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The well- adjusted human machine was running smoothly; every man knew his place and the duties that went with it; the hands of each worker were capable and skilled. But now the hillsides were growing bare, rills gashed the sloping snow-fields, the upper gullies began to rumble to avalanches forerunners of the process that would strip the earth of snow and ice and free the river in all its fury.
First Instalment this; copiously followed by others, all that year; and flowing on, in smaller rills and drippings, for several years more, till it got completed.
"Hear, hear!" said all in chorus, and Julian with playful force possessed himself of the pocket-book, while Kennedy, only asseverating that the verses were addressed to nobody in particular, fled from the sound of his own lyrics, which Julian proceeded to read. "Rose-opals of the sunlit hills Are flashing round my lonely way, And cataracts dash the rushing rills To plumes of glimmering spray.
Two little rills of blood, already thickened, starting from Caffie's chair, and running across the tiled floor, which sloped a little toward the side of the staircase, joined in the stain which caused the discovery of the crime. The commissioner and Saniel took care not to step in it. "The unfortunate man has had his throat cut," Saniel said. "Death must have occurred two or three hours ago.
Twelve miles only had to be accomplished this first day, and we could saunter as we chose, making our dinner of the little loaves which we had bought hot from the oven, as we quitted the town, and drinking of the clear little rills, which were gurgling merrily under the brown hedge-rows. If we reached the convent before six o'clock we should find the doors open, and should gain admission.
Here and there in the expanse of forest he could see flashes of green and brown, of tree-tops from which the snow had fallen. The river-banks, which yesterday had seemed chiselled out of solid marble, were to-day tunnelled and scarred with tiny rills and watercourses which groped their way feebly riverwards.
Some of the tops are covered with a rich, wild vegetation, some are rugged or have sharp peaks from which torrents of sparkling white foam dash down the narrow dark crevices with roaring fury. From those superb masses extend a series of plateaus like so many terraces which the more they descend the more they unfold the fruitfulness of the soil, irrigated by smooth rivers and rills.
And above the trees, in shelving distance, rise the crests of upland, a soft gray lias, where orchards thrive, and greensward strokes down the rigor of the rocks, and quick rills lace the bosom of the slope with tags of twisted silver. In the murmur of the valley twenty little waters meet, and discoursing their way to the sea, give name to the bay that receives them and the anchorage they make.
Thus are the rills and the rivulets from the summits collected in these beautiful alpine lakes to give birth to the Colorado in white cascades, typical, at the very fountainhead, of the turbulence of the waters which have rent for themselves a trough of rock to the gulf.* Springing from these clear pools and seething falls, shadowed by sombre pines and granite crags, its course is run through plunging rapids to the final assault on the sea, where wide sand-barrens and desolation prevail.
On, upward, back into the untracked mountains it ran through mile upon mile of undulations, until at last it joined the ice-cap which weighted the plateau. As far as the eye could follow the river ahead it stood solidly. Across its entire face it was dripping; a thousand little rills and waterfalls ate into it, and over it swept a cool, dank breath. The effect of the first view was overwhelming.