United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The foot-hills were clear, the rugged wall of the glacier cut the sky, but the great mountain might have been a thousand miles off for any visible indication it gave.

Behind their coach came the small party gathered at Mrs. Selden's. The church was three miles down the road. It was now afternoon, and the heat lay like a veil upon wood and field and the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. The dust rose behind the carriage, then sank upon and further whitened the milkweed and the love vine and the papaw bushes.

True to the practice of the craft, the instant fire was opened from the rocks each man had put spurs to his horse and dashed away to a safer distance with such speed as was possible with their jaded mounts, each trooper warily scanning the dark line of the foot-hills in search of the foe and striving as he rode to unfasten the flap that held his carbine, in the fashion of the day, athwart the pommel of his saddle; and now, circling farther out upon the plain, in wide sweep, with carbines advanced, they were hastening to the succor of their comrade.

The boys made their way rapidly down the slope, which after all was only that of a foot-hill. Beyond were other foot-hills, and they skirted among them, finally entering a canon. It was as dark and cold and damp as the last hour of the tunnel had been, but the narrow river, roaring through its middle, had caught all the snow, and there was scarce a fleck on the narrow tilted banks.

Here they found themselves not only within sight, but actually among the foot-hills of those mountains, for the tourist scarce second in interest to the Alps themselves, but perhaps for the naturalist even more interesting than these.

The hacienda of Don Juan Briones, nestling in a wooded cleft of the foot-hills, was hidden, as Father Pedro had wisely reflected, from the straying feet of travelers along the dusty highway to San Jose. As Francisco, emerging from the canada, put spurs to his mule at the sight of the whitewashed walls, Antonio grunted.

I first heard the wild cry of the loon, a lonesome and eerie sound, on Pine River Pond, a small lake in the foot-hills of the White Mountains. There I saw the great bird dive and disappear beneath the water to remain an alarmingly long time, and then come up several hundred yards away, and rising, fly slowly to the shore.

He is five feet ten inches and a half in height, thick set, has a mustache sprinkled with gray, grizzled hair, clear blue eyes, walks stooping, and served in the late civil war, under Price and Quantrell, in the Confederate army. He may be lurking in some of the mining-camps near the foot-hills, as he was a Washoe teamster during the Comstock excitement.

The rustling grass, long, lean at the waving tops, but rich and succulent in its undergrowth, spoke of awakening life, obeying that law which man, in his superiority, sets aside to suit his own artificial pleasures. The sparkling morning haze shrouding the foot-hills was lifting, yielding a vision of natural beauty unsurpassed at any other time of the day.

The other ten thousand acres lie near the foot-hills; they are extremely well adapted to grape culture, and are worth five to twelve dollars per acre. General Bidwell is not willing to sell. "The next rancho on the west is owned by John Parrot. It contains about seventeen thousand acres, and lies on the east bank of the Sacramento River.