United States or Philippines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He rests his weary head under the hallowing sounds of the well-remembered bells of the past at the Mission Dolores. Natalie de Santos rubs her eyes in wonder at the queen city of the West, with its conquered hills and vanished sand-dunes. Whirled away to a secure quiet retreat in a convent, selected by Pere Francois, the heiress and her young guardian are safe from even Hardin's wiles.
The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of the grasses upon the sand-dunes converted them from solid bulwarks against the ocean to loose accumulations of dust, which every sea-breeze drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up water-courses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other.
And that, by the way, is why she had that supernatural guess when he was away on the sand-dunes. Mere figure and gait, however distant, are more likely to remind us of somebody than a well-made-up face quite close." There was another silence. "Well," growled the detective, "and so this great numismatist and coin-collector was nothing but a vulgar miser."
In 1846 this fort was barely above the water. Still farther out beyond James Island, and separated from it by a wide space of salt marsh with crooked channels, was Morris Island, composed of the sand-dunes thrown up by the wind and the sea, backed with the salt marsh. On this was the lighthouse, but no people.
The Indian had disappeared by this time, and there was little danger of overtaking him; so with the two low hills as his objective point, the Easterner circled a mile out of the direct course which he knew the Indian would take, and when the dawn commenced to show in the east he herded the pack-animals down into a swale between two sand-dunes.
To the left was the city swarming upon its hills, a dull gray mass, cut in parallel furrows by the streets; straggling and uneven where it approached the sand-dunes in the direction of the Presidio.
They might as well walk open-eyed into a trap. There was but one hope, one opportunity to cross the stream before dawn came and hide among those shifting sand-dunes of the opposite shore.
"At that time, however, it was a sweep of tawny sand-dunes, for the Spaniards had neither the ability nor the money to beautify the place. After it came into possession of the Americans, lupins were scattered broadcast as a first means of cultivation and for a time the undulating hills were veiled in blue.
We travelled on horseback and in a two-mule buggy, and with the movement discontent dropped away from me and all was well with the world, even though I knew not what weeks or even days should bring me. That night we camped thirty miles from the ranch and thirty from the little town we called a city, which had grown up in the sand-dunes by the banks of the Texan Colorado.
But he believes it may exist, somewhere far, far east, beyond walls of mountains and shifting sand-dunes, between the Sahara and the Libyan deserts." "Wouldn't other explorers have found it, if it were there?" "Lots have tried, and been lost themselves: or else they've given up hope, after terrible privations, and have struggled back to their starting-place.