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Chapter six. Introduction to the Zemi |
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It was a pleasant camp in park-land, with the site of an old headquarters station on the spur beyond. A wood like a Hampshire beech-hanger hid the village; and in it, thirty or so houses, whose steep-pitched roofs jutted in front as porches and sloped away behind, faced on to an irregular street of bare earth dotted with large, flat gravestones. There were two morungs, or " bachelors' halls ", each three times the size of a private house, and their huge front rooms served as clubs and dormitories for the men and youths. Small granaries on stilts and patches of fenced garden were scattered about on the village outskirts. Stray fruit-trees, plum and pomegranate, grew at the wood's edge. Beyond the houses, whose thatch was weathered to silver-grey, one saw the dim blue distances of the low ground. |
