United States or French Southern Territories ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Beyond, and extending over all the middle ground, are somber swaths of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes; and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole glorious show is seen in its right proportions.
He knew that to attempt to follow the railroad through those swaths the avalanches had left, under the burned skeletons of trees ready to topple at the first pressure of other bodies of snow, was to take one's life needlessly in his hands; but there was another way.
Sheaf by sheaf they tied together, Barney gradually gaining by the doubling process. "Don't wait for me," gasped Dick, "if you can go faster!" "One minute and a half, boys, if you can stand it!" cried Alec, as they reached the last corner. "One minute and a half, and we win!" There remained five sheaves on the outer of Barney's two swaths, two on the inner of Dick's.
He was longing already to be out in the open with his cattle; and here he had to be at everybody's beck and call. Later in the morning, while the men were mowing the thin clover, Erik flung down his scythe so that it rebounded with a ringing sound from the swaths. The others stopped their work. "What's the matter with you, Erik?" asked Karl Johan. "Have you got a bee in your bonnet?"
When he has gathered his armful, he turns and flings it down behind him, so that it lies spread out, covering when fallen the same space it filled while standing. And so he crosses the broad acres, and so each of the big black followers, stepping one by one to a place behind him, until the long, wavering, whitish green swaths of the prostrate hemp lie shimmering across the fields.
And it was fairly late in the afternoon before they topped a rise of ground and looked out upon one of Sargol's seas. The water was a dull-metallic gray, broken by great swaths of purple as if an artist had slapped a brush of color across it in a hit or miss fashion.
Then a great machine called a "header and thresher" is driven into the field and sweeps through miles and miles of bending grain, cutting swaths as wide as a street, and harvesting, threshing, and leaving a long trail of sacked wheat ready to ship on the cars.
Suddenly the winds grappled, split asunder, struggled, whirled about, and in whistling columns circled over the ponds, stirring the waters in the ponds to their depths; they fell upon the meadows and whistled through the willows and the grass. The willow branches snapped, the swaths of grass were borne on the wind like hair torn out by handfuls, mixed with ringlets from the sheaves.
On each side of the road new hemp lay in shining swaths, while bales of last year's crop were on the way to market along the roads. The farmers were turning over the soil for the autumn sowing of wheat, corn-shucking was over, and ragged darkies were straggling from the fields back to town.
Yes, indeed!" thought Shenac as she watched the swinging of the scythes, and saw the broad swaths of grain that fell as they passed on. Dan followed, but he made small show after the young giants that had taken the work in hand; and in a little while he made a virtue of necessity and exchanged the scythe for the spreading-pole, to help Shenac and the little ones in the merry, healthful work.
Word Of The Day