ABSTRACT
The new situation was, and still is, particularly beautiful. The city lies in a round valley inclosed on three sides by hills which rise on the northeast to a notched green peak. A monastery had recently been built on this peak at that time, and its holy influence, it was believed, would ward off evils expected from that quarter. Two rivers meander over the gently sloping floor of the bowl-shaped valley, and the city lies between them. The valley floor is still a mosaic of dyked fields, each little patch a-blossom in spring with a crop of a different color. In summer the dykes disappear under the even green of the young rice; in autumn the land is golden with harvest; in winter the empty brown fields are spiked with conical straw ricks and touched white with frost.
