“It was so musing that I found myself approaching a high tangle of reeds, through which a narrow path wound and was lost to view. On this path I engaged. The reeds on either side were so tall as to hide the farther landscape, and so closely set that one could see but a few yards into their mass.
“After perhaps an hour of such journeying my mule and I came out suddenly upon the firm bank of a broad and shallow river whose noise and coolness, swift current and clear stream were a delight after so many hours of arid travel. There did I sit me down. There did I unload and hobble my patient companion. There did we drink of the good water, and there did the mule eat plentifully of cool grass. But I made no meal, for the oat-cakes and cheese which I had taken from the Common Table of the Poor in the Pilgrims’ camp were now exhausted.
“It was this circumstance which made me a little anxious for the day. I looked about me, stood up on the highest part of the bank, and then saw that the shore opposite had been artificially heightened to form a regular levee or embankment, beyond which the flat country was hidden. I determined to seek this point of advantage for a view. I reloaded my mule, carefully forded the stream in its various branches and climbed to the farther shore.
“At the summit of the embankment, which was evidently of recent construction, my effort was well rewarded, for I saw a sight that set at rest all anxiety for food and shelter.
“The embankment on which I stood swept round in a horseshoe shape--not everywhere finished, but everywhere traced out. It thus enclosed a peninsula, bounded by the river: a space of marshy ground full of stagnant pools and water-grasses. Three or four furlongs away, cutting across the whole neck of the horseshoe of swamp and stretching from the river to the river again, ran the well-built stone wall of a strong town, the flat roofs and low domes of which (it had no tower or minaret) made a ridge of snow-white against the intense blue of the sky. Far away beyond were distant mountains, purple in the heat.
“Scattered over the swamp itself and on the unfinished sections of the embankment were groups of labourers working with spades and barrows, and, overseeing them, nearby to me, a young man of energetic carriage, well dressed in a brown garment, rich, but suitable to his work and girded. He had no sandals, for they would have impeded him on such ground; he bore an inlaid ebon staff with an ivory hand-grasp, and was occupied, when I first saw him, in shouting a new order to a distant group of diggers. His back was towards me. He had not seen my approach.
