towers

850 the two towers
curve that was lost in the distance. Before them, as they
turned west, gentle slopes ran down into dim hazes far below.
All about them were small woods of resinous trees, fir and
cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the Shire,
with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a
wealth of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey
from Rivendell had brought them far south of their own land,
but not until now in this more sheltered region had the hobbits
felt the change of clime. Here Spring was already busy
about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were
green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds
were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate
kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.
South and west it looked towards the warm lower vales of
Anduin, shielded from the east by the Ephel Dúath and yet
not under the mountain-shadow, protected from the north
by the Emyn Muil, open to the southern airs and the moist
winds from the Sea far away. Many great trees grew there,
planted long ago, falling into untended age amid a riot of
careless descendants; and groves and thickets there were of
tamarisk and pungent terebinth, of olive and of bay; and
there were junipers and myrtles; and thymes that grew in
bushes, or with their woody creeping stems mantled in deep
tapestries the hidden stones; sages of many kinds putting
forth blue flowers, or red, or pale green; and marjorams and
new-sprouting parsleys, and many herbs of forms and scents
beyond the garden-lore of Sam. The grots and rocky walls
were already starred with saxifrages and stonecrops. Primeroles
and anemones were awake in the filbert-brakes; and
asphodel and many lily-flowers nodded their half-opened
heads in the grass: deep green grass beside the pools, where
falling streams halted in cool hollows on their journey down
to Anduin.
The travellers turned their backs on the road and went
downhill. As they walked, brushing their way through bush
and herb, sweet odours rose about them. Gollum coughed
and retched; but the hobbits breathed deep, and suddenly