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Updated: May 7, 2025
Catarina seems to preserve an element of the poetic, almost magical; and as I drove with the Cavaliere Valguanera one evening in March out of Palermo, along the garden valley of the Oreto, then up the mountain side where the warm light of the spring sunset swept across from Monreale, lying golden and mellow on the luxuriant growth of figs, and olives, and orange-trees, and fantastic cacti, and so up to where the path of the convent swung off to the right round a dizzy point of cliff that reached out gaunt and gray from the olives below, as I drove thus in the balmy air, and saw of a sudden a vision of creamy walls and orange roofs, draped in fantastic festoons of roses, with a single curving palm-tree stuck black and feathery against the gold sunset, it is hardly to be wondered at that I should slip into a mood of visionary enjoyment, looking for a time on the whole thing as the misty phantasm of a summer dream.
The mounds are not devoid of vegetation, for sagebrush, cacti, and other desert genera grow quite profusely over their surface; but they are wholly barren of trees or large bushes, and except in the plaza the ruin area is uncultivated.
And then he would be running through the lashing, bucketing wet, circumventing the sentry-posts, wriggling over the veld on his belly like a snake. He would be pushing through the dripping covert of the north bank of the river for that, he had decided, was the safest way out or in leaving fragments of his garments on the thorny cacti that grabbed at him with their green hands.
This cup, the novelist said, was to be flanked by two figures, Faith and Hope, the former holding a scroll, with Neuchatel and the date 1833 on it, the latter, another scroll, with a kneeling Cupid the whole resting on a ground covered with cacti and various thorny plants besides, in silver gilt. The blasts of winter in a rigorous climate laid him by with bronchitis in November.
The climate is fine, of that I have no doubt, but the surrounding country is sterile and monotonous, the vegetation just then on the hills consisting of half-withered cacti, though in the valleys and the plains to the left of the town we saw groves of fruit trees and flowering shrubs.
Beyond the tunal the naked hillside fell steeply to a narrow plain, all patched with golden flowers, and from this yellow carpet writhed tall cacti, fantastic as trees seen in a dream. Upon the plain, pearl pink in the sunset light, huddled the town. Palm-trees and tamarinds overhung it; palm-trees, mimosas, and mangroves marked the course of a limpid river.
He rolled down his trousers' leg, closed his knife and tossed it to Pink for fear he might lose it, examined critically a patch of grass to make sure there were no more cacti hidden there and bawled: "Come on, now, I'll sure give yuh a run for your money this time, by cripes!" and began all over again.
As the train moved out of the platform the twilight vanished into daylight, the sky flushed, and he saw a scant land, ragged and torn with twisted plants, cacti and others, gashed and red, and savage as a negress's lips. So he saw the South through the breath-misted windows.
There were vegetable plants such as chillies and brinjals. There were flowering plants, cacti, creepers, ferns, bonsai of Banyan trees, peepal trees, etc. There were also lime trees, orange trees and chickoo trees all growing in pots. On the stage in the hall, competition exhibits-vegetable-carving crafts and flower-making crafts of students from different schools-were kept.
"Come!" she told the cattleman imperiously, and led the way from the cabin in a hurried flight for the porch shadows. They had scarcely reached these when another half-clad figure emerged from the house, rifle in hand, and plunged across the road into the cacti. He, too, headed for the scene of the now intermittent shooting. "Now!" cried Phyllis, and gave her hand to the man huddled beside her.
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