I don't
fear dogs, but these were powerful animals, and withal a tremendous
surprise. I must have had a bad time had no one called them away.
I came to the river Bzib, deep and fast-running, and rowed myself
across in a leaky and muddy boat. I ploughed my way through deep
sand, or stepped from boulder to boulder, or crushed through miles of
sea-holly and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which the
Ahkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, since
their conversion, they have chiefly committed murder. I passed through
three strange woods, the first of juniper and wild pear; the second,
all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn,
but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the
third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the
far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like
woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular
elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the
earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the
wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails
had never been clipped; the third, queenly, as if beloved of Diana.
Evening grew to night as I plodded past these woods or struggled
through them.
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