Beyond the
ridge lay a short dip--short, that is, as a bird flies. Not more
than fifty yards ahead the slope rose again, strewn with granite
boulders and piled masses of granite, such as in Cornwall we call
"tors"; and clear away to the mountain-tops stretched a view with
never a tree, but a few outstanding bushes only. Yet from ridge to
ridge green vegetation filled every hollow, and in the hollow between
me and the nearest the hogs were lost.
I heard, however, their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the
undergrowth: and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three
minutes' work to reach the next ridge. I followed then, confidently
enough--and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican _macchia_ by
plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two rocks of granite.
I did not actually fall more than a third of the distance, for I
saved myself by clutching at a clematis which laced its coils, thick
as a man's wrist, across the cleft. But I know that the hole cannot
have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the
bottom of it to recover my musket.
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