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A MORNING’S JOURNEY 187
Virgin Mary” dazzling white on its long stems, nodded
over the running water on both sides of the footpath.
The flat Vega lay before me shining in the sunlight.
Over the Vega there extended the thousand-branched
system of canals, so that it might rain whether the
Lord willed it or not, as the merry peasant put it.
“But God’s rain is better than the river’s rain,” his
wife added by way of gentle correction.
The floor of the Vega was a green surrounded by
green, broken only by the many whitewashed huts
which flecked the great space like white sails. And
then the snow-line! How it crept upward, rising
higher each day. First the snow ran all the way down,
down to the backs of the nearest hillocks, and one
night there were even traces of it way down in the
valley. But the sun touched it with a magic wand and
the snow dissolved, filling the clefts with cascades and
making the stream tumble head over heels into its
subterranean bed. The stream boils and babbles under
the city streets. On the other side, when it comes out
again, it suffers a blood-letting at the hands of the
peasants, which makes it quite weak and pale. Its
waters are drawn off to the east and to the west.
The wheat stood knee-high and bushy, as thick as
grass and without any weeds. One day in the fall the
peasant went out and delved in the side with his
pointed prong, to which his two mules were hitched.
Then he walked over the same plot, sowing.
“For God, for the birds, and for me,” he would say
as he cast out a handful of seed at each step. The
frivolous birds ate their share on the spot, but the
good God and the peasant permitted theirs to grow.
All winter long, sheep and goats grazed on the wheat.
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