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I wish I could talk to some of those men who dug clay with me at Fort Leavenworth men who went away cursing the government, loathing the flag, hating all men, and who have nothing to take them out of it. I wish I could take them up with me to the hill-top and say 'There! Don't look at the little pit down below! Look out! Look wide!
Arrived at the "hill-top," as the Indians call this point, the conveyance must be abandoned, and all the outfit for sleeping, cooking, and eating is transferred to the backs of pack animals, which have been sent on ahead. The visitors take saddle animals. There are those who make this drive, and then ride to the village, fifteen miles further down the trail, in one day.
You have seen a field of green barley ruffled over by the wind, just so from the hill-top you could see the wind in its passage over the sunlit foliage beneath. It was breezing up from the south-west, and banyan and cocoa-palm, artu and breadfruit tree, swayed and rocked in the merry wind.
However it is all right if you are sturdy and in good heart, and keep going a stirring pace, and never sit down till you are dry again. My companion did not seem very buoyant, though he made no complaint and trudged on without flagging. We had a glorious service in a quaint church of wattles and earth and grass on a hill-top.
Three miles away, but seemingly very much closer, was the bold headland of the Peak, and more inland was Stoupe Brow, with Robin Hood's Butts on the hill-top. The fable connected with the outlaw is scarcely worth repeating, but on the site of these butts urns have been dug up, and are now to be found in Scarborough Museum.
How truly marvellous is the description of these wind-swept, weed-grown solitudes that Robert Browning presents to us in what is perhaps the most truly Italian in feeling of all his poems, “The Englishman in Italy!” For here with the rich imagination, worthy of some of Shelley’s finest flights, is mingled an accurate appreciation of Nature, of which Wordsworth might well be proud; for the Lake poet himself could not have improved upon this exquisite description of the various shrubs and plants of a limestone hill-top in Italy.
The fire was plain enough, but we were under the impression that some one was spending the night on the hill-top and had kindled the fire either for cooking or companionship. Lance is an obstinate chap and was not altogether convinced. He arose at dawn and discovered the two smoke columns. He wakened no one but me. We set out and were lucky enough to find Tory and Kara without much trouble.
They were some miles inside the coast, but from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, "The sky! the sky! Look! It has fallen on to the land." "That is the sea, my child," said Israel.
To this end, we went down, all of us, to the beach where lay the wreckage, and, getting about the portion which I intended to use, carried it to the foot of the hill; then we sent a man to the top to let down the rope by which we had moored the boat to the sea anchor, and when we had bent this on securely to the piece of timber, we returned to the hill-top, and tailed on to the rope, and so, presently, after much weariful pulling, had it up.
But my father in me made my whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my mother in me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of her cool, misty country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the pearl-gray dawn. Dearest, dearest, don't sob so.
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