The Other Shade-Trees Were
Also Old And Gnarled, Some Of Them Dying.
The house itself did not
look ancient, and was built of unburnt bricks and thatched, and had a
broad corridor supported by wooden posts or pillars.
The Casa Antigua was situated about six miles from our house, but
looked no more than three on account of the great height of the trees,
which made it appear large and conspicuous on that wide level plain.
The land for miles round it was covered with a dense growth of cardoon
thistles. Now the cardoon is the European artichoke run wild and its
character somewhat altered in a different soil and climate. The large
deep-cut leaves are of a palish grey-green colour, the stalks covered
with a whitish-grey down, and the leaves and stems thickly set with
long yellow spines. It grows in thick bushes, and the bushes grow
close together to the exclusion of grasses and most other plant-life,
and produces purple blossoms big as a small boy's head, on stems four
or five feet high. The stalks, which are about as thick as a man's
wrist, were used when dead and dry as firewood; and this indeed was
the only fuel obtainable at that time in the country, except "cow
chips," from the grazing lands and "peat" from the sheepfold. At the
end of summer, in February, the firewood-gatherers would set to work
gathering the cardoon-stalks, their hands and arms protected with
sheep-skin gloves, and at that season our carters would bring in huge
loads, to be stacked up in piles high as a house for the year's use.
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