39 



than time it shall endure till the rocks burn 

 and waste, the heavens be rolled away as a 

 scroll. Likewise full of contrast. Here in 

 the lowland the fat, black earth, full of 

 rounded, unctuous pebbles, has a fine, moist 

 breath subtile, suggestive that somehow 

 brings with it the noise of shaken reeds. 

 Rightly enough, too. Less than a hundred 

 years back all this level was arustle with 

 tall, green cane. Deer fed fat on it, bear 

 lay in wait to make prey of fawn or doe 

 mayhap also themselves to perish, spiked 

 through with antler-thrusts from a stag of ten. 

 Settlers came in by twos, by threes built 

 cabins of round poles to shelter them while 

 they cut roads through the cane. The first 

 white owner of these acres made a path to 

 his next neighbor's, eleven miles away, and 

 either hand, along every foot of it, the reeds 

 upraised a green, whispering rampart, so 

 high that a man on horseback was com- 

 pletely hidden. The few highwaymen of 

 that time by turns blessed and cursed the 

 cane-brake. If it hid themselves, their vic- 

 tims, past finding, it likewise made flight 

 impossible, save by known and beaten ways, 

 communication across even the shortest 

 space a matter so difficult as to be always 

 full of risk. 



