Llanero

“ From one end of the valley to the other the white men had traveled; and yet, as the track of a canoe dies out of the water or the shadow of a flying bird passes over the plain and is gone, so now it seemed that the trail of the white men’s passing had vanished out of the valley and that the dream that had led to their coming had been lost with the dreamer beneath the waving grass of the Southern plains. ”

“ The trail rises and rises from the sandy levels of the railroad town till you are presently on the high northern mesa among scrub juniper and cedar, in a cool-scented, ozone atmosphere, as life-giving as any frost air of the North. The yellow ocher rocks close on each side in walled ramparts, and nestling in an angle of rock you see a little fenced ranch house, where they charge ten cents a glass for the privilege of their spring. ”

“ For some months we had been sojourning in the City of the Plains, and as summer drew on and wide roads grew dusty, and the freshness faded from trees and gardens, a great longing grew up in our hearts for the cool, dim forests, for the snow peaks, and blue glacier rivers: and little by little the plan grew. ”

“ Every crest and billow of the prairie is bathed in crimson and gold, while the "breaks" and ravines trending southward grow black and forbidding in their contrasted gloom. Far over to the southeast, in dazzling radiance, two lofty peaks, still snow-clad, gleam against the summer sky, and at their feet dark waves of forest-covered foot-hills drink in the last rays of the waning sunshine as though hoarding its treasured warmth against the chill of coming night. ”

“ Let us therefore leave the river bank, and visit another portion of the old continent.
We stand in a lovely valley surrounded on all sides by high mountains, whose slopes are covered with luxuriant vegetation. A crystal stream meanders through the fertile plains, and runs into a fairy-like lake, upon whose margin there are little groups of arborescent ferns and palms. The whole valley has the appearance of a rich garden, and we regard its varied beauties with rapturous admiration. ”

“ THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS All streets of the mountains lead to the citadel; steep or slow they go up to the core of the hills. Any trail that goes otherwhere must dip and cross, sidle and take chances. Rifts of the hills open into each other, and the high meadows are often wide enough to be called valleys by courtesy; but one keeps this distinction in mind,—valleys are the sunken places of the earth, cañons are scored out by the glacier ploughs of God. ”

“ Happy Valley is the name of another beautiful place in the Summer-land, where children live. As its name implies, it is a valley; for great green hills surround and hedge it in, and it lies like a bright and sparkling jewel within the sweet embrace of those wooded heights which may be seen from its every point of view. The hills around the valley are covered with groves of shady trees, the green foliage of which gives a restful, cool, and inviting sight to the eye that gazes upon them. ”

“ They seemed to breathe; to sit, looking down into the valley, with heads dropped on their breasts, and deep overshadowed eyes, that never changed, in mist or snow, or sun, or any kind of weather: dark brooding lights that knew the secrets of the world, watchful yet kind. Races, ardent with longing, had come and gone through the valley, had passed the shining porches in the North on the way to the quiet country; and they had never come again, though shadows flitted back and forth when the mists came down: visiting spirits, hungering on the old trail for some that had dropped by the way. ”

“ Making your way along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south, seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation. The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand. No singing water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in—mountain and valley alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare ”

“ At all times the locality is very beautiful, but it is especially so in summer, when the thin line of trees on the one side of the road and the rustling wood upon the other cast a welcome shade upon the traveller, who can rest against the old railings, and look down upon a rich expanse of meadow-land and corn-fields, bounded in the distance by dim, solemn-looking hills, and over the white farm-houses, snugly set in the midst of luxurious vegetation. ”

“ To breathe of the home that he holds so dear;
Your gales pass by on the breath of the rose,
The vines on your sunny hills repose;
And your river is clear as its silver tide
Had no task save to mirror the flowers beside.
Thou art fair, Provence, but not fair to me
As the land which my spirit is pining to see,
Where the pine rises darkly, the lord of the wood,
Or stands lone in the pass, where the warrior has stood;
Where the torrent is rushing like youth in its might,
And the cavern is black as the slumber of night ”

“ We descended to a valley on the east, climbed a long ascent, and after crossing the broad shoulder of a mountain beyond, saw below us a landscape even more magnificent than that of Nablous. It was a great winding valley, its bottom rolhng in waves of wheat and barley, while every hill-side, up to the bare rock, was mantled with groves of olive. ”

“ And our journey was beautiful, this day, between the lofty mountains, from amongst which gleamed forth snow and fields of ice, whilst the pleasantest woods of melize-trees come down from the mountains, to the banks of the foaming Viege, which roars through the valley. Our road lies along the riverside, by a good footpath. Little villages, with their white churches, lie in picturesque disorder, upon the mountain plains. ”

“ But let the rain fall and the wind whirl it, or let the sun shine too mightily, the Plain assumes the character by which it is best known, that of a sublime, inhospitable wilderness. It makes us feel the age of the earth, the greatness of Time, Space, and Nature; the littleness of man even in an aeroplane, the fact that the earth does not belong to man, but man to the earth. ”

“ The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church-tower, white through the storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. ”

“ As we rounded its western shoulder, we caught a grand view of the Snowy Range again, solemn and sublime over and above all intervening peaks and ridges; but with one accord, all hastened forward to behold once more the Plains, the Plains! Yes, [Pg 110] there they were, in all their immeasurable extent! We were out of the Mountains—our long jaunt almost over. No more cañons. No more forests. No more snow-squalls. No more rides, hour by hour, through narrow valleys and defiles, where the whole man feels "cabined, cribbed, confined." ”

“ Crossing from ridge to ridge, high in the air, on long straddling trestles as if flowing on stilts, or down and up across valleys and hills, imprisoned in iron pipes to strike and wash away hills and miles of the skin of the mountain’s face, riddling, stripping every gold gully and flat. These are the white man’s marks made in a few feverish years, to say nothing of mills, fields, villages, scattered hundreds of miles along the flank of the Range. ”

“ At length we seemed to leave all human habitations behind; and in the majesty of loneliness we were crossing the desert, on a single track, in the midst of the lone prairie lands.
Those beautiful rolling plains—millions of acres, covered with the short, yellow buffalo grass—extend to the horizon in undulating lines, a wide, uninhabited, lifeless, uplifted solitude. The blue of the sky overhead and the dried-up grass are the only blending of colours. Monotonous as they are, there is the greatest fascination about the prairies. ”

“ The visitor who goes there by rail will find plenty of adventure for days and weeks in following the mountain trails, ascending to the great points of view, exploring the cañons, or climbing so as to command the vast stretch of the snowy Sierras. Or, if he is not inclined to adventure, the valley itself will satisfy his highest imaginative flights of the sublime in rock masses and perpendicular ledges, and his sense of beauty in the graceful water-falls, rainbow colors, and exquisite lines of domes and pinnacles. ”

“ These Alpine villages look beautifully picturesque from the valley below, but they are sad and grim enough when you are in them. All the poetry is gone when you wind in and out through the little tortuous street and see the squalor and the poverty in which the people live. ”

“ They are coming each year to have greater and greater value to the people of the plains. They are playgrounds, like the Alps. Campers are coming into my valley every day, and, while they increase the danger of fires, I welcome them. They are all advocates of the forest. As one man said: ‘The mountains supplement the plains. They give color and charm to the otherwise monotonous West.’ I confess I couldn’t live on the prairies—not even on the plains—if out of sight of the mountains. If I should ever settle down to a home it would be in a canon like this, with a great peak at my front door. ”

“ We, as we play along the grassy meadows, and cross here and there the clear river rippling over its pebbles, have come to think that the towering rock-ramparts, upon which the sun and the clouds play with infinite gradations of light and colour, have as much to do with the beauty of the scene as the verdant valley itself, or the little old huddled Italian-looking town which hugs both banks of the river. ”

“ Travelling to-day in foot-hill Sierras, one may see the old, rude scars of mining; trenches yawn, disordered heaps cumber the ground, yet they are no longer bare. Time, with friendly rain, and wind, and flood, slowly, surely, levels all, and a compassionate cover of innocent verdure weaves fresh and cool from mile to mile. While Nature thus gently heals the humble Earth, God, who is also Nature, moulds and changes Man. ”

“ I now wheel along a smooth, level road leading through several orchard-environed villages; general cultivation and an atmosphere of peace and plenty seems to pervade the valley, which, with its scattering villages amid the foliage of their orchards, looks most charming upon emerging from the gloomy environments of the rock-ribbed and verdureless ravine; a fitting background is presented on the south by a mountain-chain of considerable elevation, upon the highest peaks of which still linger tardy patches of snow. ”

“ The valleys were covered with a silvery, shimmering atmosphere, on which we traced the outlines of meadows, forests, and lakes, like the first sketching of an artist picture that ere long, under our good genius the automobile, would grow into reality. The road that wound among forest crowned hills was one of the most pleasant we remember. The air was filled with silvery haze, which made distance mysterious; and grain fields and the nearer hills, touched with the rarest delicacy of tone and softly blended color, were dreamy and full of suggestion of Indian summer. ”

“ XXVIII. We visited together, in succession, every creek and cove, or sandy beach of the lake, every mountain pass or ridge; every grotto or remote valley; every cascade hidden among the rocks of Savoy. We saw more sublime or smiling landscapes, more mysterious solitudes, more enchanted deserts, more cottages hanging on the mountain brow half-way between the clouds and the abyss, more foaming waters in the sloping meadows, more forests of dark pines disclosing their gloomy colonnades and echoing our steps beneath their domes, than might have hidden a whole world of lovers. ”

“ I don't know when it is most beautiful up here,—in the morning, when the heat lies along the valley in delicate mists, and the folded mountains, one behind the other, grow dimmer and dimmer beyond sight, swooning away through tender gradations of violets and greys, or at night when I look over the edge of the terrace and see the lights in the valley shimmering as though they were reflected in water. ”

“ The glories of gold and brown have spread downwards like fire into the valleys. The leaves are falling from the trees on the hills where the wind roars, from the trees in the valleys, even from the trees in the town, where there is no wind at all, and the snow is descending in the 286valleys. ”

“ The night passed without accident or adventure; and early next morning they were again on horseback, and across ridge and valley, through scenes of the strangest picturesqueness, pursued their track. Across ridge and valley, but in a lofty region always—just below the line of perpetual snow, but above the region of vegetation; the eye unrelieved by branch of moss or blade of grass; until, towards evening, they descended into the valley of the Arriga. Then they wound over a low wooded ridge, and struck into a rugged pass, at the head of which they encamped for the night. ”

“ The valley is one of exquisite beauty, presenting a combination of mingled picturesqueness and sublimity, the like of which is rarely to be seen. It is hemmed in by mountains, in some places rounded and majestic, in others jagged and abrupt. The sides of the valley are in many places finely wooded, while in others well-tilled fields, pastures, and vineyards slope down to the river-side. ”