Then
We Went Into Camp At The Edge Of Another Grass Valley, By A
Stream Across Which Rose Some Ordinary Low Cliffs.
That is the disconcerting thing about a whole lot of this
country-it is so much like home.
Of course, there are many wide
districts exotic enough in all conscience-the jungle beds of the
rivers, the bamboo forests, the great tangled forests themselves,
the banana groves down the aisles of which dance savages with
shields-but so very much of it is familiar. One needs only
church spires and a red-roofed village or so to imagine one's
self in Surrey. There is any amount of country like Arizona, and
more like the uplands of Wyoming, and a lot of it resembling the
smaller landscapes of New England. The prospects of the whole
world are there, so that somewhere every wanderer can find the
countryside of his own home repeated. And, by the same token,
that is exactly what makes a good deal of it so startling. When a
man sees a file of spear-armed savages, or a pair of snorty old
rhinos, step out into what has seemed practically his own back
yard home, he is even more startled than if he had encountered
them in quite strange surroundings.
We rode into the grass meadow and picked camp site. The men
trailed in and dumped down their loads in a row.
At a signal they set to work. A dozen to each tent got them up in
a jiffy.
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