How fast the boat sped on over the surface of the whirling stream that
rushed by those red banks, swift as the flash of life, hurrying on to
lose itself in the ocean as life hurries on to lose itself in the
infinite.
The banks were getting flatter, here and there the stream widened,
the wild tamarisk, child of the desert, disappeared and gave way to
cultivated fields and wide tracts of the maguey plant, dear and
valuable to the Mexican as the date-palm to the East-Indian. Rough
yellow adobe huts stood here and there, their crude colouring of
unbaked mud turned into gold by that great painter, the tropical sun;
and sometimes a palm stood by a hut, cutting the fierce light blue of
the sky with its delicate, fine, curved, drooping branches; sometimes
the dark, glossy green of the organ cactus rose like jade pillars
beside it. All these sped by us quickly, though at times the scene was
so engaging I could have held it with my eyes; but ruthlessly we were
whirled forward and the scenes on the bank kept slipping behind us,
just as our dearest scenes and incidents in life keep slipping past,
swallowed up by the ever-pursuing distance.
Our red banks had been growing flatter and flatter and now they seemed
to disappear, and the river instantly broadened itself out and spread
into a lake, as if glad of the expansion. Over each bank, far on
either side, it rolled itself out in great shining flats of water,
glittering and dazzling, impossible to look at in this hour of noon;
and as if tranquillity had come to it with its greater freedom, the
river flowed more slowly and gently.
Our boatmen stood at ease at their paddles, pushing quietly along,
and I looked round with interest. We were in the centre of a great
lake in which here and there submerged trees and bushes made green
islands. An endless lake it seemed, a great waste of gleaming water.
We floated along gently like this for some time, and then almost
suddenly when I looked ahead, I saw the end of the lake was closing
in, there were woods and forests now upon its margin; a few more
strokes of the paddle and we were in shade, heavy, cool shade, where
the water gleamed with a bronze shimmer. Narrower still the lake end
became, the margins drew together, and with a swift push forwards,
like the bolt of a rabbit to its hole, our boat shot forwards into a
little tunnel of darkness before us over which the interlacing boughs
of the trees made a perfect arch. We were in the
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