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Indeed, it does not require any great knowledge of agriculture to see that a country like this, a lofty table-land, dry and barren, with no market handy, or chance of irrigation, is a wretched poor farming country. Hence the pity it seems of wiping out the burghers.
In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western Midlands.
The river is a shining, spangled, surface of light blue and white, reflecting the sky sprinkled with fleecy clouds. Here a chattering stream, the Petit Ruisseau, falls over white rocks to lose itself in the sand. Far ahead now one can see the Church of Ste. Irénée perched on a level table-land, two or three hundred feet above the river.
In a few minutes we arrived at a platform of table-land on the summit of the hill, prettily sprinkled with palm-trees, and came upon a scene full of life, picture, and movement. The white outline of the smaller tents had a sort of phantom look in the ambiguous light, but the open doors of the principal one showed a strong illumination.
It is not improbable that rumors of the advent of a strange and mysterious race should have spread gradually among the Indian tribes along the great table-land of the Cordilleras, and should have shaken the hearts of the stoutest warriors with feelings of undefined dread, as of some impending calamity.
Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the afternoon, silenced by the imminence of the mountains, the luminous, dazing sides of snow that rose above them and fell away beneath. They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow, where stood the last peaks of snow like the heart petals of an open rose.
My uncle's earlier motor-car phases work in with these associations, and there stands out a little bright vignette of the hall of the Magnificent, Bexhill-on-Sea, and people dressed for dinner and sitting about amidst the scarlet furniture satin and white-enameled woodwork until the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into admiration, and in the middle of the picture is my uncle, making his first appearance in that Esquimaux costume I have already mentioned, a short figure, compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of brown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a table-land of motoring cap.
She followed the direction of his gaze, and saw, on the trail that led downward from a little table-land to the level that stretched toward the ranchhouse, a horseman, coming rapidly toward them. "It's Mr. Haydon!" she ejaculated, her voice leaping. "So it is," said Harlan, dryly. He looked keenly at her, noting the flush on her face, the brightness of her eyes.
Through the tangled passion-flowers, jessamines and magnolias, what a soft gleam of bright hazy distance, over the plains and far away! The deep river-glen cleaves the table-land, which, here and there, swells into breezy downs. Beyond, miles away to the north, is a great forest-barrier, above which there is a blaze of late snow, sending strange light aloft into the burning haze.
The archery-ground was a carefully-kept enclosure on a bit of table-land at the farthest end of the park, protected toward the southwest by tall elms and a thick screen of hollies, which kept the gravel walk and the bit of newly-mown turf where the targets were placed in agreeable afternoon shade.
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