Then He Grasped His Long Staff And I Mine, We Bade
Farewell To The Party, And Together We Went In Silence Through Thick
Brushwood Down Towards The Broad River-Bed.
The stones of it glared
like the sands of Africa; Fornovo baked under the sun all white and
black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks
that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a
chain of stagnant ponds.
To-day some seven narrow streams wandered in
the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again I
wondered at the need of a guide.
We came to the edge of the first, and I climbed on the guide's back.
He went bare-legged into the stream deeper and deeper till my feet,
though held up high, just touched the water; then laboriously he
climbed the further shore, and I got down upon dry land. It had been
but twenty yards or so, and he knew the place well. I had seen, as we
crossed, what a torrent this first little stream was, and I now knew
the difficulty and understood the warnings of the inn.
The second branch was impassable. We followed it up for nearly a mile
to where 'an island' (that is, a mass of high land that must have been
an island in flood-time, and that had on it an old brown village)
stood above the white bed of the river. Just at this 'island' my guide
found a ford.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 269 of 361
Words from 72846 to 73100
of 97758
