The Subaltern [by G R Gleig] Library Ed

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 34 CHAPTER III. Dat had fully dawned when the general stir of the troops around me put an end to my repose. I opened my eyes, and remained for half a minute in a state of entire bewilderment, so new and so splendid was the prospect which met them. We had bivouacked upon a well-wooded eminence?standing, as...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 34 CHAPTER III. Dat had fully dawned when the general stir of the troops around me put an end to my repose. I opened my eyes, and remained for half a minute in a state of entire bewilderment, so new and so splendid was the prospect which met them. We had bivouacked upon a well-wooded eminence?standing, as it were, in the very centre of an amphitheatre of mountains. Behind us lay the beautiful little bay of Passages, tranquil and almost motionless, under the influence of a calm morning, though rendered more than usually gay by the ships and boats which covered its surface. In front, and to the right and left, rose, at some little distance off, hill above hill, not rugged and barren, like those among which we afterwards took up our abode, but shaggy with the richest and most luxuriant groves of plane, birch, and mountain-ash. Immediately beneath was a small glen, covered partly with the stubble of last year's barley, and still loaded with an abundant crop of unreaped Indian corn; whilsta little to the rear from the spot where I had slept, stood a neat farmhouse, having its walls hidden by the spreading branches of a vine, and studded with clusters of grapes approaching rapidly to perfection. In a word, it was a scene to which the pencil might perhaps do justice, but which defies all the powers of language adequately to describe. I arose in the same enthusiastic frame of mind with which I had gone to sleep, and assigned myself willingly to the task of erecting huts for our own accommodation and that of the men?no tents having as yet been issued to us. This was speedily effected. Large stakes were felled and driven into the earth, between which, in order to form the walls, thinner and more leafy branches were twisted, and these being covered with twigs so closely wedged as t...