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There might be seen the fragrant mimosa the abundant acacia the swamp oak, which would have been styled a fir, had not the first exiles to Australia found twined round its boughs, the misletoe, with its many home associations the elegant cedar the close-growing mangrove and strange parasitical plants, pushing through huge fungi, and clasping with the remorseless strength of the wrestler, and with the round crunching folds of the boa, the trees they were gradually to supplant and destroy.
Now they saw desert for the first time the curious iron-grey, velvety-brown, and rose-pink mountains; the nomadic Arabs camping in their earth-coloured tents patched with rags; the camels against the skyline; the everlasting sands, broken here and there by the deep green shadows of distant oases, where the close-growing palms, seen from far off, give to the desert almost the effect that clouds give to Cornish waters.
Driving his way through close-growing bush comes the unkempt figure of a man. A familiar figure, but so changed as to be hardly recognizable. His clothes are rent and scored by the horny branches. His feet crush noisily over the pine-cones in moccasins that have rotted from his feet with the journey over melting snow and sodden vegetation.
Halting frequently, to make sure that they were not being followed or spied upon, the lads pushed steadily forward, climbing the opposite slope of the gulch, and finally emerging into a close-growing tangle of pinon and spiny brush of various kinds.
Behind him and all around was the green wood, close-growing bushes hedging in the short trees of a second growth which covered a long low hill. Above the hill ominous clouds like smoking censers were being rolled up from the east; the waving beards of the corn stooks rustled and streamed in wind which was growing colder.
At Miss Puttenham's gate he paused, hesitated a moment, then went straight into the twilight garden, where he imagined that he should find its mistress. He found her, in a far corner, among close-growing trees and with her usual occupations, her books and her embroidery, beside her. But she was neither reading nor sewing.
For it is really a distressful cry, although it often proclaims nothing more serious than that the young vireo wants his dinner; as some infants of the human family scream at the top of their voices under similar circumstances. Beyond the close-growing bushes I heard the crow baby's quavering cry; and these seemed indeed anxious days in crowland.
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