United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the beautiful beacon cliff to which we eagerly toil through the snow, and up and down the slippery hill-sides we behold the sea as still and smiling as in summer, and as clearly reflecting the exquisite blue of the vault above; but each of the many little rills which the long rains preceding the frost had caused to flow over the face of the red cliffs, is now a stationary thread of silver, spell-bound by the enchaining frost; and icicles, or, as old-fashioned people call them, aglets, of three or four feet long, ornament the overhanging ledges, prone to fall to the beach far, far below when a thaw releases them from their present stations.
The water imbibed by the soil in winter sinks until it meets a more or less impermeable or a saturated stratum, and then, by unseen conduits, slowly finds its way to the channels springs, or oozes out of the ground in drops which unite in rills, and so all is conveyed to the larger streams, and by them finally to the sea.
"A tear is on each heather bell where heaven's dew distils, And weeping down the mountain side flows on a thousand rills; The winds rush down the empty glens with many a sigh and moan, Where little children played and sang is desolate and lone. The scattered stones of many homes have witnessed our despair, And every stone's a monument to cruel John Adair.
So, at one time, this arid plain had borne a forest. To the mind's eye, here lay the dead earth's burial-place. Ages ago a torrent had fertilized the surrounding tract, and its dried- up bed was marked by water-smoothed boulders. Here and there, small groups of dwarf bushes, covered with dagger-like thorns, drew sustenance from secret rills of moisture.
It's just as hard to realize as to believe that the tiny rills trickling over pebbly river-beds which we pass can turn into mighty floods when they choose. When the snows melt on Monte Viso that great, white, leaning tower against the sky and on the other snow mountains, then is the time of danger in this land that the sun loves."
Just below the town are several rills of the finest water; and the natives report that they issue from a small but deep lake at a very short distance. Beneath one of these spouts we each evening took a most delicious bath in water as cold as it is limpid.
And without waiting for them he ran across the bridge and darted round the building, his torch scattering a shower of sparks behind him on the night, and sending little rills of blood-red light down the sword which he still carried.
The top of the mountain was found to consist of a fragment of original table-land, very marshy, and full of deep sloughs, intersected with small rills of water, pure and pellucid as crystal, and a profusion of wild parsley and celery. The prospect was one dreary scene of destitution, without a single ray of hope to relieve the misery of the desponding crew.
Yet deep down in her consciousness the pity and the pathos of the thing hovered gloomily and would not be driven out. The rain in mid-winter gave every prospect a sad, cold, sodden gray appearance. The ground was soaked, little rills ran in the narrow streets, the small streams became great rivers, the Wabash overflowed its banks and made a sea of all the lowlands on either side.
Solemnly growling and grinding moulins contrast with the sweet low-voiced whispering and warbling of a network of rills, singing like water-ouzels, glinting, gliding with indescribable softness and sweetness of voice. They are all around, one within a few feet of my hard sled bed. July 17.
Word Of The Day