I cannot forget this walk of gloom and mystery, and my stay in this
strange, sleeping monastery of the Middle Ages. But over and against
it stands the bright morning of Gudaout, four days later.
Gudaout is encompassed by the highest Caucasus--its only refuge is the
sea. It is a place most wonderful in the pageantry of dawn. Picture
my life of one evening and morning. I left Gudaout at the dusk, and
having bought myself a pound of purple grapes, strolled out along the
dusty high road eating them. I made my bed on the seashore, and slept
away the aches and pains of a heavy day's tramping. Next day, in that
sort of reflection of last evening which comes before the morning, I
rose, for the coldest of October breezes had come down to me from the
mountains. The dawn was all gold--a new dawn, I thought. But when I
stood on my feet I saw below the gold the lovely bosom of the East,
a beautiful, soft bed of creamy rose. It was an elemental sunrise, a
veritable _first_ morning.
Distant mountains lay wrapped in dissolving mists, and seemed like the
multifarious tents of a great army encamped on a plain--for the smooth
sea was like a plain. The chamber of the dawn seemed gigantic, the
mountains having lifted up the roof of heaven higher than I had ever
seen it before, the sea having taken it out to a far horizon.
I stood looking over the shore before sunrise, and far out in the bay
were three high-masted feluccas, looking like ships of the Spanish
Armada. At the water's edge, and yet silhouetted against the dawn sky,
were Mahometans, washing themselves and praying--stark, black figures
in the strange light.