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Updated: May 29, 2025
They camped in full jungle wild beast voices ringing through the night. Next day they came into a valley like Eden, nourished by a small river. On its banks near a mud-walled, grass-thatched village Cadman discovered a devout man of great learning, who rested on the path of a long pilgrimage. The devout man was approachable and spoke perfect English; so they asked him about the land ahead.
Cold as this was we decided that it was safer to endure it and risk frost-biting every night than to build one of the mud-walled and mud-covered holes that so many, lived in. These were much warmer than lying out on the frozen ground, but we believed that they were very unhealthy, and that no one lived long who inhabited them.
It was a strange little village, this Agua Fria. Its squat dwellings, with impenetrable adobe walls, had sat out there on the sandy edge of the dry Santa Fé River through many and many a lagging decade; a single trail hardly more than a cart-width across ran through it. A church, mud-walled and ancient, rose above the low houses, but of order or uniformity of outline there was none.
Peasants sowing and reaping; mud-walled hut villages, and cities; processions of priests and warriors; battles with swords and bows, and with cannon and muskets; galleys, and ships with sails, and ships without visible means of propulsion, and aircraft. Changing costumes and weapons and machines and styles of architecture.
One night, at a station where the mounted Night Patrol fire as they challenge, and the wheat rolls in great blue-green waves under our cold northern moon, the officers were playing billiards in the mud-walled club-house, when orders came to them that they were to go on parade at once for a night-drill.
Lodging of some sort should be there, for where there is a candle there is a candlestick. This was not firelight. To it he turned his tired beast, and found that he had been well advised. He was before a mud-walled hovel; there through the horn he saw the candle-flame. He drew his sword and beat upon the door. For answer the light was blown swiftly out, and the darkness swam about him like ink.
We marched out of our quarters along the road for a mile or more, and then we took the fields, and presently came to a crest and dropped into a sort of maze of zigzag trenches going up to the front trench. These trenches, you know, are much deeper than one's height; you don't see anything. It's like walking along a mud-walled passage. You just trudge along them in single file.
On the next day but one, they reached Sebha, a mud-walled town, picturesquely situated on rising ground, surrounded with its palm groves, in the midst of a dreary, desert plain; it has a high, square, white-washed minaret to its principal mosque. At this place, Captain Lyon remarked a change of colour in the population, the people being mulattoes.
Then laying two fingers across his mouth as a sign for silence, he pointed inside the mud-walled enclosure. "Him hasta putti datto?" asked Hal, in a low voice. "Datto" was the only word the Moro could make out, but he understood that, and again pointed inside. "Banga tim no satti du," remarked Hal softly to his chum. Then Sergeant Hal bent low, making an elaborate bow before the gateway.
When we drew near to the capital of the Great King, wishing to enrage Hadad, I asked, 'What mud-walled village is it that we see yonder over the plain? Thou shouldst have seen the scowl of his eye answer he gave none. I spit upon such a city I cast out my shoe upon it! I who have dwelt at Rome, Carthage, Antioch, and Palmyra, may be allowed to despise a place like this.
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