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Yet in the evening light the distant slopes, the sharply cut silhouettes of the hills, held a strange and exquisitely delicate serenity. The sky, cloudless, shot with primrose, blue, and green, deepening toward the West into a red that was flecked with gold, was calm and almost tender. Nature showed two sides of her soul; but humanity seemed to respond only to the side that was fierce and violent.
Progress was slow, and hindered by many vexatious obstacles low walls and brushwood, ruined cottages, and many dangerous pitfalls on the vine-clad slopes obstacles that forbade all speed, yet gave no cover from the pitiless fire that searched every corner, and mowed men down like grass.
The villages tend to nestle along the roots of the down, in sheltered valleys where the streams break out, the orchard closes and cottage gardens creeping a little way up the gentle slopes; and thus when the time came for the roads to be metalled there was little use for the high ridgeway; for its only advantage had been that it gave in more unsettled times a securer and more secluded route for the pack-horse of the pilgrim a chance of seeing if danger threatened or risk awaited him.
What a panorama of quickly acted scenes it must have been, and how often it occurred on this road! Not even history has recorded a half of the times it happened. Soon, almost hidden in the dense foliage of the tree-lined slopes, we pass Esmeralda Fall, whose waters dash in foam over 60 feet, to unite with the river far beneath.
And you shall know that I peered down into that great hollow, and did see a very strange and horrid sight; for, in truth, there was a large fire-hole in the centre of that place, and all about the sides there were great holes into the slopes of the hollow, and there were great men laid in the holes, so that I might see a great head that did show out to my sight here, from one of those holes, and would seem to be that of a monstrous man heavy with sleep.
He wanted to thank the faithful Mercedes, and Thorne for getting well, and the cheerful Lash, and Ladd himself, and that strange and wonderful Yaqui, now such a splendid figure. He thought of home and Nell. The terrible encompassing red slopes lost something of their fearsomeness, and there was a good spirit hovering near. "Boys, come round," called Ladd, in his low voice. "An' you, Mercedes.
A couple of miles farther on creek and road entered the mouth of a wide spruce-timbered gulch. These trees hid any view of the slopes or floor of the gulch, and it was not till several more miles had been passed that the bandit rode out into what Joan first thought was a hideous slash in the forest made by fire. But it was only the devastation wrought by men.
Some of the Coldstreamers had gained possession of the chalk-pit, which they were organizing into a strong defensive position, and various companies of the Guards divisions, after heroic assaults upon Hill 70, where they were shattered by the fire which met them on the crest from the enemy's redoubt on the northeast side, had dug themselves into the lower slopes.
The Spanish army occupied both sides of the river, the wing on the right bank being protected from attack by the river Lippe, which falls into the Rhine at Wesel, and by a range of moorland hills called the Testerburg. The Dutch cavalry saw that the slopes of this hill were occupied by the Spaniards, but believed that their force consisted only of a few troops of horse.
The fertility of these districts is remarkable; but owing to the misgovernment of the country, which renders native property so insecure, only a small portion is cultivated. The untilled slopes which border the plains are generally selected by the Arabs for their encampments, circles or ovals of low goat-hair tents, each covering a large area in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.
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