142 LAGOSTA, MELEDA, CANNOSA
stands the Benedictine Monastery of S. Maria del Lago, founded by a Serbian Princess in 1145, the object of our journey. The way lay through a thicket of ilex and Pinus pinea with a dense undergrowth of heath and juniper. After a very short walk we suddenly emerged on the edge of the lake, for such it appeared to be. It was set round by very low hills, densely clad with low growing pine sweeping down, like the folds of a rich green-velvet mantle, to the water’s edge. There we found a boat to take us to the island-monastery and the little village gathered around it. We were welcomed by the Parocco and some of his flock, and were shown over the cloister where lie buried a Serbian Prince and a Bosnian Queen, dead on a pilgrimage. Under the tower is a loggia with an entrancing view over the calm waters of the lake towards the point where lies the channel that connects it with the invisible sea; a sense of extraordinary beauty locked away in a world all its own, seldom, if ever, disturbed. As we came out on the landing-place a little crowd of villagers had gathered round our boat, and in order to make our adieus to the good priest as friendly as possible, and to diffuse a spirit of general kindliness, the daughter of my host, a beautiful English girl of fifteen or so, singled