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The Land of Little Rain-Part15_Mary Hunter Austin(1868-1934)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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the drift. It is hot, dry, fretful work, but by going along the



ground with the wind behind, one may come upon strange things in

its tumultuous privacy. I like these truces of wind and heat that



the desert makes, otherwise I do not know how I should come by so

many acquaintances with furtive folk. I like to see hawks sitting



daunted in shallow holes, not daring to spread a feather,

and doves in a row by the prickle-bushes, and shut-eyed cattle,



turned tail to the wind in a patient doze. I like the smother of

sand among the dunes, and finding small coiled snakes in open



places, but I never like to come in a wind upon the silly sheep.

The wind robs them of what wit they had, and they seem never to



have learned the self-induced hypnotic stupor with which most wild

things endure weather stress. I have never heard that the desert



winds brought harm to any other than the wandering shepherds and

their flocks. Once below Pastaria Little Pete showed me bones



sticking out of the sand where a flock of two hundred had been

smothered in a bygone wind. In many places the four-foot posts of



a cattle fence had been buried by the wind-blown dunes.

It is enough occupation, when no storm is brewing, to watch



the cloud currents and the chambers of the sky. From Kearsarge,

say, you look over Inyo and find pink soft cloud masses asleep on



the level desert air; south of you hurries a white troop late to

some gathering of their kind at the back of Oppapago; nosing the



foot of Waban, a woolly mist creeps south. In the clean, smooth

paths of the middle sky and highest up in air, drift, unshepherded,



small flocks ranging contrarily. You will find the proper names of

these things in the reports of the Weather Bureau--cirrus, cumulus,



and the like and charts that will teach by study when to

sow and take up crops. It is astonishing the trouble men will be



at to find out when to plant potatoes, and gloze over the eternal

meaning of the skies. You have to beat out for yourself many



mornings on the windy headlands the sense of the fact that you get

the same rainbow in the cloud drift over Waban and the spray of



your garden hose. And not necessarily then do you live up to it.

THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES



There are still some places in the west where the quails cry

"cuidado"; where all the speech is soft, all the manners gentle;



where all the dishes have chile in them, and they make more of the

Sixteenth of September than they do of the Fourth of July. I mean



in particular El Pueblo de Las Uvas. Where it lies, how to come at

it, you will not get from me; rather would I show you the heron's



nest in the tulares. It has a peak behind it, glinting above the

tamarack pines, above a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long



slope valley-wards and the shoreward steep of waves toward the

Sierras.



Below the Town of the Grape Vines, which shortens to Las Uvas

for common use, the land dips away to the river pastures and the



tulares. It shrouds under a twilightthicket of vines, under a

dome of cottonwood-trees, drowsy and murmurous as a hive.



Hereabouts are some strips of tillage and the headgates that dam up

the creek for the village weirs; upstream you catch the growl of



the arrastra. Wild vines that begin among the willows lap

over to the orchard rows, take the trellis and roof-tree.



There is another town above Las Uvas that merits some

attention, a town of arches and airy crofts, full of linnets,



blackbirds, fruit birds, small sharp hawks, and mockingbirds that

sing by night. They pour out piercing, unendurably sweet cavatinas



above the fragrance of bloom and musky smell of fruit. Singing is

in fact the business of the night at Las Uvas as sleeping is for



midday. When the moon comes over the mountain wall new-washed from

the sea, and the shadows lie like lace on the stamped floors of the



patios, from recess to recess of the vine tangle runs the thrum of

guitars and the voice of singing.



At Las Uvas they keep up all the good customs brought out of

Old Mexico or bred in a lotus-eating land; drink, and are merry and



look out for something to eat afterward; have children, nine or ten

to a family, have cock-fights, keep the siesta, smoke cigarettes



and wait for the sun to go down. And always they dance; at dusk on

the smooth adobe floors, afternoons under the trellises where the



earth is damp and has a fruity smell. A betrothal, a wedding, or

a christening, or the mere proximity of a guitar is sufficient



occasion; and if the occasion lacks, send for the guitar and dance

anyway.



All this requires explanation. Antonio Sevadra,

drifting this way from Old Mexico with the flood that poured into



the Tappan district after the first notable strike, discovered La

Golondrina. It was a generous lode and Tony a good fellow; to work






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