Rostof on the Don is always beautiful when one leaves it to go south.
Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when
first going to the Caucasus. The sunset illumined it with the hues of
romance. All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit
up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows
became burning living colours. The town lay spread out upon the high
banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church.
The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses above them were
changed into pure fire. Round about the town stretched the grey-green
steppe, freshened by the river-side, but burned down to the suffering
earth itself on the horizon. Then over all, like God's mercy
harmonising man's sins, the effulgence of a light-blue southern sky.