We tried to hold on with our hands and feet, but we slid on their slippery asperities.

The cliff was so very high that it quite frightened us to look up at it.

Although it crushed us by its formidable placidity, still it fascinated us, for we could not help looking at it and it did not tire our eyes.
A swallow passed us and we watched its flight; it came from the sea; it ascended slowly through the air, cutting the luminous, fluid atmosphere with its sharp, outstretched wings that seemed to enjoy being absolutely untrammelled.

The bird ascended higher and higher, rose above the cliff and finally disappeared.
Meanwhile we were creeping over the rocks, the perspective of which was renewed by each bend of the coast.

Once in a while, when the rocks ended, we walked on square stones that were as flat as marble slabs and seamed by almost symmetrical furrows, which appeared like the tracks of some ancient road of another world.
In some places were great pools of water as calm as their greenish depths and as limpid and motionless as a woodland stream on its bed of cresses.