DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61635#0076
C 72 1
The .wind was. now directly in our faces, and the
road was deep with sand and loose with stones,
and we had not gone a mile, a mile but scarcely
one, when we lost our tempers outright and sent
sentiment to the winds. First we climbed a long
up-grade, passing old crumbling grey churches
decorated with grotesques and gargoyles like those
on St. Wulfran’s, in Abbeville, some perched upon
hillocks, with cottages gathered about them, others
adjoining lonely chateaux• and riding through
forlornly poor villages full of houses tumbling to
pieces and vicious dogs. Hills rose to our left;
to our right, in the valley below, were wide
marshes covered with a luxurious green growth,
and beyond, the river, on the other side of
which was a town with a tall church rising in
its centre.
Once we got down to drink syrup and water at
an inn where a commercial traveller catechised us
about America.-
“And the commerce, it goes well there? Yes?”
—I suppose he took us for fellow-drummers;
and I must admit the idea of our travelling for
pleasure over such roads was the last likely to
occur to him.
Then we went down hill for some distance,
but we ran into ridges of sand and brought up
suddenly
The .wind was. now directly in our faces, and the
road was deep with sand and loose with stones,
and we had not gone a mile, a mile but scarcely
one, when we lost our tempers outright and sent
sentiment to the winds. First we climbed a long
up-grade, passing old crumbling grey churches
decorated with grotesques and gargoyles like those
on St. Wulfran’s, in Abbeville, some perched upon
hillocks, with cottages gathered about them, others
adjoining lonely chateaux• and riding through
forlornly poor villages full of houses tumbling to
pieces and vicious dogs. Hills rose to our left;
to our right, in the valley below, were wide
marshes covered with a luxurious green growth,
and beyond, the river, on the other side of
which was a town with a tall church rising in
its centre.
Once we got down to drink syrup and water at
an inn where a commercial traveller catechised us
about America.-
“And the commerce, it goes well there? Yes?”
—I suppose he took us for fellow-drummers;
and I must admit the idea of our travelling for
pleasure over such roads was the last likely to
occur to him.
Then we went down hill for some distance,
but we ran into ridges of sand and brought up
suddenly