For it is through the atmosphere of that religion that a man makes his way, as so many pilgrims have done, to the goal of this pilgrimage.
Also this particular aspect remained the more sharply in my memory because of the suddenness with which I escaped from it.

I had not expected the contrast; and it may have coloured all my after experiences.
I descended from the desert train at Ludd, which had all the look of a large camp in the desert; appropriately enough perhaps, for it is the traditional birthplace of the soldier St.George.
At the moment, however, there was nothing rousing or romantic about its appearance.

It was perhaps unusually dreary; for heavy rain had fallen; and the water stood about in what it is easier to call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools.
A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform; I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there.
And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land.
The dark red plains had rolled away like an enormous nightmare; and I found myself in a fresh and exceedingly pleasant dream.
I know it will seem fanciful; but for a moment I really felt as if I had come home; or rather to that home behind home for which we are all homesick.

The lost memory of it is the life at once of faith and of fairy-tale.

Groves glowing with oranges rose behind hedges of grotesque cactus or prickly pear; which really looked like green dragons guarding the golden apples of the Hesperides.
On each side of the road were such flowers as I had never seen before under the sun; for indeed they seemed to have the sun in them rather than the sun on them.