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The white stones of which it was built glistened like Parian marble; and its renovated, coquettish aspect contrasted singularly with the gloomy mansion seen at the other extremity of an extensive lawn, on which were planted here and there gigantic clumps of verdant trees.
The Major had retired upstairs about ten o'clock, taking his socks with him, presumably to sleep in them, and Frank had heard him creaking about upstairs for a minute or two; there had followed two clumps as the boots were thrown off; a board suddenly spoke loudly; there was a little talking obviously the Major had awakened Gertie in order to make a remark or two and then silence.
We had been progressing in this fashion for about three hours, and had covered some twenty miles of perfectly flat country, when we observed that the character of the scenery ahead was changing, the scattered clumps of bush through which we had been riding giving place to forest trees of various descriptions, imparting quite a park-like aspect to the scene.
The parched tops of the palms, where turtle doves, lapwings and sparrow-hawks were wont to perch, were crowded with the vagabond boys of the town, who whiled away the time by pulling the withered and diseased dates from the great clumps and flinging them down on the bystanders below, till the guard took aim at them with their arrows and stopped the game.
In ancient times the whole mountain was thickly wooded, but at present, though it contains "rocky dells" where there are "thick jungles of copse," and is covered in places with olive groves and thickets of dwarf oak, yet its appearance is rather that of a park than of a forest, long stretches of grass alternating with patches of woodland and "shrubberies, thicker than any in Central Palestine," while the larger trees grow in clumps or singly, and there is nowhere, as in Lebanon, any dense growth, or even any considerable grove, of forest trees.
We passed the plantation, noticeable because there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches, birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes; great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr.
The river-bank itself is one interminable street. Here dwells the brown-skinned population Malays, Bugis, Makassars, and a sprinkling of Sea Dyaks. Sometimes the flimsy, cane-walled, leaf-thatched huts, perched aloft on bamboo stilts, stand, like flocks of storks, in clusters. Again they stray a little apart, seeking protection from the pitiless sun beneath clumps of palms.
There were other spots where the trail led into timber clumps and through tangles of brush where an ambuscade might be planned in perfect safety by an enemy; and there were the bastioned cliffs that towered above the trail at intervals, offering admirable hinding-places for any man with hostile intentions.
These, passing between the two clumps of trees, were making for the plain beyond, when from behind the other grove a dark band of horsemen rode out. "Let them pass," Hamilcar shouted; "do not head them back." The cavalry reined up until the troop of lions had passed. Hamilcar rode up to the officer in command. "Bring twenty of your men," he said; "let the rest remain here.
These are separated one from another by glades of grass land, broken here and there with clumps of timber trees; and in some instances by curious isolated koppies, and even by single crags of granite that start up into the air as though they were monuments carved by man, and not tombstones set by nature over the grave of ages gone.
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