Francois was determined to finish our journey to-day.  He had a presentiment that we should reach Brousa, although I expected nothing of the kind.  He called us long before the lovely pastoral valley in which we lay had a suspicion of the sun, but just in time to see the first rays strike the high head of Olympus.  The long lines of snow blushed with an opaline radiance against the dark-blue of the morning sky, and all the forests and fields below lay still, and cool, and dewy, lapped in dreams yet unrecalled by the fading moon.  I bathed my face in the cold well that perpetually poured over its full brim, drank the coffee which Francois had already prepared, sprang into the saddle, and began the last day of our long pilgrimage.  The tent was folded, alas! for the last time; and now farewell to the freedom of our wandering life!  Shall I ever feel it again?

The dew glistened on the chestnuts and the walnuts, on the wild grape-vines and wild roses, that shaded our road, as we followed the course of an Olympian stream through a charming dell, into the great plain below.  Everywhere the same bountiful soil, the same superb orchards, the same ripe fields of wheat and barley, and silver rye.  The peasants were at work, men and women, cutting the grain with rude scythes, binding it into sheaves, and stacking it in the fields.  As we rode over the plain, the boys came running out to us with handfuls of grain, saluting us from afar, bidding us welcome as pilgrims, wishing us as many years of prosperity as there were kernels in their sheaves, and kissing the hands that gave them the harvest-toll.  The whole landscape had an air of plenty, peace, and contentment.  The people all greeted us cordially; and once a Mevlevi Dervish and a stately Turk, riding in company, saluted me so respectfully, stopping to speak with me, that I quite regretted being obliged to assume an air of dignified reserve, and ride away from them.

Ere long, we saw the two white minarets of Aineghioel, above the line of orchards in front of us, and, in three hours after starting, reached the place.  It is a small town, not particularly clean, but with brisk-looking bazaars.  In one of the houses, I saw half-a-dozen pairs of superb antlers, the spoils of Olympian stags.  The bazaar is covered with a trellised roof, overgrown with grape-vines, which hang enormous bunches of young grapes over the shop-boards.  We were cheered by the news that Brousa was only eight hours distant, and I now began to hope that we might reach it.  We jogged on as fast as we could urge our weary horses, passed another belt of orchard land, paid more harvest-tolls to the reapers, and commenced ascending a chain of low hills which divides the plain of Aineghioel from that of Brousa.