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Just then the silver-voiced bugles in hundreds of camps on mountain-sides, in glens, in the valleys, and on the plains began ringing out sweetly mournful "Taps," and the echoes reverberated from the towering palisades of Lookout to the rocky cliffs of the Pigeon Mountains. It was the last general "Taps" that mighty army would hear for 100 days of stormy battling.
Traveling southward for two days over bare brown mountain-sides, their monotony unrelieved except by groves of planted pine and fir trees, we descended abruptly into the great subtropical valley at Shih-tien.
The treeless condition of the Lozere chain and other once well-wooded regions was thus brought about. The Government is replanting many bare mountain-sides here, as in the Hautes Alpes, in order to improve the soil and climate. The barrenness of the Causses arises, as will be seen, from natural causes.
The altars of the pagan world were in it, and the wayside shrines before which the little lamps are lit by night upon the lonely mountain-sides, the old faith and the new, and the love of a land that lives on from generation to generation in the pulsing breasts of men. And Maurice was in it, too, and Hermione and her love for him and his for her. Gaspare did not move.
The stars are now shining brightly over head, and give light enough to show the patches of snow lying along the mountain-sides as we proceed. The snow becomes more continuous as we mount the ascent, until only the black rocks and pine-trees stand out in relief against their white background.
Though about twelve miles in extent, it contains a very small proportion of arable land only a narrow strip, of varying width, lying in the bottom, with occasional little patches of cultivated ground along the mountain-sides, where the soil has settled on the ledges, the fields seeming in many cases to hang over precipices.
The countries that border on this midland water, with their promontories buttressing a mimic ocean their mountain-sides teeming with the picturesque of human life their heights crowned with watch-towers their rocky shelves consecrated by hermitages, and their unrivalled sheet dotted with sails, rigged, as it might be, expressly to produce effect in a picture, form a sort of world apart, that is replete with charms which not only fascinate the beholder, but which linger in the memories of the absent like visions of a glorious past.
Hence their place in these high stations of the world is taken by the gay and airy butterflies, which have lighter bodies and a much bigger expanse of wing-area to buoy them up. In the valleys and plains the bee competes at an advantage with the butterflies for all the sweets of life: but in this broad sub-glacial belt on the mountain-sides the butterflies in turn have things all their own way.
Doubtless there is much more of it available; but a considerable of it consists of steep mountain-sides, of deserts, and the beds and overflow of the rivers. With your permission, Mr. Commander, I will retreat from this prominent position, after doing the best I could with a meagre subject;" and the doctor bowed to the audience, while they were applauding him warmly.
Throughout the length of it, by carrying it skilfully along the windings of the mountain-sides, an equable, easy grade was maintained; where it led across open spaces the loose stones had been cleared away and stood heaped along each side of it; where it skirted precipices the solid rock had been cut out in order to give a wider and a surer foothold; and here and there in its course crevices which traversed it were bridged with great slabs of stone.
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