Book II

VISSARION

Letter from Rupert Sent Leger, Castle of Vissarion, the Spear of
Ivan, Land of the Blue Mountains, to Miss Janet MacKelpie, Croom
Castle, Ross-shire, N.B.
January 23, 1907.

MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

As you see, I am here at last. Having got my formal duty done, as
you made me promise--my letters reporting arrival to Sir Colin and
Mr. Trent are lying sealed in front of me ready to post (for nothing
shall go before yours)--I am free to speak to you.

This is a most lovely place, and I hope you will like it. I am quite
sure you will. We passed it in the steamer coming from Trieste to
Durazzo. I knew the locality from the chart, and it was pointed out
to me by one of the officers with whom I had become quite friendly,
and who kindly showed me interesting places whenever we got within
sight of shore. The Spear of Ivan, on which the Castle stands, is a
headland running well out into the sea. It is quite a peculiar
place--a sort of headland on a headland, jutting out into a deep,
wide bay, so that, though it is a promontory, it is as far away from
the traffic of coast life as anything you can conceive. The main
promontory is the end of a range of mountains, and looms up vast,
towering over everything, a mass of sapphire blue. I can well
understand how the country came to be called the "Land of the Blue
Mountains," for it is all mountains, and they are all blue! The
coast-line is magnificent--what is called "iron-bound"--being all
rocky; sometimes great frowning precipices; sometimes jutting spurs
of rock; again little rocky islets, now and again clad with trees and
verdure, at other places stark and bare. Elsewhere are little rocky
bays and indentations--always rock, and often with long, interesting
caves. Some of the shores of the bays are sandy, or else ridges of
beautiful pebbles, where the waves make endless murmur.

But of all the places I have seen--in this land or any other--the
most absolutely beautiful is Vissarion. It stands at the ultimate
point of the promontory--I mean the little, or, rather, lesser
promontory--that continues on the spur of the mountain range. For
the lesser promontory or extension of the mountain is in reality
vast; the lowest bit of cliff along the sea-front is not less than a
couple of hundred feet high. That point of rock is really very
peculiar. I think Dame Nature must, in the early days of her
housekeeping--or, rather, house-BUILDING--have intended to give her
little child, man, a rudimentary lesson in self-protection. It is
just a natural bastion such as a titanic Vauban might have designed
in primeval times. So far as the Castle is concerned, it is alone
visible from the sea. Any enemy approaching could see only