United States or North Macedonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now, as they were riding over this desert, picking their way among the boulders at the discretion of their animals, it so happened that Richard and Jehane were in front by some forty paces. Riding so, presently Jehane gave a short gasping cry, and almost fell off her horse. She pointed with her hand, and 'Look, look, look! she said in a dry whisper.
Even as these thoughts passed through his mind, the terrible cry was uttered again this time so close at hand that it was taken up and repeated by a chorus of echoes from the nearby cliffs. The Indians sprang to their feet in terror, while at the same moment an avalanche of stones, gravel, and small boulders rushed down the face of the cliff close to where Cabot lay.
Certainly in this valley district it was very hot. "We will go back by the hill road," Fletcher said, as he handed her up. "It is rather longer, but I think it is worth it. This blaze is too much for you." They left the thronged highroad, and turned up a rutty track leading directly into the hills. Their way lay between great, glaring boulders of naked rock.
They are too enormous to have been transported by glacial action, by which method we account for the position of so many big boulders in the northern portions of our own continent. One of these in the neighborhood we are speaking of is called "The Elephant's Tusk," towering six hundred feet into the air; but why it is thus named is not obvious.
Oh, for no purpose at all except as boys rob nests immemorially, for the fun of it, to have and handle and show to other lads as an exceeding treasure, and afterwards discard. So, not quite meaning to, but breathless with daring, they crept up a gully, across a sage brush flat and through a waste of boulders, to the rugged pines where their sharp eyes had made out the buzzards settling.
Harry and his two mates rode on at a slower pace than before, while the two Indians, Jerry, and Tom dismounted, left their horses beyond the turn, and then coming back took up their positions behind four large boulders. The Indians had noticed their returning figures, for they suddenly drew up their horses and gathered together in consultation.
These boulders were rounded like a cricket-ball evidently through the action of water and yet the hand of Nature had contrived to balance them, each one smaller than that beneath, the one upon the other, and to keep them so. But this was not always the case.
The connection between the transportal of boulders and the presence of ice in some form, is strikingly shown by their geographical distribution over the earth.
The wear and tear of travelling soon separates these, leaving gaps between; and when, added to this, one trunk rots away, and another sinks down into the swamp, and another tilts up, you may imagine such a jolting as only leather springs could bear. On the very worst roads, filled with deep holes, or covered with small granite boulders, the stage only swings on the straps.
"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself. I'll take the short cut an' head him." Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense, tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders.
Word Of The Day