She offers few other means of reaching the water save
for these nicks in the edges of the great cup; yet it is possible enough to
view her as a careless and reckless handmaiden busily devastating the
cosmical china-closet. The "blow-out" is a tragedy, and the cause of
further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long,
unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and
test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the
work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues
without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the
air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white
shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the
green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet
to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of
trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has
done its work of ruin and passed on.
After some moments of scrambling and panting our two travelers gained the
divide.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99