It was a Mediterranean landscape, fraught with that historic significance that is inseparable from these lands that border the old-world sea. The Olive, the Cypress, and the Vine — what a magic of association is involved in this leafy trinity of the South! I for one never look upon a cypress, with its dark grave outline and perfect form, Without thinking of the Great King and of Salamis, and of all the successive hosts of Islam which have beaten themselves upon Christendom in vain. And here I remembered that I was upon the very threshold of some of their greatest triumphs and disasters.