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"When we had got within about five miles of the mountain-foot, the other ox broke down, and fell as we supposed dead. We could take the wagon no farther; but it was no time either to hesitate or halt: we must try it afoot, or perish where we were. "I loosed out the horse, and left him to his will I saw he was no longer able to carry any of us.
They would have been fools, indeed, to have made that dreadful journey for all they could have gotten from us. Moreover, the sight of our antelope, with its nice yellow fat, crisped by the cold night-air, was anything but disheartening. As Cudjo was a dexterous butcher, I allowed him to quarter it, while I shouldered the axe and marched off to the mountain-foot to procure more wood for the fire.
In spite of the drought, water sparkled on the mountain-sides in little glittering threads, and here and there in the plain; and pretty farms were dotted on either side at the very bottom of the slopes toward the mountain-foot. The sky of such a blue! In short, I never did see anything so beautiful. It even surpassed Hottentot's Holland.
It was so bright and pure a blue, so limpid and pellucid, that it even seemed to out-vie the tint of the sky which it reflected, and the myriad sparks of sunshine on it twinkled like a crystal rain. Plodding through the parched and scorching dust of the mountain-foot, through the stifling vapor and the blinding, ochreous glare, the traveler suddenly came upon this cool and calm delight.
Camp Bay, which lies on the further side of the 'Lion's Head', is most lovely; never was sea so deeply blue, rocks so warmly brown, or sand and foam so glittering white; and down at the mountain-foot the bright green of the orange and pomegranate trees throws it all out in greater relief. But the atmosphere here won't do after that of the 'Ruggings', as the Caledon line of country is called.
The northeasterly wind, which had risen as the sun rose, now blew more keenly, wreaths of white foam rode on the crests of the waves, though these did not beat wildly and stormily on the mountain-foot, but rolled heavily to the shore in humped ridges, endlessly long, as if they were of molten lead.
The electric agencies in our world are very powerful; and it is supposed that at an early age of our world's history the mountain-foot covered with cities extended considerably beyond the land on which stand the present lower cities, and for many miles beyond the actual point to which the sea now recedes at low water, and that through a great electric disturbance, the upheaving seas of mighty waters rolled on, and, rising to an immense height some think above the summit of the great mountain with resistless force carried away miles of intermediate rock-land, which had till then formed the heart of the mountain.
Perhaps we might come to this river before arriving at the mountain-foot. But, no; the plain evidently sloped down from us to the mountain. Whatever stream ran from it must go the other way. We should find no water before reaching the mountain perhaps, not then; and, tortured with these doubts, we pushed gloomily forward. "By noon the oxen began to give out. One of them fell dead, and we left him.
These Savannas of Trinidad stand, it must be remembered, in the very line where, on such a theory, they might be expected to stand, along the newest deposit; the great band of sand, gravel, and clay rubbish which stretches across the island at the mountain-foot, its highest point in thirty-six miles being only two hundred and twenty feet an elevation far less than the corresponding depression of the Bocas, which has parted Trinidad from the main Cordillera.
As they walked back along the mountain-foot, a fox stole out from the rocks and skulked towards the marshy lake, no doubt in search of prey. This fox was the Canis Azara, a most troublesome species, found all through South America. He is the great pest of the Puna shepherds, as he is a fierce hunter, and kills many of the young lambs and alpacos.
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