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Boulder Creek, a small stream when rain fell full of big stones, and with here and there a patch of yellow sandy gravel lying in corners and crevices, wound its way through country which was equally rocky, but with just enough soil above the rock to sparsely nourish the gnarled, scraggy gums which waged with the spear-grass a constant struggle for existence.
We've followed their tracks from the rolling plain Through slime-green sloughs to a sedgy ravine, Where the cat-tail spikes of the marsh-grown flags Stand half as high as the billowy green. The spear-grass touched our saddle-bows, The blade-points pricked to the broncho's neck; But we followed the tracks like hounds on scent Till our horses reared with a sudden check.
A short search revealed a narrow path leading up along the bank, first through low thicket scrub, and then through high spear-grass. Further back, amid the dense forest, they could hear the deep notes of the wild pigeons, but as young Walters was intent on getting a duck they took no heed, but pressed steadily on.
When we suffer very much ourselves, anything that smiles in the sun seems cruel a child, a bird, a dragon-fly nay, even a fluttering ribbon, or a spear-grass that waves in the wind. There was a little shrine at the corner of the garden, set into the wall; a niche with a bit of glass and a picture of the Virgin, so battered that no one could trace any feature of it.
There majestic trees stood like pillars in a colonnade; there palms struggled for room with wild vines and canes; there flourished ferns, spear-grass, and reeds, and there bushes in tropical profusion formed impenetrable brushwood; while through the whole was entangled a network of climbing plants, which ran up the trunks and hung down from the branches. Everything was damp and wet.
Here Tess flung herself down upon the rustling undergrowth of spear-grass, as upon a bed, and remained crouching in palpitating misery broken by momentary shoots of joy, which her fears about the ending could not altogether suppress. In reality, she was drifting into acquiescence.
The shout with which the news was greeted spread far beyond the Rest as far as the barren rocks and spear-grass covered patches of sandy soil over which the outlying fossickers were hurrying for corroboration of the news and the sound of the mighty shout made their pulses tingle and their blood run free. Only one thing could make the men of the Boulder Creek dirt-holes shout like that.
Add fern and tutu, and for the back country, spear-grass and Irishman, and we have summed up such prevalent plants as strike the eye. As for the birds, they appear at first sight very few indeed. On the plains one sees a little lark with two white feathers in the tail, and in other respects exactly like the English skylark, save that he does not soar, and has only a little chirrup instead of song.
Up, rangers, up, ere the buffalo herds Sniff morning air for the hunter's gun! They lie in their lairs of dank spear-grass, Down in the gorge, where the prairie dips. We've followed their tracks through the sucking ooze, Where our bronchos sank to their steaming hips.
In the earliest days of my lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the milkmaids, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening to her many voices, and above all to the voice of the little brook which ran through the meadows where I used to play: I think it has run through my whole life also, to lose itself at last, not in the great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of God.
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