As the sun rose, a kind of transformation-scene took place. The whole level land lifted at the horizon till the teams seemed crawling forever at bottom of an enormous bowl. Mystical forms came into view—grotesquely elongated, unrecognizable. Hills twenty, thirty miles away rose like apparitions, astonishingly magnified. Willows became elms, a settler's shanty rose like a shot-tower—towns hitherto unseen swam and palpitated in the yellow flood of light like shaken banners low-hung on unseen flagstaffs.
Burke marched with uplifted face. He was like one suddenly wakened in a new world, where nothing was familiar. Not a tree or shrub was in sight. Not a mark of plough or harrow—everything was wild, and to him mystical and glorious. His eyes were like those of a man who sees a world at its birth.
Hour after hour they moved across the swelling land. Hour after hour, while the yellow sun rolled up the slope, putting to flight the morning shapes on the horizon—striking the plain into level prose again, and warming the air into genial March. Hour after hour the horses toiled on till the last cabin fell away to the east, like a sail at sea, till the road faded into a trail almost imperceptible on the firm sod.
And so at last they came to the land of "the straddle-bug"—the squatters' watch dog—three boards nailed together (like a stack of army muskets) to mark a claim. Burke resembled a man taking his first sea-voyage. His eyes searched the plain restlessly, and his brain dreamed. Bailey, an old settler—of two years' experience—whistled and sang and shouted lustily to his tired beasts.
It drew toward noon. Bailey's clear voice shouted back, "When we reach that swell we'll see the Western Coteaux." The Western Coteaux! To Burke, the man from Illinois, this was like discovering a new range of mountains.
"There they rise," Bailey called, a little later.
Burke looked away to the west. Low down on the horizon lay a long, blue bank, hardly more substantial than a line of cloud. "How far off are they?" he asked, in awe.
"About twenty-five miles. Our claims are just about in line with that gap." Bailey pointed with his whip. "And about twelve miles from here. We're on the unsurveyed land now."
Burke experienced a thrill of exultation as he looked around him. In the distance, other carriages were crawling like beetles. A couple of shanties, newly built on a near-by ridge, glittered like gold in the sun, and the piles of yellow lumber and the straddle-bugs increased in number as they left the surveyed land and emerged into the finer tract which lay as yet unmapped. At noon they stopped and fed their animals, eating their own food on the ground beside their wagons.