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After walking some fifteen miles the lads stopped suddenly on the brow of a sandhill. In front of them was a wide expanse of water bordered by a band of vegetation. Long rushes and aquatic plants formed a band by the water's edge, while here and there huts with patches of cultivated ground dotted the country. "We are at the end of our journey," Rabah said.
It rains very seldom, but during a short portion of the year heavy torrents fall, and immediately afterwards a light vegetation springs out of every crevice. This soon withers; and upon such naturally formed hay the animals live. It had not now rained for an entire year. I state this on the authority of Dr. Helena, and at some of the Canary islands, almost entire sterility.
Within a few yards of permanent fresh water, on sand blackened by the mould of centuries of vegetation, close to an almost inextricable forest merging into jungle, whence a great portion of the necessaries of life were obtained, and but ten paces from the sea, the tree stood as a landmark, not of soaring height, but of bulk and comeliness withal.
At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects and sometimes larger beings leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them.
Without this there would be no rain and hence no vegetation, and man would soon perish. In Genesis we read that God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," And in Psalms, "Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens and ye waters that be above the heavens." Then we hear, "The windows of Heaven were opened."
"We followed the duke through the extensive and straggling place, frequently buried up to the ankles in sand, from which the vegetation was worn by the constant passing and repassing of the inhabitants.
But its oolitic hills, gently swelling to above 700 feet, and the valleys of the many rivers which flow from this central watershed, west and east, are covered with fat vegetation almost equally divided between grass and corn, with green crops. The many large estates are rich in gardens and orchards. The farmers, chiefly on small holdings, are famous for their shorthorns and Leicester sheep.
But we have seen that the Summer-tree is in some cases a revivification of the effigy of Death. It follows, therefore, that in these cases the effigy called Death must be an embodiment of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
The causes which produce this extraordinary, and apparently abnormal, growth of moss are those which exercise the most powerful influence over the development of vegetation everywhere, viz., heat, light, and moisture, and these agencies, in a northern climate, are so combined and intensified during the summer months as to stimulate some kinds of vegetation into almost tropical luxuriance.
The little mirror on our table showed him sitting there, watching every move we made. We laid down to rest, but sleep was impossible. Through the panelled transparent floor, I watched the country changing as we advanced; vegetation dwindling; the soil changing to rocky barrenness at the border of the Cold Country. And then the snow-plains, the mute frozen rivers of ice, the mountains.
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