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Scattered here and there over this terrible plateau are tiny farmsteads, their houses and the walls shutting in the little patches under cultivation being built from the stones obtained in clearing the soil, a task requiring incredible patience. No wonder that the folk who dwell in them are characterized by expressions as stony and hopeless as the soil from which they wring a wretched existence.
I climb and climb and climb, halting perforce betimes, to ease the violent aching of my quadriceps muscles; reach the top completely out of breath; and find myself between two lions of stone; one showing his fangs, the other with jaws closed. Before me stands the temple, at the farther end of a small bare plateau surrounded on three sides by low cliffs,-a small temple, looking very old and grey.
The Scudamores, having no duty, stood at the entrance to the inclosure and watched the fight on their right. As the masses of French infantry appeared on the edge of the plateau they made no pause, but opening a heavy fire pressed forward on the retiring British troops, who were falling back in open order, contesting every inch of ground.
We traversed the Grand Plateau, and at length reached the base of an extremely steep incline which stretched upward toward the Corridor. Here, as if produced by a fault, consequent upon the sinking of the ice in front, rose a vertical precipice, from the coping of which vast stalactites of ice depended.
It is said that the country abounds in horses, but Lieutenant Speke "doubts the fact." The eastern portion of the plateau visited by our traveller belongs to the Warsingali, the western to the Dulbahantas: the former tribe extends to the S. E., whilst the latter possess the lands lying about the Tuk Der, the Nogal, and Haud.
Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose. He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull white damask.
To be sure, journeymen, beggars who how can one tell? already have one foot in the lock-up, did not pass through the village, which is situated apart from others on the Eifel plateau, with its two straight, compact rows of houses in the protecting shade of a dark grove of fir-trees, but with its remote fields, reclaimed from the waste land, exposed to all the winds of the Eifel and all the rays of the burning sun.
From the meadow below the plateau came the tinkle of cow-bells, musical in the distance; and this sound, combined with the note of a bird and the voices of children from an unseen garden, produced an Arcadian atmosphere which even the harsh gong of the returning electric car could not dispel.
The inhabitants of this borderland are, to judge by appearance, superior to the people of the plains, who certainly strike the casual observer as being dirty and somewhat dull. The Castilian and Aragonese, however, may be said to constitute the heart of the nation. Leon and Estremadura form a part of the same raised plateau, but their people are very different.
As the brave Irishmen reach the abandoned batteries, the hoarse roar of cannon, the sharp rattle of musketry-volleys, the scream of shot and shell, and the whistling of bullets, is at once deafening and appalling, while the air seems filled with the iron and leaden sleet which sweeps across the scorched and blasted plateau of the Henry House.
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