“Priestesses still live there, do they not?” said Leo, trying in his turn to extract the truth.

“Yes, and priests also.  The College of them was established by the conquerors, who subdued all the land.  Or rather, it took the place of another College of those who fashioned the Sanctuary and the Temple, whose god was the fire in the Mountain, as it is that of the people of Kaloon to-day.”

“Then who is worshipped there now?”

“The goddess Hes, it is said; but we know little of the matter, for between us and the Mountain folk there has been enmity for ages.  They kill us and we kill them, for they are jealous of their shrine, which none may visit save by permission, to consult the Oracle and to make prayer or offering in times of calamity, when a Khan dies, or the waters of the river sink and the crops fail, or when ashes fall and earthquakes shake the land, or great sickness comes.  Otherwise, unless they attack us, we leave them alone, for though every man is trained to arms, and can fight if need be, we are a peaceful folk, who cultivate the soil from generation to generation, and thus grow rich.  Look round you.  Is it not a scene of peace?”

We stood up in the boat and gazed about us at the pastoral prospect.  Everywhere appeared herds of cattle feeding upon meadow lands, or troops of mules and horses, or square fields sown with corn and outlined by trees.  Village folk, also, clad in long, grey gowns, were labouring on the land, or, their day’s toil finished, driving their beasts homewards along roads built upon the banks of the irrigation dykes, towards the hamlets that were placed on rising knolls amidst tall poplar groves.

In its sharp contrast with the arid deserts and fearful mountains amongst which we had wandered for so many years, this country struck us as most charming, and indeed, seen by the red light of the sinking sun on that spring day, even as beautiful with the same kind of beauty which is to be found in Holland.  One could understand too that these landowners and peasant-farmers would by choice be men of peace, and what a temptation their wealth must offer to the hungry, half-savage tribes of the mountains.

Also it was easy to guess when the survivors of Alexander’s legions under their Egyptian general burst through the iron band of snow-clad hills and saw this sweet country, with its homes, its herds, and its ripening grass, that they must have cried with one voice, “We will march and fight and toil no more.  Here we will sit us down to live and die.”  Thus doubtless they did, taking them wives from among the women of the people of the land which they had conquered—­perhaps after a single battle.