From this elevation, which was about a hundred
feet above the plain, I wished to survey the country before me, for
I was tired and hungry, so was my horse, and I was anxious to find a
resting-place before night. Before me the country stretched away in
vast undulations towards the ocean, which was not, however, in sight.
Not the faintest stain of vapour appeared on the immense crystalline
dome of heaven, while the stillness and transparency of the atmosphere
seemed almost preternatural. A blue gleam of water, south-east of where
I stood and many leagues distant, I took to be the lake of Rocha; on
the western horizon were faint blue cloud-like masses with pearly
peaks. They were not clouds, however, but the sierras of the range
weirdly named _Cuchilla de las Animas_--Ghost-haunted Mountains.
At length, like a person who puts his binocular into his pocket and
begins to look about him, I recalled my vision from its wanderings
over illimitable space to examine the objects close at hand. On the
slope of the hill, sixty yards from my standpoint, were some deep
green, dwarf bushes, each bush looking in that still brilliant sunshine
as if it had been hewn out of a block of malachite; and on the pale
purple solanaceous flowers covering them some humble-bees were feeding.
It was the humming of the bees coming distinctly to my ears that first
attracted my attention to the bushes; for so still was the atmosphere
that at that distance apart--sixty yards--two persons might have
conversed easily without raising their voices.
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