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Updated: May 3, 2025
Behind them stretched Happy Valley, seeming to run right up to the tree-crowned summit of Ali el Muntar, while on its left were Kurd and Border valleys and the sand dunes, and on its right a tumbled mass of green uplands with sudden red cliffs marking nullahs and wadis. The position of the town itself was shown by the minaret of the mosque and one or two other taller buildings.
"Would Miss Yardely's canoe come through that?" "Like a dry stick," answered the Indian, letting the canoe drift for a moment in order to swing into the main current of the broader stream. Ainley looked ahead. Downstream the river narrowed and the low broad banks about them gradually rose, until they were like high ramparts on either hand. The Indian pointed towards the tree-crowned cliffs.
While the trees were bare, and when the air was clear as now, he could see the spires of Onabasha, five miles away, intervening cultivated fields, stretches of wood, the long black line of the railway, and the swampy bottom lands gradually rising to the culmination of the tree-crowned summit above him. His cocks were crowing warlike challenges to rivals on neighbouring farms.
Then with three mighty splashes that send the sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.
The snow came again, a blinding whirl that blotted out the whole landscape, then the half-breed gave a sharp order, and the Indian in front breaking trail turned ashore. The half-breed looked back, and then forward, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. The girl also looked forward. They were approaching a tree-crowned bluff, which was apparently their goal.
To return to Pontoon; we stood on the bridge in the sunlight and drank in the scene broad blue waters, spotted with islands, guarded by the munitions of rocks, watched over by the eternal mountains, bald and wrinkled, every wrinkle scored deep on their brows, heather on the cliffs, ivy creeping some places, ferns waving their delicate fronds in another; bare, desolate grandeur here, tree-crowned hill tops waving their magnificence before you there.
This all came back to me in memory as I sat there, searching out that distant shore line, and picturing in imagination the restless Indian camp concealed from view beyond those tree-crowned bluffs. Already tales reached us of encroaching settlers advancing along the valley, and of savage, retaliating raids which could only terminate in armed encounters.
So the men settled down again to wait in patience for the appearance of the earthly paradise promised them by Dyer, and, sure enough, the dawn of the second day after passing Barbados revealed high land on the larboard bow, serrated in outline, and tree-crowned to its very summit.
Opposite were the tall houses, tinted in faint pink and grey and cream colour, with their crazy wooden balconies overhanging the rocks, and above the high-pitched brown roofs rose the church and the square tree-crowned ruin, behind which was a background of pine-covered hills, where the snow still lay amongst the trunks in a silver graining on the dark red soil.
They agreed that Francey had not boasted about her hill. It stood up boldly out of the rolling sea of field and common land and was tree-crowned, with primroses shining amongst the young grass. From its summit they could see toy villages and church, spires and motors and char-a-bancs running like alarmed insects along the white, winding lanes. But apparently no one saw the hill. No one came to it.
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