Crows followed the caravan in great
numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid man, six
feet high, with reddish whiskers, the most opaque Englishman Owen had
ever seen. "'We must get rid of some of them,'" Owen muttered,
quoting Burton. "'Terrible destructive, them birds,'"
Among these remembrances of England, a jackal running across the
path, just as a fox would in England, reminded Owen that he was in
Africa; and though occasionally one meets an adder in England, one
meets them much more frequently in the North of Africa. It was
impossible to say how many Owen had not seen lying in front of his
horse like dead sticks. As the cavalcade passed they would twist
themselves down a hole. As for rats, they seemed to be everywhere,
and at home everywhere, with the adders and with the rabbits; any
hole was good enough for the rat. The lizards were larger and uglier
than the English variety, and Owen never could bring himself to look
upon them with anything but disgust--their blunt head, the viscous
jaws exuding some sort of scum; and he left them to continue their
eternal siesta in the warm sand.
That evening, after passing through a succession of hills and narrow
valleys, the caravan entered the southern plain, an immense
perspective of twenty or thirty miles; and Owen reined up his horse
and sat at gaze, watching the dim greenness of the alfa-grass
striped with long rays of pale light and grey shadows.
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