United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In an hour Duane struck the slope of Mount Ord, and as he climbed he got a view of the rolling, black-spotted country, partly desert, partly fertile, with long, bright lines of dry stream-beds winding away to grow dim in the distance. He got among broken rocks and cliffs, and here the open, downward-rolling land disappeared, and he was hard put to it to find the trail.
They wanted no doubt an absolutely flat piece of country, with no depressions, no hills or stream-beds in which we could hide, but which should be high upon the edges, like an amphitheatre. They would get us in the centre and occupy the rim themselves. Roughly, this is the bit of desert which witnesses our 'last stand. On three sides the ground swells a very little the rise is not four feet.
During the afternoon the ride grew hot, and very dusty. We came to a long, open valley where the dust lay several inches deep. It had been an unusually dry summer and fall a fact that presaged poor luck for our hunting and the washes and stream-beds were bleached white. We came to two water-holes, tanks the Arizonians called them, and they were vile mud-holes with green scum on the water.
The forest on the whole held to the level, open character, but there were swales and stream-beds breaking up its regular conformity. Toward noon, however, it gradually changed, a fact that Helen believed she might have observed sooner had she been more keen. The general lay of the land began to ascend, and the trees to grow denser. She made another discovery.
They approached it with caution, following the reverse slope of hills, and dry stream-beds, and at last penetrating horse-high brush to the point where they could see it clearly. If Hoddan had been a student of early terrestrial history, he might have remarked upon the re-emergence of ancient architectural forms to match the revival of primitive social systems.
There is, however, no connection between the two, and the precious metal in the subsoil is either swept down by the floods or washed out of the sides, as we shall see on the Ancobra River. The negroes, who ignore pumps and steam-navvies, have neglected the obvious measure of deep-digging in all the stream-beds, where much detrital gold and even nuggets will assuredly be found.
For us children there were compensations. The expedition took on the character of a high adventure, in which we sometimes had shelter and sometimes failed to find it, sometimes were fed, but often went hungry. We forded innumerable streams, the wheels of the heavy wagon sinking so deeply into the stream-beds that we often had to empty our load before we could get them out again.
For it stands to reason that as the stream-beds become excavated more and more and this is what has brought them to their present position the groves must irrevocably follow suit, since water escapes at the lowest level, while trees cannot be suspended in air. Supposing the system of dams, which now force the liquid to keep to a certain plane, fell into disuse, how would it end?
And the little river-beds and stream-beds, carelessly left to get filled up with dead leaves and rank grass, such a turning out for them as the resistless water was driven in sweeping streams along their bosoms! And woe betide any carelessly thatched or unsightly roofs! Off they went, away with the general medley. The coming summer would have none of them.
Several sandy watercourses, on which were impressed many a trail of elephants, were also passed on this march. The slope of these stream-beds trended south-east and south.
Word Of The Day