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Not a rock of granite meets the eye; but there are others piled as high, and glistening with the whiteness of snow. These are mountains of the milky quartz. They exhibit a variety of peaks, naked and shining; crags that hang over deep, treeless ravines, and needle-shaped summits aspiring to the sky. They too have their vegetation, a vegetation that suggests ideas of the desert and desolation.
Never had I seen the Alps to such advantage. The level plain ran quite up to them, and allowed the eye to take their full height from their flower-girt base to their icy summit. Hundreds and hundreds of peaks ran along the sky, conical, serrated, needle-shaped, jagged, some flaming like the ruby in the morning ray, others dazzlingly white as the alabaster.
They were very tall, with a thick, globe-shaped head of pinnate, plume-like leaves. But what rendered these trees peculiar was the stem. It was slender in proportion to the height of the tree, and was thickly covered with long needle-shaped spines, not growing irregularly, but set in bands, or rings, around the tree.
So rang forth the supplication, echoing from rock and fell, as the people of Claudiodunum streamed forth in the May sunshine to invoke a blessing on the cornlands, olives, and vineyards that won vantage- ground on the terraces carefully kept up on the slopes of the wonderful needle-shaped hills of Auvergne.
The mountain-tops, unlike those of our Coral Island, were sharp, needle-shaped, and bare, while their sides were more rugged and grand in outline than anything I had yet seen in those seas. Bloody Bill was beside me when the island first hove in sight. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I know that island well. They call it Emo." "Have you been there before, then?" I inquired.
Behind them all, O monarch, and surrounded by a vast force, was king Jayadratha stationed at one side of that needle-shaped array. At the entrance of the Sakata, O king, was Bharadwaja's son. Behind Drona was the chief of the Bhojas, who protected him.
A third time the fire shone, and with such intensity, that no lightning could surpass its brilliance. All around the heavens were lit up, and, through the black needle-shaped eye of the symbol, as from the flare of a beacon, or the search-light of a ship, one fierce ray shot across the sea of mountain tops and the spaces of the desert, straight as an arrow to the lofty peak on which we lay.
They were of the pinus sylvestris, and thickly covered with bunches of long needle-shaped leaves. If they should climb into these trees, the leaves and branches would sufficiently conceal them, and the bear would hardly suspect their presence in such a situation. The suggestion of their guide was at once acted upon.
The twigs seem to be found just below the bud-rings, as the upper leaf-buds usually develop best and the lower buds are single, containing flowers only. The buds are terminal, and axillary, from the axils of the leaves of the preceding year, usually from those at the ends of the branchlets. They are covered with brown scales and contain many leaves. The leaves are needle-shaped and short.
If we cut across a stalk of the garden rhubarb, we can see, with the aid of a microscope, the fine needle-shaped crystals of oxalate of potash lying among the fibres of the plant, a provision for an extra supply of the oxalic acid which is the source of the intense sourness of this vegetable.
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