There Is A Monastery And A Large School.

I rode to the bay, about four miles and a half distant, passing many villages, which, as we neared

The sea, were in the midst of magnificent crops of barley and wheat, resulting from artificial irrigation by the water that percolates beneath the sandy bed of the dry river at a certain level, which has been led into numerous channels before it can reach the natural exit at its mouth. It must be exceedingly unhealthy, as, for several square miles upon the sea margin, the country is an expanse of marsh and bulrushes, abounding with snipe during the winter months. On 13th April I walked over the greater portion of this locality with my three spaniels, but the snipe had departed, and we did not move a bird.

On the right side of Morphu Bay to the east, by Kormachiti, there are extensive sand-dunes, forming deep drifts, which extend for several miles inland at the foot of the hill-range that we had descended. These exhibit the prevailing wind (north). Many people upon observing sand-dunes attribute the most distant limit of the sand to the extreme violence of the wind; but this is not the case. It is the steady prevalence of moderately strong winds that causes the extension of sand-drifts. The wind of to-day deposits the sand at a certain distance from the shore. The wind to-morrow starts the accumulated sand from that depot to form a new deposit about equidistant; and thus by slow degrees the dunes are formed by a succession of mounds, conveyed onwards by an unchanging force; but the maximum power of a gale would be unable to carry thousands of tons of heavy sand to form a hill-range at the extreme distance from the original base of the material. At Hambantotte, in the southern district of Ceylon, there is an extraordinary example of this action, where during one monsoon a range of mounds is formed which might be termed hills; when the monsoon changes, these by degrees disappear, and, according to the alteration in the wind, a range of hills is formed in an exactly opposite direction.

I was glad to escape from Morphu; the wind from the dry plain was hot, and brought clouds of dust. We were surrounded by throngs of people during the day, many of whom were blind, including young children. The 13th April was the Greek Easter Sunday, and we could not start, as Iiani declared that the mules had run away during the night, and could not be found; we knew this was only an excuse for remaining at Morphu, and he at length confessed that the mules were caught, and we could start in the afternoon if I would allow him to wait until he should have received the sacrament together with his wife. Having thus brought the theological and the domestic guns to concentrate their fire upon me, I was obliged to yield, and liani appeared in such a jovial frame of mind in the afternoon, and smelt so strongly of spirits, that I suspected his devotions had been made at the raki-shop instead of the altar.

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