United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In that neighbourhood the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all the wealth of her palette.

"The last of the wilderness before you reach the treeless plains," explained the colonel, "but as far as Fort McMurray the region is a vast trail-less extent of poplar and spruce. The winter comes in November and lasts until June. In that period, when the nights grow long, you have a pretty good imitation of the Arctic.

The valley of the Seven Communes, that curious little tongue of German-speaking territory projecting into pre-war Italy, ran across the foreground. Barren and almost treeless, it had been in the battle-line since the Austrian offensive of May, 1916, which had nearly broken successfully into the Venetian plain.

Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, the richness of the valleys at their feet; the grey downs of southern England and treeless coteaux of central France, and grey swells of Scottish moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves, are at least destitute of those which belong to the woods and fields of the lowlands.

It needs a trained eye, I imagine, to judge of the age of men of an alien race. On passing out from the suburbs of the town, charmingly embowered in fruit orchards, we struck across the open, treeless plain.

At the western extremity of the indentation a slightly elevated ridge projects out into the water, treeless, but overgrown with bushes of low stature, which are thickly covered with what at a distance appear to be bunches of red blossoms, but on closer inspection prove to be berries cranberries. Per contra to all these advantages, other indications about the place are not so pleasing.

The plank footways were enclosed by stout rails to guard against the chargings of long-horned cattle chased through the thoroughfares by lasso-whirling "bull-drivers" as wild as they. In the middle of the river-front was a ferry, whence Louisiana Avenue, broad, treeless, grassy, and thinly lined with slaughter-houses, led across the plain.

From the summit of a high dune I looked round in all directions, and as far as the eye could reach could see nothing but the endless monotony of wave after wave of dunes, treeless, and apparently almost devoid of vegetation, for the little there was, was confined to the deep hollows between.

On the better portion of the Plains say in the heart of the Buffalo region it is otherwise: though you are hundreds of miles from a human habitation other than a rude mail-station tent or ruder Indian lodge, the country wears a subdued, placid aspect; you rise a gentle slope of two or three miles, and look down the opposite incline or 'divide, and up the counterpart of that you have just traversed, seeing nothing but these gentle, wave-like undulations of the surface to limit your gaze, which contemplates at once some fifty to eighty square miles of unfenced, treeless, but green and close-cropped pasturage; and it is hard to realize that you are out of the pale of civilization, hundreds of miles from a decent dwelling-house, and that the innumerable cattle moving and grazing before you so countless that they seem thickly to cover half the district swept by your vision are not domestic and heritable the collected herds of some great grazing county, impelled from Texas or New Mexico to help subdue some distant Oregon.

There are certain formalities that must be regarded one of them being that you must not eat or drink with your left hand. In Tekrit we did not find as much in the way of supplies and ammunition as we had hoped. The Turk had destroyed the greater part of his store. We did find great quantities of wood, and in that barren, treeless country it was worth a lot.