CHAPTER IX

Summary

Our road now lay over hilly ground again, sometimes skirted by live trees and a slight semblance of herbage, and often approaching in wild and sterile grandeur the scenery we had before traversed. A singular range of perpendicular cliffs form a striking feature in the landscape at a place called “Hassan's Walls.” These walls or cliffs rise, I should think, to a height of about 300 feet perpendicularly above the road, and their summits, broken and fissured in various fantastic forms, exactly resemble a ruined castle crowning the brow of the sheer precipice, with here and there a stunted tree or graceful shrub growing from crevices in the dark rock. Had I been travelling in an old country, I should at once have decided that these were truly the ruins of some mighty mountain-fortress of former days; loopholes, arches, battlements, and buttresses were, as it seemed, so clearly remaining, and extending far along the airy heights of these genii-haunted crags, for such I half fancied them, especially when a turn in the road gave to view a colossal head standing well out against the clear, bright, blue sky, and bearing a strong resemblance to the venerable and veteran Duke of Wellington. We paused to contemplate the rude though striking likeness; and then, as we slowly drove on, the features changed, and a judge with a flowing wig stood frowning down on us; another turn, and another change came over the mountain statue, and then it again resolved itself into a mere turret of the hoary ruin.