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It was nervous work, in the thick, dark brush, and amidst the barbed prickly-pears that filled their flesh with sharp needles, all the worse because they struck unexpectedly. Lieutenant Beale was hoping that now an open way lay before. They had avoided two outposts; were there others, still? Ah!
Here and there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad fleshy leaves. At the foot of the kopje lay the homestead.
Joeboy knew me better than I knew myself when he hobbled the horse, for as I sat there watching and thinking how solitary it all was, wondering how they were getting on at home, and whether the Boers were really in force by the pass, a pleasant feeling of restfulness came over me, and the mountains in the distance seemed to grow hazy and of a delicious blue; the coarse bushes did not look so dry, nor the sickly prickly-pears so unwholesome and like flat oval cakes of horribly unwholesome human flesh joined together at their edges; while the little patch of pasture where Sandho was feeding appeared to be of an indescribably beautiful tinge of green.
In the morning as glorious a sun rose upon us as ever animated that desolate wilderness. We advanced and soon were surrounded by tall bare hills, overspread from top to bottom with prickly-pears and other cacti, that seemed like clinging reptiles. A plain, flat and hard, and with scarcely the vestige of grass, lay before us, and a line of tall misshapen trees bounded the onward view.
I drew the faithful sharer of my long voyage near a thicket of prickly-pears, and slept beside it for the last time, never thinking or dreaming that one year later I should approach the mouth of the Suwanee from the west, after a long voyage of twenty-five hundred miles from the bead of the Ohio River, and would again seek shelter on its banks. It was a night of sweet repose.
Our proper course was easterly, but we went in a northerly direction in order to avoid the Indians. We travelled all that night, the next day, and a portion of its night until we reached the Arkansas River, and, having eaten nothing during that whole time excepting a few prickly-pears, were beginning to feel weak from the weight of our burdens and exhaustion.
Iskender then sat down before the threshold, and fell to drawing pictures in the sand, smoking cigarette after cigarette without contentment, till he knew by the shadow of the prickly-pears that the afternoon was well advanced; when he changed his position for one commanding the approach to the Mission, lit a fresh cigarette and began his watch.
From below, the noises of the restless life and labor of the plain came weakened, softened, by the wind, like the murmuring of waves breaking on a distant shore. Among the prickly-pears that grew in close thicket behind the bench, insects were buzzing about, shining in the sun like buds of gold.
The fig-trees produce something, but I have seen no prickly-pears, which support many poor families on The Coast, during several months every year. The olive plantations are the principal resource of these poor mountaineers, which are also a sensible relief for the eye on these bare heights. In the houses there is hardly anything to be got. No pepper, no onions, no meat killed or sold.
"I have never read of any," was the reply, "and I think that strange custom is confined to apple trees. And there is no mention made of either pears or pear trees in the Scriptures." "What are prickly-pears?" asked Clara. "Do they have thorns on 'em?" "There is a plant by this name," replied her governess, "with large yellow flowers, and the fruit is full of small seeds and has a crimson pulp.
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