16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
ton horse-leech.'
The road to Lima ran between great irrigated
mud-walled fields of sugar-cane, cotton, alfalfa,
Indian corn, and past carob-groves, with
here and there bananas, oranges and lemons
in all their variety; and where the sides of the
valley rose, some distant vines. At times it followed
the deep-cut bank of the Rimac, now a
fine great roaring torrent from the snows that
could be seen a great way off, and here were
palms, strangely interspersed with fine great
willows of a kind Stephen had not seen before.
Few birds, apart from an elegant tern
that patrolled the quieter side-pools of the
river, and few flowers: this was the dry season
of the year, and except where the innumerable
irrigation-channels flowed nothing but a grey
wiry grass was to be seen.
There was a good deal of traffic: casks and