One day I wandered to the margin of the woods, and climbing a tree,
surveyed a prospect new to me. For miles and miles, away to the white
line of the smoking Cordillera, stretched a low rolling plain; one vast
thistle-bed, the down of which flew in grey gauzy clouds before a soft
fitful breeze; innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it, and bent
the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose above the level
thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down. The
forest leaves seemed tasteless; my stomach sickened at them; nothing but
that tree would satisfy me; and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with
half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried even my bulk.
At last, after days of painful crawling, I dragged my unwieldiness to the
tree-foot. Around it the plain was bare, and scored by burrows and heaps
of earth, among which gold, some in dust, some in great knots and ingots,
sparkled everywhere in the sun, in fearful contrast to the skulls and bones
which lay bleaching round. Some were human, some were those of vast and
monstrous beasts.
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