springs, all the signs of a prosperous land, but she liked better the uncertainty, the magic and mystery that the northern hills hid beneath their wealth of bush.
They turned their faces to the sea. They dropped into little dips and mounted little rises, alternately seeing and losing sight of the sand-dunes to the left of them and the reddish white cliffs to the right. There was not a sizable tree to be seen on this flatness set up between the river and the ocean till you came to the hills that rose suddenly out of it on the north. Nothing but pampas grass and fern and low scrub would grow on its niggardly soil.
They swung along happily, startling myriads of grasshoppers and small brown butterflies that lived in some miraculous manner upon the dead sticks. Soon it became harder to walk, and their feet sank in the heavy sand. And the air was now filled with the roar of the sea.
As they cleared a mound, all unexpectedly glory was spread about their feet. They stood at the head of an S-shaped ravine that cut into the coast-line, dividing a stretch of sand-hills from a stretch of cliffs. It was deep and green with forest trees fed from a spring that gushed out at its head to fall in a series of cataracts on to a shallow stony bed, and so out across the beach below. In layers between the dunes and the cliffs the gap was striped with low sand-banks, a bit of white beach, a narrow line of lazy surf and a stretch of azure sea. Coming to it thus across the miles of hot aridity, the gully was a wonder of coolness and vivid colour and sweet scents.
The road dipped suddenly and a turn showed them the first waterfall. Valerie was furious to see iron pipes leading from it.
“Of course they had to ruin it?” she exploded.
Further down the trees met above them and they
