Onwards
again, and from the cool ravines, adorned with overhang branches,
forming cosy retreats from the now blazing sun, one emerged to a road
leading up once more to undiscovered vastnesses. Yonder narrowed a
gorge, fine and delicately covered, pleasing to one's aesthetic sense.
The center was a dome, all full of life and waving leafage, ethereal and
sweet; and running down, like children to their mother, were numerous
little hills densely clothed in a green lighter and more dainty than
that of the parent hill, throwing graceful curtsies to the murmuring
river at the foot. As I write here, bathed in the beauty of spring
sunlight, it is difficult to believe that a few hours since the
thermometer was at zero. Little spots of habitation, with foodstuffs
growing alongside, looking most lonely in their patches of green in the
forest, added a human and sentimental picturesqueness to a scene so
strongly impressive.
A thatched, barn-like place gave us rest, the woman producing for me a
huge chunk of palatable rice sponge-cake sprinkled with brown sugar.
Little naked children, offspring of parents themselves covered with
merest hanging rags, groped round me and treated me with courteous
curiosity; goats smelt round the coolie-loads of men who rested on low
forms and smoked their rank tobacco; smoke from the green wood fires
issued from the mud grates, where receptacles were filled with boiling
water ready for the traveler, constantly re-filled by a woman whose
child, hung over her back, moaned piteously for the milk its mother was
too busy to give to it.
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