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On issuing from the gorges of the Cordilleras, Glenarvan and his band came first to plains of sand, called MEDANOS, lying in ridges like waves of the sea, and so extremely fine that the least breath of wind agitated the light particles, and sent them flying in clouds, which rose and fell like water-spouts.
Tschudi observed, in the same desert, two species of dunes, fixed and movable, and he ascribes a falciform shape to the movable, a conical to the fixed dunes, or medanos. "The medanos," he observes, "are hillock-like elevations of sand, some having a firm, others a loose base. On this side they are sloping, inside precipitous, and from fifteen to twenty feet high.
The Quickstep had arrived in port again before Cappy Ricks and Florry could get away to Europe, so Matt came down by train from Los Medanos and was granted the meager comfort of a farewell with his heart's desire. Thereafter all comfort fled his life, for, with Cappy Ricks away, Mr.
We hoped it would reach Vitor about the same time that we did, but that was expecting too much of arrieros on the first day of their journey. So we had an all-day wait near the primitive little railway station. We amused ourselves wandering off over the neighboring pampa and studying the médanos, crescent-shaped sand dunes which are common in the great coastal desert.
Matt engaged a certified lumber surveyor at five dollars a day to do the tallying at the various mills, but at Los Medanos he tallied the cargo out personally. To a shingle it agreed with the mill tally. Subsequently the manager of the drying yard reported a shortage of eight thousand shingles, and again Mr.
It was a spectacle which caused both pleasure and pain, for nothing could be more curious than to see the said water-spouts wandering over the plain, coming in contact and mingling with each other, and falling and rising in wild confusion; but, on the other hand, nothing could be more disagreeable than the dust which was thrown off by these innumerable MEDANOS, which was so impalpable that close one's eyes as they might, it found its way through the lids.
"Do I not know what I am talking about, young sir? They are dead, I tell you dead as the past, dead as Oriental independence and honour. Did I not ride into the fight at Gil de los Medanos with the last of the Peraltas, Calixto, when he received his baptism of blood?
I'll be at Los Medanos Sunday night." "Her skipper's a big Finn," Cappy warned him. "Behave yourself, Matt. He's bad medicine for young second mates." "I'll do my duty, sir." He took his leave. As he went out the door Cappy gazed after him with twinkling eyes: "Young scoundrel!" he murmured. "Damned young scoundrel!
As the moon was setting we entered a hilly region, and at sunrise found ourselves in the midst of a tumbled mass of enormous sand dunes the result of hundreds of médanos blown across the pampa of Majes and deposited along the border of the valley.
She's carrying redwood shingles from Eureka to the Shingle Association's air-drying yards up river at Los Medanos at present, and she'll get to Los Medanos Sunday afternoon, so you'd better get there about the same time, in order to turn to discharging bright and early Monday morning. And you'll have to step lively, Matt.
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