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We accomplished about eight miles in a straight line to the westward, but went over a much greater extent of ground; as I mistook a large though dry creek from the northward for the river, and followed it about four miles; when, finding my mistake, I crossed about four or five miles of rich treeless plains, and reached the river again at the foot of a long high range to the westward.
Meantime the major and his party stood gazing silently after them. They saw them winding away down the southward face of the long ridge and crossing the shallow ravine at its foot. Beyond lay another long, low spur of treeless prairie. "The Parson didn't seem over-anxious to go," muttered Mr. Hastings, as though to himself. "Small blame to him!" promptly answered the major.
From the Atlantic to the Atlas, from Tangier to Mogador, and then away through the fertile province of Sûs, one of the chief features of Morocco is the series of wide alluvial treeless plains, often apparently as flat as a table, but here and there cut up by winding rivers and crossed by low ridges.
We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its peculiarities. Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sail-less sea this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth is little graced with the picturesque.
Somewhat bare, flat, and treeless was the route along which our journey lay; and slimy canals crept, like half-torpid green snakes, beside the road; and formal pollard willows edged level fields, tilled like kitchen-garden beds.
Such spots are found only about the barrens, which are treeless plains scattered here and there throughout the great northern wilderness. The scattered thickets on such plains are, without doubt, the islands of the ancient lakes that once covered them.
Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a gas-mask to the face.
There was a wagon trail, if we may so call it, leading circuitously over the vast and almost treeless intervening plains. The route led along the river valleys, following the windings of streams, and conducting to fords near their head waters. Sometimes they came to swampy regions, sometimes to deep gulleys, sometimes to desert plains.
But mighty columns not of man's rearing stand upon the farther edge of that western valley, columns of rock rich with gold and silver and every other precious metal, surmounted, some of them the year through, with capitals of snow and lacking only the legend: Here upon the Brink of the Plains Which stretched away pathless, treeless, boundless, Ended their century-long exodus The New Children of the Wilderness, Driven by the Hand of God Westward and ever Westward Till they have at last entered Into the full Heritage of those Who, first of Pioneers, Traced the rivers and lakes of this Valley Between the eternal mountains.
By this time railhead had reached a place called Machakos Road, some two hundred and seventy-six miles from Mombasa and within a few miles of the great Athi Plains, the latter being treeless and waterless expanses, bare of everything except grass, which the great herds of game keep closely cropped.
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