One of the boys brought down from the hill a particularly large fellow, hanging on a forked stick, its frightful mouth gaping so wide open that the whole head seemed split in two, and big amber-coloured drops of the terrible poison hanging to its fangs.
One certainly gets accustomed to anything; and here even the little children think nothing of killing a rattlesnake on their way to school. It is true they are easily killed, and are always in a hurry to get away. The danger is, of course, that one may tread on them unawares, for their skin is so like the colour of the ground. But on the road they are easily seen, and in walking through the brush one keeps a sharp look-out.
The house looked terribly bare, perched on the hill-top, without a touch of green about it and no single patch of shade far or near, so we were in a great hurry to make the garden, which was to surround the house, but was only to be a small one, as when once we had made it, we should, of course, have to keep it in order ourselves. When it was finished, we could not but laugh at our cypress hedge of baby trees about ten inches high, standing round so valiantly, and through which the smallest chicken walked with easy dignity. However, now it is a thick green wall, six or eight feet high, and there is a fence as well to keep out barn-yard intruders.
Shade trees were planted, perhaps too profusely, in our eagerness for the shade and the dear green for which our eyes so hungered.
Among the many different pangs of homesickness, a longing for the trees, and the beautiful green of England, is almost as painful as the sehnsucht that pinches one so surely at times, for the sight of an old friend’s face.
We are unusually fortunate in having within reach exceptionally charming cultivated people; and their kindliness to the newcomers, has made all the difference to us in the happiness of our social life.
But old friends grow ever dearer to the exiled ones, and I often think that if those at home who have friends in “foreign parts” knew with what joy and gratitude each simple sign is received, which proves that still they are remembered, then, indeed, many an odd paper, or little book, would be dropped into the post, when time or inclination for letter-writing failed. The paper has tenfold its value, because of the unwritten message it conveys from friend to friend.
After the garden was finished, we cleared a piece of land on the hilltop, at the back of the ranch, about one acre in size, and made a small plantation there of eucalyptus, for firewood; it grows very fast and needs little attention. Also six acres on the hill-slopes, that lay too high for irrigation, and therefore would not do for lemons, we cleared, and planted with peaches.
In April we worked hard, laying more piping. Pipe-laying is the pain and crucifixion of a rancher’s life. No part of the work is so detested; it is very back-breaking work to begin with, and there are frantic half hours spent over screws that will not screw, where the thread of the pipe has been broken or injured in the transit, or faultily made; and there are the bends in the land, which the pipe has to be coaxed round, and there are “elbows,” and “tees,” and “unions,” and “crosses,” and “hydrants,” each of which has its own separate way of being exasperating.
(To be continued.)