Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
After leaving Rangiora, which is about 8 miles from Kaiapoi, I followed the Harewood road till it became a mere track, then a footpath, and then dwindled away to nothing at all. I soon found myself in the middle of the plains, with nothing but brown tussocks of grass before me and behind me, and on either side. The day was rather dark, and the mountains were obliterated by a haze.
Everything is different and distinctive in those opening hours; everything has a different value from what it has by day. All the little things upon the ground, fallen branches, tussocks, wood-piles, have a peculiar intensity and importance, seem magnified, because of the length of their shadows in the slanting rays, and all the great trees seem lifted above the light and merged with the sky.
It was worth while to hear the poultry cries of the gallinules if nothing more; and often several of the birds would be seen swimming about among the big white lilies and the green tussocks. Once I discovered one of them sitting upright on a stake, a precarious seat, off which he soon tumbled awkwardly into the water. At another time, on the same stake, sat some dark, strange-looking object.
Consuelo was there! reclining beside a manzanita bush which screened her from the road, in what struck me, even at that supreme moment, as a judicious and picturesquely selected couch of scented Indian grass and dry tussocks. The velvet hat with its balls of scarlet plush was laid carefully aside; her lovely blue-black hair retained its tight coils undisheveled, her eyes were luminous and tender.
When we struck on tussocks of the wiry grass we were grateful, but for the most part we were falling with bone-breaking jerks into miry pitfalls, or tumbling into space as we ran, and coming up with a splash and a struggle in some deep pool or wide-flowing ditch. There is a limit, however, to human endurance, even where liberty is at stake.
About the motionless body swayed tussocks of tall grass and the trampled heads of wild-flowers. The shouts of the regulars, the clamor of the militia, the shrill war-cry of the Mohawks, and the organ notes of battle, were his requiem.
On the bank behind was a great vigorous growth of golden green skunk-cabbage, that cast a dense shadow over the brown swamp tussocks.
There was also a sort of wild strawberry plant plentiful enough about, running like a vine over the rocks under the cliff; but there was nothing like what we call grass to be seen anywhere, only clumps or tussocks of a fibrous material like hemp, with long, ragged, straggling ends.
To hold the squalling mouth above water, and swim, was no simple feat; yet at last he came floundering among the tussocks, wrapped the naked body in his jacket, and with infinite pains tugged his terrified pony along a tortuous bar to the land. Once in the river-path, he stood gloomily, and let Mrs. Forrester canter up to join him. Indeed, he had almost forgotten her. "Splendid!" she laughed.
As we drew nearer his pace slackened. Then he stopped and pointed, and I saw a small circle of burnt grass upon the ground. The tussocks were blackened and smouldering, and from the centre rose this line of smoke, pale, blue, steady.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking