Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

CHAPTER SIXTHE declining sun had shifted the shadows from west toeast amongst the houses of the town. It had shifted themupon the whole extent of the immense Campo, with thewhite walls of its haciendas on the knolls dominating thegreen distances; with its grass-thatched ranches crouchingin the folds of ground by the banks of streams; withthe dark islands of clustered trees on a clear sea of grass,and the precipitous range of the Cordillera, immense andmotionless, emerging from the billows of the lower forestslike the barren coast of a land of giants. The sunset raysstriking the snow-slope of Higuerota from afar gave it anair of rosy youth, while the serrated mass of distant peaksremained black, as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulatingsurface of the forests seemed powdered with palegold dust; and away there, beyond Rincon, hidden from thetown by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the San Tome gorge,with the flat wall of the mountain itself crowned by giganticferns, took on warm tones of brown and yellow, with redrusty streaks, and the dark green clumps of bushes rootedin crevices. From the plain the stamp sheds and the housesof the mine appeared dark and small, high up, like thenests of birds clustered on the ledges of a cliff. The zigzagpaths resembled faint tracings scratched on the wall of acyclopean blockhouse. To the two serenos of the mine on