path

Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day. Such an edge was there in Mary's voice when she greeted him. About her seemed to hang the mist of the winter hedges, and the clear red of the bramble leaves. He felt himself at once stepping on to the firm ground of an entirely different world, but he did not allow himself to yield to the pleasure of it directly. They gave him his choice of driving with Edward or of walking home across the fields with Mary--not a shorter way, they explained, but Mary thought it a nicer way. He decided to walk with her, being conscious, indeed, that he got comfort from her presence. What could be the cause of her cheerfulness, he wondered, half ironically, and half enviously, as the pony-cart started briskly away, and the dusk swam between their eyes and the tall form of Edward, standing up to drive, with the reins in one hand and the whip in the other. People from the village, who had been to the market town, were climbing into their gigs, or setting off home down the road together in little parties. Many salutations were addressed to Mary, who shouted back, with the addition of the speaker's name. But soon she led the way over a stile, and along a path worn slightly darker than the dim green surrounding it. In front of them the sky now showed itself of a reddish-yellow, like a slice of some semilucent stone behind which a lamp burnt, while a fringe of black trees with distinct branches

Virginia Woolf
Night and Day

From the summit of the first hill, after leaving Pont-St.-Esprit, there is a beautiful view of the bridge at about two miles’ distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. Where the body of the mountains has a surface of soil, the summit has sometimes a crown of rock, as observed in Champagne. At Nismes, the earth is full of lime-stone. The horses are shorn. They are now pruning the olive. A very good tree produces sixty pounds of olives, which yield fifteen pounds of oil: the best quality selling at twelve sous the pound, retail, and ten sous, wholesale. The high hills of Languedoc still covered with snow. The horse-chestnut and mulberry are leafing; apple trees and peas blossoming. The first butterfly I have seen. After the vernal equinox, they are often six or eight months without rain. Many separate farm-houses, numbers of people in rags, and abundance of beggars. The _mine_ of wheat, weighing thirty pounds, costs four livres and ten sous. Wheat bread, three sous the pound. _Vin ordinaire_, good, and of a strong body, two or three sous the bottle. Oranges, one sous

Thomas Jefferson
Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson

The whole of the country for hundreds of miles is covered with picturesque but pathless forests, and there are only two roads along which excursions can be made by land from Ega. One is a narrow hunter’s track, about two miles in length, which traverses the forest in the rear of the settlement. The other is an extremely pleasant path along the beach to the west of the town. This is practicable only in the dry season, when a flat strip of white sandy beach is exposed at the foot of the high wooded banks of the lake, covered with trees, which, as there is no underwood, form a spacious shady grove. I rambled daily, during many weeks of each successive dry season, along this delightful road. The trees, many of which are myrtles and wild Guavas, with smooth yellow stems, were in flower at this time; and the rippling waters of the lake, under the cool shade, everywhere bordered the path. The place was the resort of kingfishers, green and blue tree-creepers, purple-headed tanagers, and hummingbirds. Birds generally, however, were not numerous. Every tree was tenanted by Cicadas, the reedy notes of which produced that loud, jarring, insect music which is the general accompaniment of a woodland ramble in a hot climate. One species was very handsome, having wings adorned with patches of bright green and scarlet. It was very common; sometimes three or four tenanting a single tree, clinging as usual to the branches. On approaching a tree thus peopled, a number of little jets of a clear liquid would be seen

Henry Walter Bates
The Naturalist on the River Amazons

clerk." If you should give a Corsican peasant his choice between the richest farm in Beauce and the baldric of the humblest forest-warden, he would not hesitate a moment, he would choose the baldric. Under such circumstances you can judge whether a candidate with a large fortune and governmental favors at his disposal has a good chance of being elected. Elected M. Jansoulet will be, therefore, especially if he succeeds in the move which he is making at this moment and which has brought us to the only inn of a small village called Pozzonegro (Black Well), a genuine well, all black with verdure, fifty cottages built of red stone clustered around a church of the Italian type, in the bottom of a ravine surrounded by steep hills, by cliffs of bright-colored sandstone, scaled by vast forests of larches and junipers. Through my open window, at which I am writing, I can see a bit of blue sky overhead, the orifice of the black well; below, on the little square, shaded by an enormous walnut tree, as if the shadows were not dense enough already, two shepherds dressed in skins are playing cards on the stone curb of a fountain. Gambling is the disease of this country of sloth, where the crops are harvested by men from Lucca. The two poor devils before me could not find a sou in their pockets; one stakes his knife, the other a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, the two stakes being placed beside them on the stone. A little cur is watching them, smoking his cigar, and apparently taking the liveliest

Alphonse Daudet
The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2)

While we were looking at the relics a French plerinage came up--quite a long procession; many very nice-looking women. They were all dressed in black, and most of them wore bonnets--some few had black veils--priests of course, and a fair amount of men of all ages. They passed in procession up the aisle, chanting a psalm, which sounded very well, full and solemn. One or two stragglers, two young men and a woman stopped to see what we were looking at, and we had a little talk. They had just arrived over the St. Gothard, hadn't much time, and were very keen to see everything. They said it was very cold crossing the mountain--the heavy rain we had had at Milan had been deep snow on the pass. We went to look at Queen Theodolinda's tomb in one of the side chapels, and then started for the "Casa Reale" as they call the Royal Villa. It has no pretensions to architecture; is a large square building with long, rambling wings. We could only see the great hall and some of the reception rooms downstairs, as they were painting and cleaning upstairs. The rooms had no particular style--large, high ceilings, great windows looking on the park; just what one sees in all Royal Palaces. All the furniture was covered with housses--the gardien took one off an arm-chair to show us the red velvet. The lustres also were covered--the mirrors were handsome. The park is delightful--quantities of trees of all kinds, lovely shady walks, and bosquets. There seemed to be a great deal of game--deer and pheasants walking about quite tame and

Mary Alsop King Waddington
Italian Letters of a Diplomat's Life

The scene inside the Castle was one of unparalleled brilliancy, while those who glanced from the mullioned windows saw by bright moonlight the Avon frozen, the ancient cedars glistening with frost, and the surrounding country wrapped in a snowy mantle. The entire ground floor of the Castle was thrown open, and no pains were spared to give as complete a representation as possible of the gorgeous fetes which made the Court of Marie Antoinette famous throughout Europe. The finest spectacle presented itself when the guests assembled at supper in the oak-lined hall, where the light of a thousand candles was reflected in the bright steel armour which surrounded the walls. Several high screens, hung with Beauvais tapestry and shaded by huge palms, filled the angles of the hall, and the stone walls were partially concealed by yellow and silver embroideries. In the huge fireplace logs crackled, and on small round tables were placed silver candelabra with crimson shades and floral decorations, consisting of scarlet geraniums and maiden-hair fern. The centre table was reserved for Marie Antoinette and her Court, and here was the choicest display of family plate, including, amongst other valuable specimens of the goldsmith's art, a golden cup modelled by Benvenuto Cellini. From the hall you entered the Red Drawing room, which contains a marble table, inlaid with flowers and fruit, and formerly the property of Marie Antoinette. Next is the Cedar Drawing-room, used as the ball-room, on whose walls are many family

Florence Mary Gardiner
The Evolution of Fashion

On the Sunday following this interview with the Truth Mr. Lavender, who ever found the day of rest irksome to his strenuous spirit, left his house after an early supper. It, had been raining all day, but the sinking sun had now emerged and struck its level light into the tree tops from a still cloudy distance. Followed by Blink, he threaded the puddled waste which lies to the west of the Spaniard's Road, nor was it long before the wild beauty of the scene infected his spirit, and he stood still to admire the world spread out. The smoke rack of misted rain was still drifting above the sunset radiance in an apple-green sky; and behind Mr. Lavender, as he gazed at those clouds symbolical of the world's unrest, a group of tall, dark pine-trees, wild and witch-like, had collected as if in audience of his cosmic mood. He formed a striking group for a painter, with the west wind flinging back his white hair, and fluttering his dark moustache along his cheeks, while Blink, a little in front of him, pointed at the prospect and emitted barks whose vigour tossed her charming head now to this side now to that.

John Galsworthy
The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature, there was a wide pathway striking through the forest at right angles to the river. It resembled a drive in an English forest, save that tropical bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at the side, and the ground was covered with an unmarked springy moss instead of grass, starred with little yellow flowers. As they passed into the depths of the forest the light grew dimmer, and the noises of the ordinary world were replaced by those creaking and sighing sounds which suggest to the traveller in a forest that he is walking at the bottom of the sea. The path narrowed and turned; it was hedged in by dense creepers which knotted tree to tree, and burst here and there into star-shaped crimson blossoms. The sighing and creaking up above were broken every now and then by the jarring cry of some startled animal. The atmosphere was close and the air came at them in languid puffs of scent. The vast green light was broken here and there by a round of pure yellow sunlight which fell through some gap in the immense umbrella of green above, and in these yellow spaces crimson and black butterflies were circling and settling. Terence and Rachel hardly spoke.

Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out

Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime, and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems as thick as a man's arm. Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts. In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it. It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact that it had a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have when glimpsed through smoked glass. It is possible that our constellations have been so constructed as to be invisible through smoked glass; if this is so it is a great mistake.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion

He finds much enjoyment in the study of the forms and characteristics of the different trees by the wayside. If the road passes over highland, on a breezy day he can look down upon or across the tops of undulating forest trees, whose swaying movements remind him of the waves of the sea. He can see in each species not only a variety in the color and form of its foliage, but some characteristic which reminds him of some human being. The rugged oak or apple tree recalls to his mind some sturdy man, of great strength and honesty of character, with picturesque but awkward manners. The gracefully swaying branches of the stately elm or weeping willow remind him of some woman whose elegant form and manners make her as lovely as the moon and as beautiful as light. The rapid and constant motion of the foliage of the poplar and the aspen reminds him of some nervous and excitable person who is never quiet or easy for a moment. The prim spruce-tree suggests to him some person of formal habits and primness of dress. The symmetrical maple and pine remind him of some quiet and dignified character who is well balanced and rounded at every point. The patriarchal tree which has outlived all its companions and stands alone with few and withered branches, but still raising its majestic head to heaven as if in supplication for blessings on the earth, reminds him of some gray-haired person who, full of years and rich in faith, after a well-spent life is approaching and can almost see the other side of the river which

Burton Willis Potter
The Road and the Roadside

tints of the leaves, while the long hairy tillandsia, like an old man's beard, three or four feet long, hung down from the topmost branches. The ground was carpeted with moss, interspersed with a few early spring flowers, and the whole scene, though utterly unlike that presented by any English forest, had a strange weird beauty of its own. Not a sound could be heard; not a bird, beast, or insect was to be seen. The larger trees were principally a peculiar sort of beech and red cedar, but all kinds of evergreens, known to us at home as shrubs, such as laurestine, and various firs, here attain the proportions of forest-trees. There is also a tree called Winter's Bark (_Drimys Winteri_), the leaves and bark of which are hot and bitter, and form an excellent substitute for quinine. But the most striking objects were the evergreen berberis and mahonia, and the Darwinia, the larger sort of which was covered with brilliant orange, almost scarlet, flowers, which hung down in bunches, of the shape and size of small outdoor grapes.

Annie Allnut Brassey
A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam'

_Thursday, November 24._--This is Thanksgiving Day, a good old festival, and we have kept it with our hearts, and, besides, have made good cheer upon our turkey and pudding, and pies and custards, although none sat at our board but our two selves. There was a new and livelier sense, I think, that we have at last found a home, and that a new family has been gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day. There have been many bright, cold days latterly, so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to keep one's self warm a-walking. Day before yesterday I saw a party of boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring meadow. Running water has not yet frozen. Vegetation has quite come to a stand, except in a few sheltered spots. In a deep ditch we found a tall plant of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as if it must have grown within the last few weeks. We wander among the wood-paths, which are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons, the trees looking rich and warm,--such of them, I mean, as have retained their russet leaves; and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or heaped plentifully in some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a charm. To-day the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is as dreary as can well be imagined,--white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter's day.

Various
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866

"He turned aside from the high road by a narrow path, which, after winding for a short distance through the tall trees, sloped down into the wood.  Soon he found himself in a perfect solitude, with a rustling, whispering, and whining round him, while only a few single gleams of sun-light reflected with a green hue, played about him like ignis fatui.  Sometimes he thought he heard his name called behind him in the distance, and--he did not know why--the call appeared to him hateful and repulsive.  Then again he would take the sound to be a mere delusion, but whatever he thought he always got deeper and deeper into the dark forest.  Large gnarled roots lay like snakes across the way, stretched out, so that the student was in danger of tumbling every moment.  Stag-beetles stood like noble game in the moor, while the purest hues of golden vegetation shone from little nooks in the rocks. The perspiration stood on his forehead, and with increasing rapidity he penetrated the thicket, and fled from the bright sunny world without. It was not only the exercise of walking that made him hot, his mind was also labouring under a burden of heavy recollections.  At last, after the pathway had long vanished from beneath his feet, he came to a beautiful, smooth, dark spot, among some mighty oak-trees.  Still he heard his name called in the distance.  'Here,' he said, 'the rude sound yonder will no more reach me; here I shall be quietly concealed.' He sunk down upon a great mossy stone, his heart heaved, he was

Various
Tales from the German

Perhaps the reader knows already the aspect of the great levels of the Gtinais, where they border with the wooded hills of Fontainebleau. Here and there a few grey rocks creep out of the forest as if to sun themselves. Here and there a few apple-trees stand together on a knoll. The quaint, undignified tartan of a myriad small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend and disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and empty, with no accident save perhaps a thin line of trees or faint church-spire against the sky. Solemn and vast at all times, in spite of pettiness in the near details, the impression becomes more solemn and vast towards evening. The sun goes down, a swollen orange, as it were into the sea. A blue-clad peasant rides home, with a harrow smoking behind him among the dry clods. Another still works with his wife in their little strip. An immense shadow fills the plain; these people stand in it up to their shoulders; and their heads, as they stoop over their work and rise again, are relieved from time to time against the golden sky.

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25)

We had supper at seven o'clock, under a tree which overhangs a weedy bank, with a high pasture back of us, sloping up to a wooded hill, at the base of which is a cluster of three neatly painted farm-houses, whose dogs bayed at us from the distance, but did not venture to approach. A half-hour later, the sun's setting warned us that quarters for the night must soon be secured. Stopping at the base of a boggy pasture-wood, we ascended through a sterile field, accursed with sheep-sorrel, and through gaps in several crazy fences, to what had seemed to us from the river a comfortable, repose-inviting house, commandingly situated on a hill-top among the trees. Near approach revealed a scene of desolation. The barriers were down, two spare-ribbed horses were nipping a scant supper among the weeds in a dark corner of an otherwise deserted barn-yard, the window-sashes were generally paneless, the porch was in a state of collapse, sand-burrs choked the paths, and to our knock at the kitchen door the only response was a hollow echo. The deserted house looked uncanny in the gloaming, and we retired to our boat wondering what evil spell had been cast over the place, and whether the horses in the barn-yard had been deliberately left behind to die of starvation.

Reuben Gold Thwaites
Historic Waterways--Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers

The path finally led us out into the forest and through the clustering pine trees, to the summit of the Bastei. An inn has been erected in the woods and an iron balustrade placed around the rock. Protected by this, we advanced to the end of the precipice and looked down to the swift Elbe, more than seven hundred feet below! Opposite through the blue mists of morning, rose Konigstein, crowned with an impregnable fortress, and the crags of Lilienstein, with a fine forest around their base, frowned from the left bank. On both sides were horrible precipices of gray rock, with rugged trees hanging from the crevices. A hill rising up from one side of the Bastei, terminates suddenly a short distance from it, in on abrupt precipice. In the intervening space stand three or four of those rock-columns, several hundred feet high, with their tops nearly on a level with the Bastei. A wooden bridge has been made across from one to the other, over which the traveller passes, looking on the trees and rocks far below him, to the mountain, where a steep zigzag path takes him to the Elbe below.

J. Bayard Taylor
Views a-foot

It was now full day, and we had reached the summit of the pass. Above us were still the snow-clad peaks; but the road does not ascend higher. We now crossed the frontier, and were in Italy. A little rocky plain surrounded by weather-beaten peaks, a deep blue lake, and a sea of bare ridges in front, were all that we saw of Italy. The road now began sensibly to decline, and the diligence quickened its pace. We soon reached the ridges before us, and began to descend over the brow of the Alps, which are steep and perpendicular as a wall almost, on their southern side. You first traverse a region covered with immense lichen-clothed boulders; next come stretches of heath; then stunted firs: by and by fruit and forest trees begin to make their appearance; next comes the lovely acacia; and last of all the vine, tall and luxuriant, veiling the peasant's cot with its shadow. The road is literally a series of hanging stairs, which zig-zag down the face of the mountain. At certain points the rock is perforated; at others it is hewn into terraces; and at others the path rests on vast substructions of masonry. Now an immense rock leans over the road, and now you find yourself on the edge of some frightful precipice, with the gulph running right down many thousands of feet, and a white torrent at the bottom, boiling and struggling, but unable to make itself heard at that height on the mountain. The turns are frequent and sharp; and the heavy, overladen vehicle, in its furious downward career, gives a swing at

James Aitken Wylie
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber

The driver turned down the Javastraat, went along the Scheveningen Road and let his horse roam at will in the rides of the Woods.... Oh, the Hague was charming; she loved the Woods! Even as Addie loved Driebergen, with an innate inherited love for the house and household and the fact of living there--he was indeed his grand-parents' grand-child--so she loved the Hague greatly. She loved those green villa-lined roads, she loved the briny fragrance of the sea.... She was now riding along the Ornamental Water, now, suddenly, along the spot where she remembered meeting Brauws years ago--he sitting on that bench yonder--when, after she had turned round with a start, he caught her up; and her confession, that she had suggested a divorce to Henri.... Oh, those days, those days of life and suffering and illusion, so far, so far away in the distant past!... And now, now the man drove with his jog-trot, the jog-trot of a victoria hired by the hour, along the Kerkhoflaan; now she was riding past the old house.... Oh, that old house! It was as though the past, the illusion, the suffering and the life, the later, later life, were still hanging around it like a low-drifting cloud! It was the trees of yore and the skies of yore and the green spring life of yore. The house, the house: there was the window at which she had so often sat musing, gazing at the great skies overhead, while her soul travelled along a path of light. Up above were Addie's little turret-room and her own bedroom: oh, that night of illusion at the open window, with the

It was a sad, green, ghostly moonlight streaming through the elms as Andrew Waples walked up Broadway. The moon appeared to be dredging for oysters amongst the clouds, circling around there by bars, islets, and shoals. Bits of spotted and mackerel-back sky swam like hosts of menhaden through the pearly sheen of the more open aerial main. The leaves of the tall domes and kissing branches of the elms, that peeped on either side into open windows of people asleep and told across the street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa of Chancellor Walworth, cowering amongst the pine-trees, expressed the burden of parricidal blood that had of late oppressed its memories. There were no murmurs from the court-room where Judge Barnard had been tried, but its deep silence seemed from the clock to tick: "Removed! disqualified!" and "Disqualified! removed!"

George Alfred Townsend
Tales of the Chesapeake

When he had once more been carried on his mat into his own chamber or sleeping-place, he drove out the drumming and fan-waving Minimuls, making signs to them that their noise and odour drove sleep away instead of charming it to him. He waited on and on, tossing on his mat, springing up to listen, hearing now some forest beast tread hollowly overhead, and now a distant cry as if of fear or anguish. But at last, when all was still, he very cautiously fumbled and fumbled, gnawed and gnawed with his sharp little dog-teeth, until in the dim light of his worm-lantern peeped out the strange pale glowing milk-white Wonderstone, carved all over with labyrinthine beast and bird and unintelligible characters. It lay there marvellously beautiful, as if in itself it were all Munza-mulgar, its swamps and forests and mountains lying tinied in the pale brown palm of his hand, and as full of changing light as the bellies of dead fishes in the dark. He got up softly, clutching the stone tightly in his hand. He listened. He stole down his sandy gallery, and stood, small and hairy, in his sheep-skin, peering out into the great evil-smelling kitchen. Then he spat with his spittle on the stone, and began to rub softly, softly, three times round with his left thumb Sāmaweeza, dancing lightly, and slowly the while, with eyes tight shut and ears twitching.

Walter De La Mare
The Three Mulla-mulgars

There was once a poor Widow who lived alone in her hut with her two children, who were called Snow-White and Rose-Red, because they were like the flowers which bloomed on two rosebushes which grew before the cottage. But they were two as pious, good, industrious, and amiable children as any that were in the world, only Snow-White was more quiet and gentle than Rose-Red. For Rose-Red would run and jump about the meadows, seeking flowers and catching butterflies, while Snow-White sat at home helping her Mother to keep house, or reading to her if there were nothing else to do. The two children loved one another dearly, and always walked hand in hand when they went out together; and ever when they talked of it they agreed that they would never separate from each other, and that whatever one had the other should share. Often they ran deep into the forest and gathered wild berries; but no beast ever harmed them. For the hare would eat cauliflowers out of their hands, the fawn would graze at their side, the goats would frisk about them in play, and the birds remained perched on the boughs singing as if nobody were near. No accident ever befell them; and if they stayed late in the forest, and night came upon them, they used to lie down on the moss and sleep till morning; and because their Mother knew they would do so, she felt no concern about them. One time when they had thus passed the night in the forest, and the dawn of morning awoke them, they saw a beautiful Child dressed in shining white sitting near their couch. She

William Patten
The Junior Classics, Volume 1

"On each side of the road great trees towered up, carrying their crowns out of sight amongst a canopy of foliage, and with lianas hanging from nearly every bough, and passing from tree to tree, entangling the giants in a great network of coiling cables. Sometimes a tree appears covered with beautiful flowers which do not belong to it, but to one of the lianas that twines through its branches and sends down great rope-like stems to the ground. Climbing ferns and vanilla cling to the trunks, and a thousand epiphytes perch themselves on the branches. Amongst these are large arums that send down long aerial roots, tough and strong, and universally used instead of cordage by the natives. Amongst the undergrowth several small species of palms, varying in height from two to fifteen feet, are common; and now and then magnificent tree ferns send off their feathery crowns twenty feet from the ground to delight the sight by their graceful elegance. Great broad-leaved heliconias, leathery melastom, and succulent-stemmed, lop-sided leaved and flesh-coloured begonias are abundant, and typical of tropical American forests; but not less so are the cecropia trees, with their white stems and large palmated leaves standing up like great candelabra. Sometimes the ground is carpeted with large flowers, yellow, pink, or white, that have fallen from some invisible tree-top above; or the air is filled with a delicious perfume, the source of which one seeks around in vain, for the flowers that cause it are far overhead out of sight, lost in the

Sir John Lubbock
The Beauties of Nature

So on we went along the mountain-side, and now through deep snow, for we were on a northward-facing slope of an outlying spur--and all slopes which face northward are wooded, while southward-facing slopes are bare. The explanation was evident. For on the latter slopes the sun's rays fell directly and almost at right angles, and in consequence fallen snow quickly disappears: while on the northern slopes the sun's rays only slant across the surface; the snow remains much longer; the moisture in the soil is retained; vegetation flourishes; trees grow up; they in their turn still further shade the snow, and with their roots retain the moisture. And so as a net result one side of a mountain is clothed in dense forest, and on the other there may not be a single tree. Thus it is that on the southern side of Kashmir, that is, on the _northward_-facing slopes of the Pir Panjal range, there is, as at Gulmarg, dense and continuous forest, while on the northern side of the valley, on the slope of the hill that consequently faces southward, there is no forest except on the slopes of those subsidiary spurs which face northward.

Sir Francis Edward Younghusband
Kashmir

At last I saw close to me a little hill covered with dark fir trees; I came nearer, and the sight of the sombre green was like a draught of cool water. I could no longer bear the horror of the heat. From the main road another smaller one led winding up the hill. I turned my horse, and soon we were among the trees, and I took a long breath of delight in the coolness. I dismounted and led him by the bridle; it was enchanting to walk along the path, soft with the fallen needles, and a delicious green smell hovered in the air. We came to a clearing, where was a little pond; I watered the poor beast, and, throwing myself down, drank deeply. Then I tied him to a tree and advanced a few steps alone. I came to a sort of terrace, and going forward found myself at the edge of the hill, looking over the plain. Behind, the tall fir trees gave me shade and coolness; I sat down, looking at the country before me. In the cloudless sky it seemed now singularly beautiful. Far away on one side I could see the walls and towers of some city, and to it in broad curves wound a river; the maze and corn, vines and olive trees, covered the land, and in the distance I saw the soft blue mountains. Why should the world be so beautiful, and I so miserable?

William Somerset Maugham
The Making of a Saint

Laurie sat down on a wheelbarrow, after removing his coat and folding back the sleeves of his shirt, and looked around him. The garden was fairly large—larger in appearance since the clutter of shrubbery along the sides had been cleared away. Along the School Park edge ran a tall hedge of lilac bushes. At the back was the high board fence, painted dark brown, that separated the garden from the Widow Deane’s humble property. On the other side was a rusty ornamental iron fence, mostly hidden by vines. Broad walks, in spite of Thomas’s efforts rather overrun with weeds, surrounded the central plot of ancient turf, and another ran straight down the middle of the garden, connecting with the arbor. Wires were to be strung from the trees and across to the arbor, and Chinese lanterns hung thereon. Laurie, half closing his eyes, sought to visualize the place as it would appear on Saturday. He did want the affair to be a success, both financial and artistic, both on account of the school and—well, for the honor of the Turners! While he was musing, two things happened simultaneously: Bob and Thomas appeared from the house, and a familiar voice came to him from the opposite direction.

Ralph Henry Barbour
The Turner Twins

I had but one relapse. It was when I got news of their marriage. I remember the day with a peculiar distinctness; for it was the first snow-storm of the season, and I had been out walking all the afternoon. It was one of those soft, leaden-colored, expectant days, of late autumn or early winter, when one is sure of snow; and I went out on purpose to see it fall among the woods; for it was just upon Christmas, and I longed to see the black ground covered. By-and-by a few flakes sauntered down, coquetting as to where they would alight; then a few more followed, thickening and thickening until the whole upper air was alive with them, and the frozen ridges whitened along their backs, and every little stiff blade of grass or rush or dead bush held all it could carry. It was pleasant to see the quiet wonder go on, until the landscape was completely changed,--to walk home _scuffing_ the snow from the frozen road on which my feet had ground as I came that way, and see the fences full, and the hollows heaped up level, and the birches bent down with their hair hidden, and the broad arms of the fir-trees loaded, like sombre cotton-pickers going home heavily laden. Then to see the brassy streak widen in the west, and the cold moon hang astonished upon the dead tops of some distant pine-trees, was to enjoy a most beautiful picture, with only the cost of a little fatigue.

Various
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

Saburo[u]zaemon waited for the lantern to disappear. Then he turned to inspect the gate. There was no entrance through its solidity. It was a _yashiki mon_, almost house, with two posterns. He must get a look within. A long high plaster wall ran on both sides into the distance. The moonlight, flooding the scene, showed him a breach opened by long neglect. Once within he felt convinced that he was on the scene of Rokuzo's experience. But the pine grove was anything but swept clean. Branches torn off by storm and wind, fallen trees, lay scattered everywhere. It was a very winding course which took him to the eaves of the building some distance off. Plainly the once occupant had been a person of position, perhaps a minor _daimyo[u]_. At the corner of the structure he found himself in the garden more particularly attached to the house. An exclamation of regret at sight of such desolation came to the lips of Saburo[u]zaemon. A master hand had laid out this beautiful piece of work; but trees and plants, no longer trained and trimmed by man's hand, had run wild. In the centre was a wide well curb rising some three feet from the ground. A single stone step allowed easier access for those drawing water. The well-sweep had rotted off and lay upon the ground. There was no bucket. Saburo[u]zaemon leaned over. From the still surface of the water came an indefinable putrescent odour, perhaps from the decaying plants, or refuse blown into the depths. He drew away, disgusted and convinced. Carefully he made the round of this pleasaunce.

James S. De Benneville
Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House)

The dk bungalow of Uri, white and clean, was most attractive, and I should imagine the place to be charming in summer, but as yet the short crisp turf is still brown from recent snow, and although hot in the sun, which now began to shine steadily, it was extremely cold in the shade, while lunch (or should I say "tiffin"?) was being got ready. I strolled over to the post-office to find--as usual--another urgent wire from Smithson several days old, beseeching me to secure my pass for Astor at once. Directly after lunch we set forward, and as the road on leaving Uri takes a long bend of some miles to the right to a point where the Haji Pir River is crossed, and then sweeps back along its right hank to a spot almost opposite the dk bungalow, we thought that a short cut down to the water, which from our height seemed quite insignificant, and thence up to the road on the other side, would be a desirable stroll. As we walked down the steep path into the nullah a brace of red-legged partridges (chikor) rose in a great fuss, and sailed gaily across the river, whose roaring gained ominously in volume as we drew near. It soon became plain to us that everything is on a very big scale in this country, and that the clearness of the atmosphere helps to delude the unwary stranger. The little stream that seemed to require but an occasional stepping-stone to enable us to pass over dry-shod, proved in the first place to be much farther off than we had supposed, and when, after a hot scramble, we found

T. R. Swinburne
A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil

"Well, at last the ceremonial started up with a great banging of drums and all that. It was a great scene, let me tell you, with the tumbled vegetation, glaringly colored as if a scene painter had gone crazy. There were the flashing birds--blood-colored and orange scarlet and yellow, gold and green. Butterflies, too,--great gaudy things that looked like moving flowers. And the noise and chatterings and whistlings in the trees of birds and insects. There were flowers and fruits, and eatings and speech-makings. As far as I could gather, the chief speakers were congratulating the hearers upon their luck in belonging to the Tlingas, which was the greatest tribe on earth and the favorite of Naol, the lizard god. We capered round the tribal pole, I capering with the rest of them of course. Somerfield took a picture of it. Then there was a procession of prospective mothers with Ista among them. Rotten, I thought it. Don't imagine female beauty, by the way, as some of the writers on savage life would have you imagine it. Nothing of the kind. White, black or yellow, I never saw a stark woman that looked beautiful yet. That's all bunk. Muscular and strong, yes. That's a kind of beauty in its way. True as God, I believe that one of the causes of unhappy marriages among white folk is that the lads are fed upon false notions about womanly beauty, and when they get the reality they think that they've captured a lemon.

Various
The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

I had arrived within fifty yards of the opposite side, and the dark forest was again before my face; but even at that short distance, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce its sombre depths.  I was congratulating myself, that I had passed the numerous logs that lay across the path, when yet one more appeared between me and the standing trees.  It had been one of the tallest victims of the tornado; and now lay transversely to the line of the track, which cut it about midway. On nearing this obstacle, I saw that the trace forked into two--one going around the tops of the decaying branches, while the other took the direction of the roots; which, with the soil still adhering to them, formed a rounded buttress-like wall of full ten feet in diameter.  The trunk itself was not over five--that being about the thickness of the tree.  It was a matter of choice which of the two paths should be followed: since both appeared to come together again on the opposite side of the tree; but I had made up my mind to take neither.  One of my motives, in seeking this forest-home, had been a desire to indulge in the exciting exercise of the chase; and the sooner I should bring my horse into practice, the sooner I might take the field with a prospect of success.  Log-leaping was new to my Arab; and he might stand in need of a little training to it.  The log before me had open ground on both sides; and afforded a very good opportunity for giving him his first lesson.  Thus prompted by Saint Hubert, I was about spurring forward to

Mayne Reid
The Wild Huntress

Whenever Martin began to show the least sign of weariness the Lady of the Hills would call him to her. Then, lying back among the ferns, she would unbind her long silky tresses to let him play with them, for this was always a delight to him. Then she would gather her hair up again and dress it with yellow flowers and glossy dark green leaves to make herself look more lovely than ever. At other times, taking him on her shoulders, she would bound nimbly as a wild goat up the steepest places, springing from crag to crag, and dancing gaily along the narrow ledges of rock, where it made him dizzy to look down. Then when the sun was near setting, when long shadows from rocks and trees began to creep over the mountain, and he had eaten the fruits and honey and other wild delicacies she provided, she would make him lie on her bosom. Playing with her loose hair and listening to her singing as she rocked herself on a stone, he would presently fall asleep.

It is characterized by its sturdy pillar-like stem, often from 15 to 20 ft. in girth, and smooth olive-grey bark. The main branches rise vertically, while the subsidiary branches spread outwards and give the whole tree a rounded outline. The slender brown pointed buds give place in April to clear green leaves fringed with delicate silky hairs. The flowers which appear in May are inconspicuous and, as usual with our forest trees, of two kinds; the male, in long-stalked globular clusters, hang from the axils of the lower leaves of a shoot, while the female, each of two or three flowers in a tiny cup (cupule of bracts), stand erect nearer the top of the shoot. In the ripe fruit or mast the four-sided cupule, which has become much enlarged, brown and tough, encloses two or three three-sided rich chestnut-brown fruits, each containing a single seed. It is readily propagated by its seeds. It is a handsome tree in every stage of its growth, but is more injurious to plants under its drip than other trees, so that shade-bearing trees, as holly, yew and thuja, suffer. Its leaves, however, enrich the soil. The beech has a remarkable power of holding the ground where the soil is congenial, and the deep shade prevents the growth of other trees. It is often and most usefully mixed with oak and Scotch fir. The timber is not remarkable for either strength or durability. It was formerly much used in mill-work and turnery; but its principal use at present is in the manufacture of chairs, bedsteads and a variety of minor articles. It

Various
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Slice 5

Besides the water drawn by the roots from the earth and the vapor absorbed by the leaves from the air, the wood mosses and fungi, which abound in all dense forests, take up a great quantity of moisture from the atmosphere when it is charged with humidity, and exhale it again when the air is dry. These humble organizations, which play a more important part in regulating the humidity of the air than writers on the forest have usually assigned to them, perish with the trees they grow on; but, in many situations, nature provides a compensation for the tree mosses in ground species, which, on cold soils, especially those with a northern exposure, spring up abundantly both before the woods are felled, and when the land is cleared and employed for pasturage, or deserted. These mosses discharge a portion of the functions appropriated to the wood, and while they render the soil of improved lands much less fit for agricultural use, they, at the same time, prepare it for the growth of a new harvest of trees, when the infertility they produce shall have driven man to abandon it and suffer it to relapse into the hands of nature.[161]

George P. Marsh
Man and Nature

Let us now turn our steps to that huge pile of mountains called the White Hills of New Hampshire. We will approach them through the valley of the Saco River, and at the distance of thirty miles they will be seen looming up in the horizon, with the clouds reposing beneath their naked heads. As the observer approaches them, the sides of the valley will gradually close in upon him, and rise higher and higher, until he will find their naked granitic summits almost jutting over his path, to the height of several thousand feet, seeming to form the very battlements of heaven. Now and then will he see the cataract leaping hundreds of feet down their sides, and the naked path of some recent landslip, which carried death and desolation in its track. From this deep and wild chasm he will at length emerge, and climb the vast ridge, until he has seen the forest trees dwindle, and at length disappear; and standing upon the naked summit, immensity seems stretched out before him. But he has not yet reached the highest point; and far in the distance, and far above him, Mount Washington seems to repose in awful majesty against the heavens. Turning his course thither, he follows the narrow and naked ridge over one peak after another, first rising upon Mount Pleasant, then Mount Franklin, and then Mount Monroe, each lifting him higher, and making the sea of mountains around him more wide and billowy, and the yawning gulfs on either side more profound and awful, so that every moment his interest

Edward Hitchcock
The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

Since his father's death Wulf had lived quite alone in the ruined castle, for none of the servants would stay after the old knight died. But this did not trouble Wulf. He did not care to hunt the wild boar through the thicket, or kill the frightened stag. His chief pleasure was to stretch himself on the thick, soft moss, and gaze through the green branches of the forest trees at the blue heavens that smiled here and there in little flocks through the thick foliage. He also loved to seek for forest flowers--the blue were his favourites. Whence this preference he knew not, but he dreamt he had once looked into Swanhild's blue eyes. Or, when tired of these things, he would stand at one of the castle windows, gazing thoughtfully out into the blue distance. "Far away yonder," so ran his thoughts at these times, "where the blue heaven bends down to touch the earth, should I not find happiness there? Were it not better to journey abroad in search of happiness than to remain alone in this solitary castle, through whose walls the wind whistles, whilst owls and bats are now the only occupants of its once stately halls?"

Various
The Diamond Fairy Book

The snow-capped mountains of Kurdistan were just visible on the horizon line; toward them rolled wave after wave of low brown tracts of land, utterly destitute of any form or sign of life. Behind, as in front, like the coils of a shining serpent, wound the thin white line of the Tigris bed, the one response to the light overhead, imparting a sense of weary pursuit in its never-ending course. Fresh coils unwound themselves ahead as we toiled after new yet familiar spots on a never-changing horizon. Now and then the raftsmen dipped their oars quietly into the water, and with a few strokes twisted the raft into the straightest part of the river; otherwise, we were helpless, in the hands of an arbitrary current which made us bide its time as it slunk pensively round unsuggesting corners, or sped us faster when it gurgled impatiently over a long reach, where grey rock vied momentarily with the endless grey mud. We had given ourselves up completely to Time, and sat all day contemplating one stretch of bank after another as we swirled along. The ripple of the water, the intermittent splash of the oars, the crooning songs of the raftsmen all added to the sense of drowsy contemplation already established by the surrounding view. Everything was in contemplative harmony: isolated herons fished from slippery stones, gazing with such intentness into the passing water that they hardly deigned to raise their heads towards us, and, if they ever deemed it wiser to move out of our way, they would do so by a very

Louisa Jebb
By Desert Ways to Baghdad

Eight hours' hard travel from Pachamama brought us to Baeza. This "Antigua Ciudad," as Villavicencio calls it, was founded in 1552 by Don Egilio Ramirez Davalos, and named after the quite different spot where Scipio the Younger routed Asdrubal a thousand years before. It consists of two habitations, the residence of two families of Tumbaco Indians, situated in a clearing of the forest on the summit of a high ridge running along the right bank of the Coca. This point, about one hundred miles east of Quito, is important in the little traffic of the Oriente. All Indian trains from the capital to the province pass through Baeza, where the trail divides; one branch passing on easterly to San Jose, and thence down through Abila and Loreto to Santa Rosa; the other leading to the Napo through Archidona. Here we rested one day, taking possession of one half of the larger hut--a mere stockade with a palm-leaf roof, without chairs, chimney, or fire-place, except any place on the floor. We swung our hammocks, while our Indians stretched themselves on the ground beneath us. The island of Juan Fernandez is not a more isolated spot than Baeza. A dense forest, impenetrable save by the trails, stretches away on every side to the Andes and to the Atlantic, and northerly and southerly along the slope of the entire mountain chain. The forest is such an entangled mass of the living and the fallen, it is difficult to say which is the predominant spirit--life or death. It is the cemetery, as well as the birthplace, of a world of vegetation. The

James Orton
The Andes and the Amazon

Other scenes rose before her as she sat here thinking--a vision of the Park corner, in all the joyous glow and brilliancy of the London season at its height--with one ever at her side--one who there in the midst of all the varied types of beauty, and style and attractiveness of the kingdom collected together, never--as she used to tell him half playfully, but all proudly--never had eyes for any but herself.  Ah, it was something to be loved like that; and yet this was not the perfervid enthusiasm, the red-hot glow of youthful adoration, but the love of one considerably past that illusive stage; whose experiences had been multifold, and frequently bitter.  Again, she saw the green glories of the Cliveden woods, mirrored in the broad placid surface, as she and one other floated down that loveliest of lovely reaches in the fire-path of the westering sunlight, alone together, the murmur of their voices and the dipped wing of the hovering swallow blending with the lazy splash of the sculls.  Again, in the opera box, while the most splendid staging perhaps that "Faust" had ever been put on with, held the entranced and densely packed multitude in the lowered light, _she_ dwelt in a paradise all her own, for had she not the presence, even the contact of that one? Many and many a scene came before her now.  Ah, that year!  It had been indeed a year of love.  And in every such scene, in every such recollection he had been ever the same.  Never a moment of time that he could spare but had been spent with her--indeed not a few also that he

Bertram Mitford
The Ruby Sword

In an hour or two we came to Yosemite Creek, the stream that makes the greatest of all the Yosemite falls. It is about forty feet wide at the Mono Trail crossing, and now about four feet in average depth, flowing about three miles an hour. The distance to the verge of the Yosemite wall, where it makes its tremendous plunge, is only about two miles from here. Calm, beautiful, and nearly silent, it glides with stately gestures, a dense growth of the slender two-leaved pine along its banks, and a fringe of willow, purple spirea, sedges, daisies, lilies, and columbines. Some of the sedges and willow boughs dip into the current, and just outside of the close ranks of trees there is a sunny flat of washed gravelly sand which seems to have been deposited by some ancient flood. It is covered with millions of erethrea, eriogonum, and oxytheca, with more flowers than leaves, forming an even growth, slightly dimpled and ruffled here and there by rosettes of _Spraguea umbellata_. Back of this flowery strip there is a wavy upsloping plain of solid granite, so smoothly ice-polished in many places that it glistens in the sun like glass. In shallow hollows there are patches of trees, mostly the rough form of the two-leaved pine, rather scrawny looking where there is little or no soil. Also a few junipers (_Juniperus occidentalis_), short and stout, with bright cinnamon-colored bark and gray foliage, standing alone mostly, on the sun-beaten pavement, safe from fire, clinging by slight joints,--a

John Muir
My First Summer in the Sierra