United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The light rapidly increased, and Pen began to look in various directions for danger, wondering the while whether some patch of forest would offer itself as an asylum somewhere close at hand; but he only uttered a sigh of relief as he grasped the fact that, while high above them the golden light was gleaming down from the sun-flecked clouds, the gorges were still full of purple gloom, and clouds of thick mist were slowly gathering in the valley-bottom and were being wafted along by the breath of morn and following the course of the river.
The immediate vicinity of Pallons is fair and fertile, but a short walk up the course of an impetuous torrent brought us to a narrow gorge, beyond which we found a totally different region. Bare slopes of rock that looked grim even in the sunny morning, and a waste valley-bottom, here of considerable width, but sterile and bleak, made up the landscape.
We stood at the lower end of a smooth, green glade, through which a broad stream a river, almost came swirling, its murmur drowned in the thunder of the waterfall behind us, which the bushes now concealed. The glade was, in fact, a valley-bottom, thinned of undergrowth and set with tall trees; and the stream such a stream as tumbles through many an English deer-park.
At Lady's Oak an ancient forest boundary where the main road forks, Damaris swung the dog-cart to the left, across the single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne; and on, up the long winding ascent from the valley-bottom to the moorlands patched with dark fir plantations, which range inland from behind Stourmouth.
Finally, near six P.M., Spinoza, finding himself in a valley-bottom, sent out the order to pitch camp: upon which the tents were fixed near a brook, waggons grouped around, and animals picketed to grass. Spinoza, the two ladies, and Loveday, then ate together at the door of one tent; after which he rose and strolled away, thinking how best to handle this crab of Israel.
"What do you say, Budge?" "Same here," agreed Roger. The long-drawn shriek of a locomotive rose from the valley-bottom. "There's the five-ten!" ejaculated Lane. "I pity Whittington when his dad finds how things have gone." "Percy isn't the only one who needs sympathy," said Spurling, soberly. "What about his father?" "I'm sorry for 'em both," was Lane's comment.
His eyes burn red, he evolves his warcry in a deep bass voice, an' goes curvin' out onto the level of the valley-bottom to meet the enemy. Gin'ral Jackson, couldn't have displayed more promptitood. "Thar ain't much action in one of them cattle battles. First, Hotspur an' Prince Hal stalks 'round, pawin' up a sod now an' then, an' sw'arin' a gale of oaths to themse'fs.
Little birds of gay and brilliant plumage, blue and crimson and emerald-green, rose in flocks from the bush and grasses that clothed the sides of the coomb; the hollows were full of the tree-fern; the grass had little white and purple flowers in it. At the valley-bottom a little stream, that would be a river after the first rains, wimpled over sandstone boulders, the barbel rose at flies.
The feeling lay fresh upon him this afternoon that not many years back the spot over which the town was spread had been but a hidden glade in the heart of the beautiful, awful wilderness, with a bountiful spring bubbling up out of the turf, and a stream winding away through the green, valley-bottom to the bright, shady Elkhorn: a glade that for ages had been thronged by stately-headed elk and heavy-headed bison, and therefore sought also by unreckoned generations of soft-footed, hard eyed red hunters.
The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles distant from the latter, by a good road across the level valley-bottom. Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever saw, bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as impressive, since, looking from the southern shore, you see only a water-horizon.
Word Of The Day