The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 by Various
page 40 of 286 (13%)
page 40 of 286 (13%)
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blank negation, like the old obstinate "No" which Nature always returns
at first to your eager questioning. It provoked me, this staring reticence of the scenery, and stimulated me to a sort of dogged exertion. I think I walked steadily for about three hours over the jagged rocks and burning sands, interspersed with a few patches of straggling grass,--all the time up hill, with never a valley to vary the monotonous climbing,--until the bushes began to thicken in about the same manner as they had thinned into the desert, the grass and herbage herded closer together under my feet, and, beating off the ravenous sand, gradually expelled the last trace of it, a few tall trees strayed timidly among the lower shrubbery, growing more and more thickly, till I found myself at the border of an apparently extensive forest. The contrast was great between the view before and behind me. Behind lay the road I had achieved, the monotonous, toilsome, wearisome desert, the dry, formal introduction, as it were, to my coming journey. Before, long, cool vistas opened green through delicious shades,--a track seemed to be almost made over the soft grass, that wound in and out among the trees, and lost itself in interminable mazes. I plunged into the profound depths of the still forest, and confidently followed for path the first open space in which I found myself. It was a strangely still wood for the tropics,--no chattering parroquets, no screaming magpies, none of the sneering, gibing dissonances that I had been accustomed to,--all was silent, and yet intensely living. I fancied that the noble trees took pleasure in growing, they were so energized with life in every leaf. I noticed another peculiarity,--there was little underbrush, little of the luxuriance of vines and creepers, which is so striking in an African forest. Parasitic life, luxurious idleness, seemed impossible here; the atmosphere was too sacred, too solemn, for the fantastic ribaldry of |
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