, in which the sweetest fruits of a southern clime ripen readily, where the spring comes earliest and the autumn sun lingers longest. ”

“ A son was born to them,—so beautiful a boy that the sun god made a land for him, stocked it with living creatures, adorned it with greenery and flowers, and gave it to the human race as an inheritance of joy forever. This land he called Cebu, and no land was more lovely. Lupa was the child, and from him came all the kings of Cebu, among them Amambar, the first chief of the island of whom we have definite record. ”

“ The whole terrace was covered with trees, and even at this height from the ground were two gigantic Ceibas, or wild cotton-trees, above twenty feet in circumference, extending their half-naked roots fifty or a hundred feet around, binding down the ruins, and shading them with their wide-spreading branches. We sat down on the very edge of the wall, and strove in vain to penetrate the mystery by which we were surrounded. Who were the people that built this city? In the ruined cities of Egypt, even in the long-lost Petra, the stranger knows the story of the people whose vestiges are around him. ”

“ An erect obelisk in the Sinaitic Peninsula, on the way from Suez to Mount Sinai. The hieroglyphs on it are partially obliterated. 9
Sa·t. The Egyptian name of Saïs, which see. 92
Sebek. The crocodile-headed deity and a form of Râ. He was specially worshiped in the Fayoom, and his Egyptian name was Sebek. 90
Sebek-Râ. A combination of the gods Sebek and Râ, the local deity of Ombos. 29
Sekhet. A lion-headed goddess and the wife of Ptah. As a destroying deity her name is Sekhet, but as a goddess of love it was Bast, or, as the Greeks called her, Pasht. She was usually identified with Diana. ”

“ Enough has been said to show that the Cevennes abound in scenes of great beauty, and that they are of special interest to geologists. They are interesting in another way. The limestone hills are overgrown with aromatic herbs, mint, marjoram, thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary, so as to be veritable spice mountains over which the warm air wafts fragrance. The shrubs and trees present to our eyes, familiar with northern vegetation, an unfamiliar appearance. ”

“ One evening, by the light of a splendid moon, which was reflected from the sea of Marmora, and the violet summits of Mount Olympus, I sat alone under the cypresses of the 'Ladders of the Dead;' those cypresses which overshadow innumerable tombs of Mussulmans, and descend from the heights of Pera to the shores of the sea. No one ever passes at that hour: you would suppose yourself an hundred miles from the capital, if a confused hum, wafted by the wind, was not occasionally heard, which speedily died away among the branches of the cypress. ”

“ The mahogany boats, however, are rather heavy, while the cedar is liable to split in what is called “beaching.” I have seen dories hollowed from a single trunk of the ceiba, in which a tall man might comfortably lie at length across the bottom, and which were capable of carrying fifty persons.
But the ceibas of our encampment supported, besides their own verdure, a mass of lianes or climbers, of many varieties, as also, numerous parasitic plants, and among them the wild-pine or rain-plant, which served us a most useful purpose. ”

“ Seek a cypress grove, whose moaning boughs will be harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep embowered in earth's dark entrails, where no light will penetrate, save that which struggles, red and flickering, through a single fissure, staining thy page with grimmest livery of death. ”

“ And the cypresses together with the Shadows bowed answeringly; and the West Wind, ceasing to mourn, spread his gauzy wings in flight toward the rising of the sun.
The moon, sinking, made longer the long shadows; the South Wind caressed the cypresses, and, bearing with him ghosts of the flowers, rose in flight toward the dying fires of the stars. ”

“ San Fernando, Trinidad
The ceiba on the wide savannah has endless room in which to spread. It is perfect in form, like a mammoth gray and green umbrella, and reaches out its immense branches toward every side in perfect symmetry. And such branches! They alone are as large as our forest oaks, and they throw themselves out from the trunk horizontally, in stupendous strength. Its foliage is rather thin; the power of the tree seems to be spent in trunk and branch. Its bark is like an elephant’s hide, and its trunk has a strange way of buttressing out its side in huge wings. ”

“ Cobo acknowledged, "but of course there is some simple explanation. Spirits, if indeed there are such things, are made of nothing—they are like thin air. How, then, could they rattle chains? You probably saw some wretched pacificos in search of food and imagined the rest."
"Indeed! Then what did I hear with these very ears? Whispers, murmurs, groans, and the clinkety-clink of old Sebastian's chisel. For his sins that old slave is chained in some cavern of the mountain. ”

“ In both continents we find tree-worship. In Mexico and Central America cypresses and palms were planted near the temples, generally in groups of threes; they were tended with great care, and received offerings of incense and gifts. The same custom prevailed among the Romans—the cypress was dedicated to Pluto, and the palm to Victory. ”

“ A second cypress standing near, and of almost equal size, is even more graceful, and they, and all the noble trees which adorn these speaking solitudes, are covered with a creeping plant resembling gray moss, hanging over every branch like long gray hair, giving them a most venerable and druidical look. ”

“ There is apparently no limit to anything in the way of size or beauty under these skies. There may be greater trees in the “High Wood” than the ceiba, but, in our experience, it was by far the most wide-stretching of anything we had yet seen. One stands before it awed, stupefied by its immensity, its age, its strange manner of growing. And we think over all the words we know to express its size and beauty, and we feel so poor and powerless in expression. ”

“ When we arrived, the sleepy soldiers, who were lounging before the gates, threw them open to let the carriage enter, and we drew up in from of the great cypress, known by the name of "Montezuma's Cypress," a most stupendous tree, dark, solemn and stately, its branches unmoved as the light wind played amongst them, of most majestic height, and forty-one feet in circumference. ”

“ A giant ceiba, growing in the exact center of the earth, rears its branches through the holes of the heavens until it reaches the seventh, where lives El Gran Dios of the Spaniards; and it is by means of this tree that the spirits of the dead ascend from heaven to heaven. ”

“ The Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, was the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land; figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really supposing Cepha, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became Cepha-us. ”

“ I say to those foolhardy men: Are ye barbarians, since ye know not who Cybele is? Must I solemnly remind you how, when the power of Rome was so gravely threatened by that Punic commander, whose grave I saw not long since in Libyssa, the Cumaean Sybil counselled that the statue of Cybele should be taken from the temple in Pessinus, and brought to Rome? As to the priests’ way of life, some have wondered that they should be forbidden to eat roots, and everything that grows along the earth, while they are allowed to partake of upward-growing herbs and fruits. ”

“ Of the western pediment, the remaining figures are Cecrops, the first King and founder of Athens, and Aglaura, his wife, and the river god, Ilissus, or Cephisus. The metopes, which generally represent single contests between the Athenians and the Centaurs, are in strong high relief, full of bold action and passionate exertion—though this is for the most part softened by great beauty of form and a masterly style of composition which knows how to adapt itself with the utmost freedom to the strict conditions of the space. ”

“ Sebastian observed it in silence; then fearing to awake him, rose to seek some other slave who might assist in conveying him to his chamber.
For this purpose he quitted the labyrinth: the pale evening star twinkling through innumerous boughs, alone lighted him on his way. Glowing with bene [Pg 4] volent and friendly joy, he trod with a lighter step, and looked even in the gardens of El Hader as he had done in the magnificent precincts of Xabregas: though wrapt in a homely dress, the kingly air was still visible. There is a gracefulness of mind which ennobles the meanest habit ”

“ As they were deeply interested in the care of herds and flocks we naturally find that certain star groups represented to them pastoral scenes. These stellar pictures of the ancients are interesting as showing the changes wrought by the advance of progress and civilisation, and there must indeed have been a fascination in painting pictures on the widespread canvas of the night with a brush steeped in the bright-hued pigments of imagination.
Smyth alluded to the constellation Cepheus as "the Dog," and a ring of stars in this group was known to the Arabs as "a Pot." ”

“ From beginning to end it is the stoniest, barest, barrenest, and most forbidding chain of hills that can well be conceived; looking up at it you wonder if the foot of man has ever trodden these rugged and pathless solitudes. Close to the southern base of these desolate hills the Cephisus—a fairly broad and deep stream of turbid whitish water—flows between low banks fringed with tall willows ”

“ The women called him Sebastian for his beauty. A Sebastian he was, per Dio! stuck all over with Amor's fiery darts. Like Sebastian, by his persecutors he would be stripped bare; like that martyr's enemies, they would wound his tender flesh; like Sebastian he would endure, casting his eyes upwards; and like Sebastian he would infallibly be wept by the women. ”

“ The case is very different with Antinous. Depicted under diverse attributes—as Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as Aristæus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient Egypt—his individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of 185 divinity can change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so marked in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. ”

“ The authorities in favour of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops are.—Diod., lib. i.; Theopomp.; Schol. Aristoph.; Plot.; Suidas. Plato speaks of the ancient connexion between Sais and Athens. Solon finds the names of Erechtheus and Cecrops in Egypt, according to the same authority, I grant a doubtful one (Plat. Critias.) The best positive authority of which I am aware in favour of the contrary supposition that Cecrops was indigenous, is Apollodorus. ”

“ Sebastian, situated near the sea coast, in a delightful valley, surrounded, like the other, by lofty mountains, the sides of which present magnificent views of the ocean. This mission contains six hundred souls. This mission establishment, though much richer and neater than the other, is, however, built on a precisely similar plan. Here they have rich [223] vineyards, and raise a great variety of the fruits of almost all climates. They also raise their own supplies of grain, and have a tolerable abundance of stock, both of the larger and smaller kinds. ”

“ Sebastian and a crew of the younger men tumbled into a boat, cross-bow and cutlass at hand, and went ashore to fill the barrels, while John Cabot kept an anxious eye on the land. Sebastian himself rather relished the adventure.
They found a stream of delicious water,—pure, cold and clear as a fountain of Eden. Among the rocks they found creeping vines with rather tasteless, bright red berries, in the woods little evergreen herbs with leaves like laurel and scarlet spicy berries, dark green mossy vines with white berries—but no spice-trees. ”

“ These trees, naturally slow growers, must be over a century in age, and afford, by their widespread branches, a shade equally graceful and grateful. Like the india-rubber trees of Asia, these ceibas have at least one half of their anaconda-like roots exposed upon the surface of the ground, dividing the lower portion of the stem into supporting buttresses, a curious piece of finesse on the part of nature to overcome the disadvantage of insufficient soil. The tree bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. ”

“ On our arrival I carefully concealed my vessel in a hidden cave and landed with my people and my wine skin. Not far away I saw a tremendous cave in the rock surrounded by a wall of great stones and shaded by a row of gigantic firs and oaks. It was the dwelling of the most terrible of the giants, where he spent the night with his goats and sheep; for the care of his flocks was his sole occupation. He was the son of Poseidon and his name was Polyphemus. Like all the Cyclops, he had a single but horrible eye in the middle of his forehead. ”