. Artists and Arabs : or, sketching in sunshine . e, and re-venge is deep in the hearts of the insurgenttribes, one peaceful English tent is pitchedupon the heights of Beni-Raten, and its occu-pants devote themselves to the uneventful pursuitof studying mountain beauty. We endeavour(and with some success) to ignore the militaryelernent; we listen neither to the reveille, nor tothe too frequent crack of a rifle ; our pursuitsare not warlike, and, judging from the sightsand sounds that sometimes surround us, we trustthey never may be. The view from this elevation is superb,—north,south, east and
. Artists and Arabs : or, sketching in sunshine . e, and re-venge is deep in the hearts of the insurgenttribes, one peaceful English tent is pitchedupon the heights of Beni-Raten, and its occu-pants devote themselves to the uneventful pursuitof studying mountain beauty. We endeavour(and with some success) to ignore the militaryelernent; we listen neither to the reveille, nor tothe too frequent crack of a rifle ; our pursuitsare not warlike, and, judging from the sightsand sounds that sometimes surround us, we trustthey never may be. The view from this elevation is superb,—north,south, east and west, there is a wondrous land-scape, but northward especially; where far abovethe purple hills, higher than all but a few snowypeaks, there stretches a horizontal line of blue,that seems almost in the clouds. Nothing gives Chap. VIII. THE KABYLE MOUNTAINS. 173 US such a sense of height and distance, asthese accidental peeps of the Mediterranean, andnothing could contrast more effectively than thesnowy peaks in sunlight, against the blue All this we are able to study, in perfect se-curity and with very little interruption; sketch-ing first one mountain side clothed with a massof verdure; another, rocky, barren, and wild;one day an olive-grove, another a deserted Ka-byle village, and so on, with an infinite varietywhich would only be wearisome in detail. 174 ARTISTS AND ARABS. Chap. VIII. And we obtain what is so valuable to anartist, and what is supposed to be so rare inAfrica—variety of atmospheric effect. It is gene-rally admitted (and we should be unwilling tocontest the point), that English landscape isunrivalled in this respect, and that it is only formand colour^ that we may study with advantagein tropical climates; but directly we ascend themountains, we lose that still, serene atmospherethat has been called the monotony of blue. We read often of African sun, but very seldomof African clouds and wind. To-day we are sur-rounded by clouds below us, which come an
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