The trees came to an end quite unexpectedly, and they saw before them a vast expanse of light blue sky and red-brown, harvested fields that were flooded with sunlight and stretched away as far as the eye could see. Near a clump of willows by the deep, blue water of a small river lay a wide threshing-ground, resplendent with its peaked haystacks and golden sheaves of corn. Here a completely different life was in progress, a life that was sonorous, busy, and gay. The threshing-machine whirred with a dry, clear sound, sheaves of wheat flew through the air, and excited voices and bursts of girlish laughter could be heard amid the swirling clouds of chaff glittering in the light. Beyond the river, their lower slopes standing deep in curly-yellow woodland, dark blue mountains towered into the sky, and over their jagged peaks translucent, pinkish-white clouds, risen like foam from the salt sea far beyond, came pouring down into the valley, bubbling and frothing like milk fresh from the cow.