United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Half a minute passed without another sound than faint and distant echo; then faint, and not so distant, came another sound, a prolonged shout, and presently another, and then a horseman hove in sight among the trees across a nearly mile-wide dip. Arnold and his friends rode on to meet him, leaving the litters at the crest.
On the afternoon of the woodsman's going, however, the wind freshened into a gale, and the fires which had been eating leisurely way through the forest were blown into sudden fury. That same evening a hurricane of flame swept down upon the lonely cabin and the little wild meadow, cutting a mile-wide swath through the woods, jumping the Quah-Davic, and roaring on to the north.
At dinner we laid ourselves out to impress our host. We told him of the mile-wide fields of the west, and enlarged upon the stoneless prairies of Dakota. We described the broadcast seeders they used in Minnesota and bragged of the amount of hay we could put up, and both of us professed a contempt for two-wheeled carts. In the end we reduced our prospective employer to humbleness.
Mark Twain remembered it as "the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer morning, . . . the great Mississippi, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, .... the dense forest away on the other side." The "white town" was built against green hills, and abutting the river were bluffs Holliday's Hill and Lover's Leap.
"The end!" murmured Norhala. There was a quick trembling through the Metal Thing. Down swung its forest of sledges. Beneath the blow down fell the smitten walls, shattered, crumbling, and with it glittering like shining flies in a dust storm fell the armored men. Through that mile-wide breach and up to the inner barrier I glimpsed confusion chaotic.
What was my surprise to see lying below me the smoke and waggons and picketed horses of the enemy's laager! The Boers, to the number of perhaps seven or eight hundred, were sitting or lying beneath trees that made a circle round the mile-wide basin. I glanced at the faces of my companions with some misgiving, but honesty was written there.
Facing our hero, flowed the river, broad, swift and deep; tufted wolf-willow, waving rushes and gray hazel fringing the banks. Across and beyond this almost mile-wide ribbon of water, the imposing walls of Fort Detroit confronted him. Approaching him at a rapid gait he at last espied his two despatch bearers, their scarlet tunics vivid against the green background.
Along the hither shore a row of trees stood up to their knees in water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream, tufts of bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The most striking objects were great solitary trees here and there, with a mile-wide waste of water all around them.
Then across a mile-wide valley we saw two dark objects in the tall grass; and almost immediately identified these as rhinoceroses, the first we had seen. They stood there side by side, gazing off into space, doing nothing in a busy morning world. After staring at them through our glasses for some time, we organized a raid.
But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then, with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we entered into our rest. After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little way. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of watery grandeur.
Word Of The Day