Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

ORDERED SOUTH
or two of roadway with its stones and weeds. And
then, there is no end to the infinite variety of the
olive-yards themselves. Even the colour is indeter-
minate and continually shifting : now you would say
it was green, now grey, now blue ; now tree stands
above tree, like ' cloud on cloud,' massed into filmy
indistinctness ; and now, at the wind's will, the
whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with
little momentary silverings and shadows. But every
one sees the world in his own way. To some the
glad moment may have arrived on other provoca-
tions ; and their recollection may be most vivid of
the stately gait of women carrying burthens on their
heads ; of tropical effects, with canes and naked rock
and sunlight ; of the relief of cypresses ; of the
troubled, busy-looking groups of sea-pines, that
seem always as if they were being wielded and swept
together by a whirlwind ; of the air coming, laden
with virginal perfumes, over the myrtles and the
scented underwood ; of the empurpled hills standing
up, solemn and sharp, out of the green-gold air of
the east at evening.
There go many elements, without doubt, to the
making of one such moment of intense perception ;
and it is on the happy agreement of these many
elements, on the harmonious vibration of many
nerves, that the whole delight of the moment must
depend. Who can forget how, when he has chanced
upon some attitude of complete restfulness, after
long uneasy rolling to and fro on grass or heather,
the whole fashion of the landscape has been changed
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