one's face.

The barrens were always green. But it was not the green of the northern
forest; it was the dark, tranquil, unchanging hue of the South. The
ground was covered thickly with herbage and little shrubs. Here and
there flower stalks made their way through, pushing themselves up as
high as they could in order to get their heads out in the sunshine;
there they swung merrily to and fro, and looked about them--violets so
broad and bright that one could recognize their blueness at a distance,
red bells of the calopogon, the yellow and lavender of pinguiculas
rising from their prim little rosettes of leaves down below; near the
pools the pitcher-plants; nearer still, hiding in thickets, the ferns.
These pools were a wonder. How came they there in so dry a land? For the
barrens were pure white sand; each narrow road, where the exterior mat
of green had been worn away, was a dry white track in which the foot
sank warmly. The pools were there, however, and in abundance. Though
shallow, their clear water had a rich hue like that of dark red wine.
Those on horseback or in a cart went through them, the little
silver-white descent on one side to get to them, and the ascent on the
other, forming the only "hills" the barrens knew; for those on foot, a
felled pine-tree sometimes served as a bridge.

The trails, crossing in various directions, were many, they all appeared
to be old. One came upon them unexpectedly, often they were not visible
in the low shrubbery three feet away. Once found, they were definite
enough; they never became merged in the barren, or stopped; they always
went sleepily on and on, they did not appear themselves to know whither.
And certainly no one else knew, as Winthrop found when occasionally, he
being more lost than usual (on the barrens he was always lost to a
certain degree, and liked it), he would stop his horse to ask of a
passing cracker in what direction some diverging trail would take him,
in case he should follow it. The cracker, astride his sorry pony, would
stare at him open-mouthed; but he never knew. Packed into the
two-wheeled cart behind him, all his family, with their strange
clay-colored complexions and sunburnt light hair, would stare also; and
they never knew. They were a gentle, mummy-like people, too indolent
even to wonder why a stranger should wish to know; they stared at him
with apathetic eyes, and then passed on, not once turning their heads,
even the children, for a second l