Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 60

The aborigine lives on the cruelest land I have ever seen.

Which does not mean that it is ugly.

Part of it is, of course.

There are thousands of square miles of salt pan which are hideous.

They are huge areas which have been swept by winds for so many centuries that there is no soil left, but only deep bare ridges fifty or sixty yards apart with ravines between them thirty or forty feet deep and the only thing that moves is a scuttling layer of sand.

Such stretches have an inhuman moonlike quality.

But much of the land which the aborigine wanders looks as if it should be hospitable.

It is softened by the saltbush and the bluebush, has a peaceful quality, the hills roll softly.