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On some subjects the testimony of the natives of a wild country is utterly worthless. The bite of the Jararacas is generally fatal. I knew of four or five instances of death from it, and only of one clear case of recovery after being bitten; but in that case the person was lamed for life. This was pierced in the same way as the former water-course, with round holes full of muddy water.
But the beauty of the place is not a simple beauty; there is something strange and almost fierce about the red-stained water-course; something uncanny and terrifying about the filmy orange clouds that stir and sway in the pool; and there sleeps, too, round the edges of the basin a bright and viscous scum, with a certain ugly radiance, shot with colours that are almost too sharp and fervid for nature.
Riding along the western bank of the water-course, a large part of which was densely clothed in oak, chestnut, and hickory, he selected, with the quick eye of the trained engineer, the best position for his line promptly moved it when it had been established on bad ground pointed out the positions for artillery; and, as he thus rode slowly along, the works which he had directed seemed to spring up behind him as though by magic.
I took the message, saluted and went off, plunging down into the thickets, and at last along my old water-course where I had crawled away from the sniper some days before. I made a big detour to avoid showing myself on the sky-line.
I ran along the deserted saps that connected our support line with the front firing trench, and came to the gap. Some twenty yards ahead, a group of about thirty men were lying together in the shallow water-course, mostly dead. Another group was gathered under cover by the gap.
Twice that day, misled by following the track of the deer, had they returned to the same spot, a deep and lovely glen, which had once been a water-course, but now a green and shady valley. This they named the Valley of the Rock, from a remarkable block of red granite that occupied a central position in the narrow defile; and here they prepared to pass the second night on the Plains.
Little clusters of dark figures were scattered here and there throughout the pleasant valley, many of them congregated along the greener banks of the circling water-course, others scattered more widely afield, yet all earnestly engaged in cultivation of the ground.
Then came the glowing image of Alice; her distress; her actual danger; and all the peril of his situation was forgotten. Cheering David, he moved on with the light and vigorous step of youth and enterprise. After making nearly a semicircle around the pond, they diverged from the water-course, and began to ascend to the level of a slight elevation in that bottom land, over which they journeyed.
On descending from the peak, we turned to the N.W. along the line of a water-course at the bottom of the valley, tracing it for about four miles with every hope of finding the element we were in search of in its green bed, but we gained the point where the valley opened out upon the plains, and halted under disappointment, yet with good grass for the horses.
A very remarkable one is given in the works of Raffles and Crawford. In 1814, it was found out that a road had been made up to the lofty summit of the mountain of Sumbing. The road was twenty feet broad, and about sixty English miles in length, and a condition of its construction being that it should cross no water-course, it straggled in countless zig-zags up the mountain side.
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