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They would bring him back only to enjoy a triumph. Gaul had been the single danger to the Empire. Nature had fortified Italy by the Alps. The mountain-barrier alone had allowed Rome to grow to its present greatness, but the Alps might now sink into the earth, Italy had no more to fear.
Passing on from the eastern district, marked by its equably distributed rainfall, and therefore naturally forest-clad, I have seen the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, restrict their growth to the borders of streams, and then disappear from the boundless drier plains; have seen grassy plains change into a brown and sere desert desert in the common sense, but hardly anywhere botanically so have seen a fair growth of coniferous trees adorning the more favored slopes of a mountain-range high enough to compel summer showers; have traversed that broad and bare elevated region shut off on both sides by high mountains from the moisture supplied by either ocean, and longitudinally intersected by sierras which seemingly remain as naked as they were born; and have reached at length the westward slopes of that high mountain-barrier which, refreshed by the Pacific, bears the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges, and among them trees which are the wonder of the world.
There lay a gigantic mass of earth, stones, and trees, among which were several large blocks of solid rock, hurled across the road, showing a jagged outline against the night-sky, like an interposing mountain-barrier but just recently dropped in their path.
He had to lurk, like a fugitive, through a part of his own dominions, nor did he feel himself secure until he had passed the frontier and beheld the mountain-barrier of his country towering behind him. Then it was that he became conscious of his humiliated state a fugitive from his throne, an outcast from his nation, a king without a kingdom. He smote his breast in an agony of grief.
Presently I was lulled to sleep by the monotonous chant of the bearers sleep only partially broken when changes of the whole set of bearers had to be made and awoke the following morning to find myself some fifty miles from the coast, and amidst the gorges of the Ghauts, with vast heights towering upwards, and almost all around, while the river, which had now sunk to what in English ideas would still seem to be one of considerable size, appeared as if it had just emerged from the navel of a mountain-barrier some miles ahead.
At the distance of thirty miles from Pasargadae, or of more than forty by the ordinary road, grew up the second capital, Persepolis, occupying a more southern position than the primitive seat of power, but still situated towards the edge of the plateau, having the mountain-barrier to the south-west and the desert at no great distance to the north-east.
It was to save Feng Kuo-chang, then, that the young patriot Tsao-ao caused the ultimatum to be dispatched fourteen days too soon, i.e., before the Yunnan troops had marched over the mountain-barrier into the neighbouring province of Szechuan and seized the city of Chungking which would have barred the advance of the Northern troops permanently as the river defiles even when lightly defended are impassable here to the strongest force.
It scarcely ever rains, but wind the people have nine months out of the twelve. It is a species of trade-wind, which commences at the Straits, or the coasts of Spain and Portugal, and sweeps down north-west with fury, making the entire coast of Morocco a mountain-barrier of breakers, increasing in its course, and extending as far as Wadnoun, Cape Bajdor, Cape Blanco, even to the Senegal.
Thus the country towards the edge of the plateau is peculiarly safe from attack, being defended on the north and east by vast deserts, and on the south by a mountain-barrier of unusual strength and difficulty. It is in these regions, which combine facility of defence with pleasantness of climate, that the principal cities of the district have at all times been placed.
The first was fought in the early part of November, and resulted in the occupation by Wellington's army of the great mountain-barrier south of Bayonne, with six miles of entrenchments along the Nivelle, and of the port of St. Jean de Luz.
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