Campos

“ The irregular border of the forest reaches in some places to within four or five hundred yards of the road, forming a barrier to the searching of a field-glass at 1000 yards from our position. Away to the right the valley opens out like a map, with villages dotted here and there among green plantations in the middle distance, and beyond a great rolling stretch of country looking to the naked eye like some large barren heath, but showing in the field-glass the patch-quilt effect of innumerable tiny strips of variegated cultivation. ”

“ We motored through the wet sunshiny country, softly dipped and softly lifted, blue-green forest and wide ripe harvest fields, blue and purple and crimson beet fields, long low brown and rust-red towns with square church towers, Sunday people out in the doorways, and swallows always flying low and crying. ”

“ Suppose that a peasant farmer in Brie has so many acres of meadow, so many acres of forest, so many acres of rich arable land and a good-sized vineyard; do you imagine that on his death one son will take the pastures, another the cornland, and so forth? Not a bit of it! Each child will claim a slice of each sort of soil; and their children again will subdivide, till the strips of meadow, rye, cabbage, or vine, are not fields at all, but merely gardens. ”

“ Such uncleared lands (and it is important when valuing a plantation to remember the following classification) may be divided into three classes, (1) the original forest, or, as the natives call it, mother jungle, that has never been touched by man; (2) the forest of secondary growth which has sprung up after the mother forest land has been cleared for grain growing, and abandoned after a crop or two has been taken from the soil; and (3) land on which young forest is growing, and which has never previously had any other forest on it. ”

“ In the central zone, lying parallel to the former, the plain and the forest long contend with each other for the possession of the soil; the trees prevail for some distance, but gradually dwindle into stunted and thorny bushes, only reappearing in belts of forest along the banks of the streams, until finally in the south, the victory remains with the plain, which displays its smooth, velvet-like surface unbounded and unbroken. ”

“ So the toad and all his brothers, who had been hiding beneath the stones of the field that they might not be killed, came out, and tended the field. They ate the insects and other creatures that would have destroyed the sprouts, and so the field grew.
It lay in the sunshine, bright with flowers, and green with the sprouts of growing food and trees.
"A fertile field!" said the farmer. "I shall help it to grow."
"The field is alive!" cried the children. "We can go in it and help the farmer."
"The field is rich!" said all the people who lived near by. "It is growing, and will help us to live." ”

“ For the greater part, the Camp is a vast plain, covering five hundred million acres of flat, fertile soil, with scarcely a natural hillock higher than those thrown up by the ants, and no depression more marked than those which the cartwheels have plowed—stretching from horizon to horizon, north, west, and south—vast, silent, and awe-inspiring in the majesty of its enormous extent and productiveness—the calm, inexhaustible bosom which suckles the prodigious infant on the Plata. ”

“ The Plain, which is water’d by the River, is beautified by two small Hills, about half a League distant from the Fort, and those Hills are cover’d with Groves of Oaks, Walnut-Trees and other Sorts I have named elsewhere. The Fields are full of Grass, growing up very high. ”

“ The land is wild, weird, full of twisted trees, strangely colored rocks, fantastic formations, bleak mountains of slabs, volcanic cones, lava, dry powdery soil or loose shale, close-growing grasses, and strong winds. You feel yourself in an upper world beyond the normal, where only the freakish cold things of nature, elsewhere crowded out, find a home. Camp is under a lonely tree, none the less solitary from the fact that it has companions. ”

“ We wandered about among the crags and ravines until dark, richly repaid for our walk by a fine collection of plants, many of them in full bloom. Ascending a peak to find the place of our camp, we saw that the little defile in which we lay communicated with the long green valley of some stream, which, here locked up in the mountains, far away to the south, found its way in a dense forest to the plains. ”

“ Our camp—a fire, our knapsacks, our multi-serviceable pot and fryingpan, and our outstretched figures, with the instruments, always including our camera outfit, a few implements and guns—was at the foot of a thicket of high ferns, under a group of palms, and we were at the base of an inconsiderable hill or rise, whose top these ferns and palms concealed. ”

“ Field upon field dotted with daisies, woodland as dense and wild as untrained nature leaves it, and hill upon hill clambering over one another, all so minute and yet so real, and dashing down from the tiny mountains was a stream of foaming water, winding about and gathering in from all sides other tributary brooks, so small that they would hardly have floated a good-sized leaf. ”

“ The camp by night, if no shelter were at hand, was in the forest, where the travelers tied their awnings to the branches of trees, built their fires, dressed their stolen meats, and lived so far as they could accomplish it on the fat of the land—for the most part of their way a rich and lovely land of vine-clad hills and opulent verdure. ”

“ We made camp at sunset, with a flare of gold along the west, and the Peaks rising rosy and clear to the north. We camped in a cut-over pine forest, where stumps and lopped tops and burned deadfalls made an aspect of blackened desolation. ”

“ But there is, nevertheless, a certain fascination about this very vastness of the Camp which grows upon one; in these leagues upon leagues of rich soil, which here spread themselves in readiness to receive the seed from the hand of the farmer, and to yield forth an abounding harvest in return for the labour bestowed. Upon these plains one may watch the herds of cattle and the flocks of the sheep which are scattered clear to the limit of one’s vision, a distance so great that the largest animals stand out as mere specks against the sky. ”

“ In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. ”

“ Here on a spur stands a grass-grown camp, with ancient thorn-trees growing in it. Turning round, the great plain runs for miles, with here and there a glint of water, where the slow-moving Avon wanders. ”

“ Beautiful views of the surrounding hills, all covered with "lofty forest trees, tangled with magnificent creepers, and festooned with orchids," are obtained from the camp. All the country round is extremely fertile, yielding with but little labour three crops a year. ”

“ We had advanced beyond the furthest settlements of the Creeks and Seminoles, and pitched our camp on a bright balmy evening, in the border of a delightful prairie, when some of the young men, attracted by the prospect of game, shouldered their rifles and wended their steps through the dense forest which lay contiguous to our encampment. ”

“ On the banks of this were several plantations, and some villages, whose inhabitants we had met on the road, and found more on the top of the hill gazing at the ship, as might be supposed. The plain, or flat of land, which lies along the shore we were upon, appeared from the hills to great advantage; the winding streams which ran through out, the plantations, the little straggling villages, the variety in the woods, and the shoals on the coast, so variegating the scene, that the whole might afford a picture for romance. ”

“ The clearing of land in the progress of settlement had the same effect as the burning off of the forest—it virtually converted a wide area of primitive forest-covered country into prairie, though interspersed with tracts of woodland. Our pastures are in reality prairies so far, at least, as their faunal and floral features are concerned. ”

“ Their cool shades cherish the mystery of the primeval forest that held undisputed sway in this region only fifty years ago. Back on the hills lie rich grain fields and comfortable farmhouses, each defined against the sky by its windmill and cluster of barns and haystacks. ”

“ In this watered valley are immense herds of cattle. The plain is covered with a thick coarse grass, which has now been everywhere cut, either by the troops themselves for their horses, or by the natives for sale to us. Crossing the plain, we have a steep rise up the side of the hill, and then, surmounting the rise, we find ourselves at the head of a valley running nearly due south. ”

“ The villages of the forest people lie mostly upon little elevations, forming wood islands, and all inclosed by fences of felled trees, and scattered about are plantations in which maize, beans, tobacco and bananas are raised. ”

“ Every one knows how a well-kept field looks when it has been plowed, and harrowed, and cultivated until not a stick, nor a stone, nor a weed shows itself aboveground. Well, in order to form a picture of this part of the Colorado Desert, imagine a field such as this extending for miles and miles, level as a floor, with no signs of life visible, and no indication of man's presence save the railroad-track and the telegraph-poles. ”

“ Every morning for many days I used to go and sit on the brow of a low hill that commanded the field, or else upon a gentle swell in the midst of the meadow itself, and listen to catch the song of the lark. ”

“ A valley extending through twenty-one degrees of latitude, and fifteen degrees of longitude, a valley just beginning to smile under the hand of cultivation, and which already invites to its large bosom those masses of people who are pouring out from the overstocked communities of the Old World, and which promises to requite the hand of cultivation by a provision for yet uncounted millions of the human race. ”

“ Some of the signs of civilization are wanting: there are no roads and no fences; the fields are divided only by stones. But the divisions are as fixed and as sacred as if the fields were hemmed in by walls ten feet high. ”

“ Let me try to describe some of the circumstances of the march from Poplar Grove to Dreifontein. It must be remembered that these are but the names of farms, and that a farm means often nothing more than a mud house, a few trees, and a well of water.
Long before it was light we were awakened by the cries of Kaffirs collecting their ox teams and by the almost human complaints of many mules; and while we breakfasted by lamplight in the dim grove where our camp was pitched a stream of transport was already flowing out of the mass surrounding us on all sides. ”

“ The arable land was divided into two or, more usually, three fields, which were cut up into strips bounded by balks and allotted to the villagers in such a way that one holding might include several disconnected strips in each field—a measure designed to prevent the whole of the best land falling to one man. ”

“ At the foot of these plantations, and sheltered in their friendly bosom, lie the gardens, with bees, and pleasant nooks for reading or talk. Walks extend all through these woodlands, and one of them conducts you through the larch copse, up the hill, and from its summit beyond the house, gives you a most magnificent panoramic view of the whole country, with its mountains, and lakes, and plains, and the very ocean. ”

“ Though the prairies are most immediately available, from an agricultural point of view, the regions now covered with second growth and forest, where the soil itself is not inferior, will eventually be equally valuable. ”

“ Here, for miles, village after village, garden after garden, make one continuous chain, the various farmsteads being separated and overshadowed by tracts of oaks or pines. Every hundred steps an enchanting picture is opened to the eye, especially in places where the mountain exhibits its own interesting geological formation, or forms a background clothed with woods or blossoming heath. ”

“ When at the summit of the river hills, we entered on a fine country, consisting of hill {150} and dale, with very extensive farms, and some of the largest fields of Indian corn I had ever seen. Perhaps no plantation has a more beautiful appearance than a field of maize in that stage of vegetation in which we now saw it. ”

“ The fields around them are now in the highest state of cultivation; and the gentle hills with which they are on all sides surrounded, where inaccessible to the plough, are, for the most part, covered with thriving plantations, which give a sheltered and picturesque appearance to the little world in which they are situated. ”

“ One great plain of prairie and woodland, reaching from zone to zone, fairly bursting with the richness of its varied soil and climate—reserved, as it were, by Providence, to receive the less hardy and vigorous generations which time might throw off upon her—tame in scenery, but filled with the resources of wealth and power. ”

“ The occasions selected for the renditions are nights, after the day's works are done, especially if there be visitors to be entertained. The places chosen are the open village street, or, in forest camps where almost all the population of a village go for a week's work on their cutting of new plantations ”

“ In all directions around the houses of this fazenda a barren campo extends to a considerable distance, and the land is not even suitable for pasture, as the grass which grows upon it is not eaten by the horses or cows to any extent, nor does it prove nutritious. ”