the snow-crust--U.S.A.

"And now," I added, wiping the rime off my blade with the lappet of my
coat, "let us stop capering about here and get to business. You have
promised to put me on the way to your big city."

"Come on then," said the little man, gathering up his property.
"This white hillside leads to nowhere; we must get into the valley first,
and then you shall see your road." And right well that quaint barbarian
kept his promise.




CHAPTER XIII

It was half a day's march from those glittering snow-fields into the
low country, and when that was reached I found myself amongst quite
another people.

The land was no longer fat and flowery, giving every kind of produce
for the asking, but stony for the most part, and, where we first came
on vegetation, overgrown by firs, with a pine which looked to me like
a species which went to make the coal measures in my dear but distant
planet. More than this I cannot say, for there are no places in the
world like mess-room and quarter-deck for forgetting school learning.
Instead of the glorious wealth of parti-coloured vegetation my eyes had
been accustomed to lately, here they rested on infertile stretches of
marshland intersected by moss-covered gravel shoots, looking as though
they had been pushed into the plains in front of extinct glaciers