Page:Brown·Bread·from·a·Colonial·Oven-Baughan-1912.pdf/133

 it is true, a clump of native trees might yet be seen; but even these were doomed, for Bush trees are gregarious, and will not long continue to survive without the shelter of their fellows; and for inches of such verdure there were acres and acres of the barren devastation. The great half-burnt skeletons of the forest, grey and black and bleached and piebald, stood gauntly up, as though in mute protest, from tawny hillside and green flat. They were splintered and shattered; at their feet lay multitudes of their brethren—enormous rotting logs, and the mouldering black stumps from which they had been severed; and it was only a question of time before they too would rest their ruins on the ground.

In one paddock Millicent could see, in spite of the bright sunshine, a little bluish film of smoke rising from the earth here and there, with a red flower or two of fire twinkling through it, as it veered and wavered in the unequal breeze. The settler who owned that paddock was trying to clear it. He had set it alight the day before, when there had been a wind. At night, when the fire smouldering at the heart of every stump would show itself in the darkness, the whole paddock would be spotted with crimson, and look all eerie, like a witches’ camp.

The paddocks bordering the road lay low; there were rushes growing in them, and from among the rushes the rains of March looked up into the sky with eyes that were bright blue pools. The grass sprang fresh and thick on these low flats; the ground looked all inlaid with vivid green and blue. Minas, with their bold, important bearing, their yellow beaks, and handsome dark wings patched