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Up on the heights he turned left of Pera, and after half an hour's rapid movement was trending northward parallel with the Bosphorus, reaches of which were occasionally visible through cleftings of the mountainous shore. Straw-thatched farmhouses dotted the hills and slopes, and the harvest spread right and left in cheerful prospect.
That night, having completed forty-five miles, he went to rest with a beggar in a hospital. On the next day toward nightfall he lodged in a straw-thatched cabin. On the third day he arrived on foot. According to his resolve, he took neither food nor drink.
"Diego Mendez, my son," said the venerable admiral, "none of those whom I have here understand the great peril in which we are placed, excepting you and myself. We are few in number, and these savage Indians are many, and of fickle and irritable natures. On the least provocation they may throw firebrands from the shore, and consume us in our straw-thatched cabins.
I was impelled onward by my almost uncontrollable feelings. I wished to resolve my doubts and fears. Was HE still there? Had HE heard of my coming? Would HE fly? How beautiful Ukaranga appears! The green hills are crowned by clusters of straw-thatched cones. The hills rise and fall; here denuded and cultivated, there in pasturage, here timbered, yonder swarming with huts.
The people were shabbily dressed, the houses straw-thatched and dilapidated, and the little patches of land poorly cultivated. It seemed that Sunday was a common wash-day; for at almost every cottage the family wash was hanging in the sun on trees, shrubs, or cacti.
The southern slope of the divide appeared to be much more thickly peopled than the northern, for, as we sped down the steep grades with brakes a-squeal, villages of mud-walled, straw-thatched huts became increasingly frequent, nor did the natives appear to be observing Menjepee as strictly as in the vicinity of Boeleleng, for they stood in the gateways of their kampongs and waved at us as we whirled past, and more than once we saw groups of them squatting in a circle beside the road, engaged in the national pastime of cock-fighting.
I had planned a little pleasure for her that afternoon, to repay her for some of the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk together in the straw-thatched cowshed and she, because I was more than usually tired, or because her husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell me of the splendid performance of the Huguenots she had seen in Paris, in her youth.
The barn built of huge pine logs, straw-thatched and raftered, is filled to overflowing with people men, women, even children all bent upon one great, all-absorbing object that object, forgetfulness.
In 651 he made his way to a group of straw-thatched log-huts, in the midst of an untilled solitude, where a few Irish monks from Lindisfarne had settled in the mission-station of Melrose. To-day the land is a land of poetry and romance. Cheviot and Lammermoor, Ettrick and Teviotdale, Yarrow and Annan-water, are musical with old ballads and border minstrelsy.
Low hills, brilliant green ridges against the sky, ran inland from the sea, and in the little hollows here and there nestled small straw-thatched cottages with shining white walls, or the more pretentious Tudor farmhouses with red or brown roofs, and much half-timbered decoration.
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