Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
Time had developed the wrinkles in this covering into cracks, and cracks only wait to be leaks. First, then, we must mend our mansion. Material was at hand; hemlocks, with a back-load of bark, stood ready to be disburdened. In August they have worn their garment so long that they yield it unwillingly. Cancut's axe, however, was insinuating, not to say peremptory.
Now, mind, I haven't said I knew this was so, but was only kinder guessing at it; for all that's really known about it that is, out loud is, that Fitch and his men found the cattle up there; and the way they found them was by following up the trail made by the hay straws that some one, after a while, grew careless enough to scatter from his back-load along the path."
Having cut enough for a ``back-load, the next thing was to make it well fast with the rope, and heaving the bundle upon our backs, and taking the hatchet in hand, to walk off, up hill and down dale, to the hand-cart. Two good back-loads apiece filled the hand-cart, and that was each one's proportion.
Humanity in the valley passed before them in forms as interesting and as alien as the brother beasts to Adam: the handsome driver of the jerky, Joe Stratton's successor, who sat at dinner opposite and combed his flowing mustache with his fork in a lazy, dandified way; the darkened faces of sheep-herders enameled by sun and wind, their hair like the winter coats of animals; the slow-eyed farmers with the appetites of horses; the spring recruits for the ranks of labor footing it to distant ranches, each with his back-load of bedding, and the dust of three counties on his garments.
For first I realized that since I could carry only the same weight of gold that I could carry of food my actual wealth was but a single back-load, which brought my millions down to a few beggarly thousands; and on top of that I realized and this came like a douse of ice-water that for every ingot that I carried away with me I must leave a like weight of food behind: which meant neither more nor less than that my great treasure, for all the good that ever it would be to me so little could I venture to take of it on these terms might as well be already at the bottom of the sea.
Having cut enough for a "back-load," the next thing was to make it well fast with the rope, and heaving the bundle upon our backs, and taking the hatchet in hand, to walk off, up hill and down dale, to the hand-cart. Two good back-loads apiece filled the hand-cart; and that was each one's proportion.
About an eighth of a mile from the water, rising out of the salt grass and reeds, was a little mound, covered by trees and bushes, into which I conveyed my cargo by the back-load, and then easily drew the light canoe over the level marsh to the camp.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking