An inland voyage, and Travels with a donkey . th pricking. It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcadeof stride-legged ladies and a pair of postrunners, the roadwas dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce re-member an incident but one. A handsome foal with abell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretchof common, sniffed the air martially as one about to dogreat deeds, and, suddenly thinking otherwise in hisgreen young heart, put about and galloped off as he hadcome, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long whileafterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up,
An inland voyage, and Travels with a donkey . th pricking. It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcadeof stride-legged ladies and a pair of postrunners, the roadwas dead solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce re-member an incident but one. A handsome foal with abell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretchof common, sniffed the air martially as one about to dogreat deeds, and, suddenly thinking otherwise in hisgreen young heart, put about and galloped off as he hadcome, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long whileafterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, andheard the note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the telegraph-wires seemed to continuethe same music. Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier,surrounded by rich meadows. They were cutting after-math on all sides, which gave the neighbourhood, thisgusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. Onthe opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mountingfor miles to the horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn. The Abbey of Mount St. Michael at Le Puy Velay 23 landscape, with black blots of fir-wood and white roadswandering through the hills. Over all this the cloudsshed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhatmenacing, exaggerating height and distance, and throw-ing into still higher relief the twisted ribbons of the high-way. It was a cheerless prospect, but one stimulating toa traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, andall that I beheld lay in another county — wild Gevaudan,mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently disforestedfrom terror of the wolves. Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the travellersadvance; and you may trudge through all our comfort-able Europe, and not meet with an adventure worth thename. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the frontiersof hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorableBeast, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. What acareer was his! He lived ten months at free quarters inGevauda
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Keywords: ., bookauthorstevensonrobertlouis1, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910
