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Updated: July 15, 2025
The country was so broken up with ravines and dry river-beds that we knew we had a long, hard march ahead of us. Our maps were poor. A German officer that we captured had in some manner got hold of our latest map, and noting that we had omitted entirely a very large ravine, became convinced that any enveloping movement we attempted would prove a failure.
Yes, there was gold in the river-beds.... Incidentally, to keep his hands "from mauling the natives," he had caused to be planted at different times, several thousand acres of cacao trees, all of which were now bearing.
The river-beds are full of large rocks, weighing from one to ten tons, and these must be moved by machinery, to allow the dirt to be taken out.
Ancient river-beds and water-courses abound, and the very eyes of fountains long since dried up may be seen, in which the flow of centuries has worn these orifices from a slit to an oval form, having on their sides the tufa so abundantly deposited from these primitive waters; and just where the splashings, made when the stream fell on the rock below, may be supposed to have reached and evaporated, the same phenomenon appears.
In spring, when pools and river-beds were full of foaming beer-coloured water, and every kloof and donga was brimmed with flowers and ferns, she would be drawn away by these, would return, trailing after her armfuls of rare blooms, and thenceforward, until these faded, the ridgy grave-mound and the heaped cairn of boulders would be gay with them. She never took them to the house.
Except in the Himalaya this is no common phenomenon, and is owing to the very remarkable depth of the river-beds.
Brown villages, not unlike those of Midland England, low houses built of stone and tiled with stone, and square-towered churches, occur at rare intervals in cultivated hollows, where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen and goats are browsing.
Our favourite walk was to Keller's Landing, an old tumbledown lumber-wharf on the Tennessee River, used during the Civil War to land soldiers. There we spent many happy hours and played at learning geography. I built dams of pebbles, made islands and lakes, and dug river-beds, all for fun, and never dreamed that I was learning a lesson.
Tutu grows chiefly on and in the neighbourhood of sandy river-beds, but occurs more or less all over the settlement, and causes considerable damage every year. Horses won't touch it. As, then, my bullocks could not get tuted on being turned out empty, I yarded them. Still the same monotonous plains, the same interminable tussock, dotted with the same cabbage- trees.
Lawrence, and huge eels, thick as the arm of the fisher who drew them up from their rich river-beds. There were sacks of meal ground in the banal mills of the seigniories for the people's bread, but the old tinettes of yellow butter, the pride of the good wives of Beauport and Lauzon, were rarely to be seen, and commanded unheard-of prices.
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