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But at length she was satisfied that her gaolers were at supper, whereupon she stole out of the house as quietly as a kitten, and was out of sight of it as quickly. Not a creature was to be seen. The gutters were all choked and the streets had become river-beds, already torn with the rush of the ephemeral torrents. But through it all she dashed fearlessly, bounding on to Tibbie's cottage.
You have the colour and speech of a Christian, while it seems that your heart is with the redskins." "To me there is little difference in nations. The people I loved most are scattered as the sands of the dry river-beds fly before the fall hurricanes, and life is too short to make use and custom with strangers, as one can do with such as he has dwelt amongst for years.
Indeed, although we were fairly fortunate as regard wells, and I was never compelled to put the caravan on short allowance, I did not pass a single stream of running water the whole way from Sonmiani to Dhaïra, twenty miles south of Gwarjak, though we must in that distance have crossed at least fifteen dry river-beds, varying from twenty to eighty yards in width.
Had we only the evidence of the deposits of rock heaped above each other in regular strata by the slow accumulation of materials, they alone would convince us of the long and slow maturing of God's work on the earth but when we add to these the successive populations of whose life this world has been the theatre, and whose remains are hidden in the rocks into which the mud or sand or soil of whatever kind on which they lived has hardened in the course of time, or the enormous chains of mountains whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet accumulation by great convulsions, or the changes of a different nature in the configuration of our globe, as the sinking of lands beneath the ocean, or the gradual rising of continents and islands above it, or the wearing of great river-beds, or the filling of extensive water-basins, till marshes first and then dry land succeeded to inland seas, or the slow growth of coral reefs, those wonderful sea-walls raised by the little ocean-architects whose own bodies furnish both the building-stones and the cement that binds them together, and who have worked so busily during the long centuries, that there are extensive countries, mountain-chains, islands, and long lines of coast consisting solely of their remains, or the countless forests that must have grown up, flourished, died, and decayed, to fill the storehouses of coal that feed the fires of the human race to-day, if we consider all these records of the past, the intellect fails to grasp a chronology for which our experience furnishes no data, and the time that lies behind us seems as much an eternity to our conception as the future that stretches indefinitely before us.
Both the country and its ruler bear the name of Coiba, as we have already stated is the case, at Careta. As the country of Javana is the richest of all in gold, it is called Coiba Rica. And in fact, wherever one digs, whether on dry land or in the river-beds, the sand is found to contain gold. The cacique Javana fled when the Spaniards approached, nor was it possible to overtake him.
And fatigued with running, they began to fall down on all sides, unable to slake their thirst, having reached river-beds that were perfectly dry. And many so falling were eaten up by the hungry warriors. While others were eaten up after having been duly quartered and roasted in fires lit up by them.
Deep in the valleys the river-beds are but 3000 feet above the sea, and are choked with fig-trees, plantains, and palms; to these succeed laurels and magnolias, and higher up still, oaks, chesnuts, birches, etc.; there is, however, no marked line between the limits of these two last forests, which form the prevailing arboreous vegetation between 4000 and 10,000 feet, and give a lurid line to the mountains.
It wasn't their religious self-abnegation that had made them flee to scorched river-beds and desert hiding-places; it was their triumphant satisfaction at having tantalized and eluded feminine pursuit. They fled in order that they might possess, not deny themselves. As they became more emaciated and scarred and as their needs grew less, they listened.
And fatigued with running, they began to fall down on all sides, unable to slake their thirst, having reached river-beds that were perfectly dry. And many so falling were eaten up by the hungry warriors. While others were eaten up after having been duly quartered and roasted in fires lit up by them.
Then came two days of driving to Djelfa, at first in a country strange enough to be Djinn-haunted, a country of gloomy mountains, and deep water-courses like badly healed wounds; passing through dry river-beds, and over broken roads with here and there a bordj where men brought water to the mules, in skins held together with ropes of straw.
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