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and plains, when they came to a wide champaign, abounding in herbs and fruits of all kinds. Therein were gazelles frisking and birds singing lustily on the branches: its slopes for flowers were like serpents’ bellies and many and various were its channels of running water. And indeed it was as saith the poet and saith well and accomplisheth desire:
As ’twere a sun-scorched tract, a valley ruddy red, With twice the common tale of herbs and flowers o’erspread.
We halted midst its groves, and it above us bent, As o’er a weanling child the nurses bend the head;
And limpid waters sweet, more pleasant than old wine To boon-companion is, to quench our thirst it shed.
It still shut out the sun, from whatsoever side It smote us, but let in the breeze to cool our bed.
Its pebbles fragrant were as maids with trinkets decked And seemed unto the touch like heaps of pearls a-thread.
And as saith another:
When its birds sing in the dawn o’er its limpid lake, El Welhan longs for its sight ere morning break;
For as it were Paradise ’tis with its fragrant gales And its fruits and its streams that run through its shady brake.
Night dcccxci.Here the two lovers alighted to rest and turning the horses loose to pasture in the valley, ate of its fruits and drank of its streams; after which they sat talking and recalling all that had befallen them and complaining one to the other of the anguish of separation and of that which they had suffered for estrangement and love-longing. As they were thus engaged, there arose in the distance a cloud of dust, which spread till it walled the world, and they heard the neighing of horses and clank of arms.
Now the reason of this was, that the king had gone forth at daybreak, to give the vizier and his daughter good-
