The White Mist Shuts Off All Details Beyond Ten Yards In Any
Direction.
All we can see, as we first turn up the path, is a patch
of kokos of tremendous size on our right.
After this comes weedy
plantation, and stretches of sword grass hanging across the road.
The country is even more unlevel than that we came over yesterday.
On we go, patiently doing our mud pulling through the valleys;
toiling up a hillside among lumps of rock and stretches of forest,
for we are now beyond Buana's plantations; and skirting the summit
of the hill only to descend into another valley. Evidently this is
a succession of foot-hills of the great mountain and we are not on
its true face yet. As we go on they become more and more abrupt in
form, the valleys mere narrow ravines. In the wet season (this is
only the tornado season) each of these valleys is occupied by a
raging torrent from the look of the confused water-worn boulders.
Now among the rocks there are only isolated pools, for the weather
for a fortnight before I left Victoria had been fairly dry, and this
rich porous soil soaks up an immense amount of water. It strikes me
as strange that when we are either going up or down the hills, the
ground is less muddy than when we are skirting their summits, but it
must be because on the inclines the rush of water clears the soil
away down to the bed rock.
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