The ground, shelving away below me, was all sand, with a few
little heathy hillocks to break the monotony of it in certain
places. The lake itself had evidently once flowed to the spot on
which I stood, and had been gradually wasted and dried up to less
than a third of its former size. I saw its still, stagnant
waters, a quarter of a mile away from me in the hollow, separated
into pools and ponds by twining reeds and rushes, and little
knolls of earth. On the farther bank from me the trees rose
thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black shadows
on the sluggish, shallow water. As I walked down to the lake, I
saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy,
overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which
was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone,
looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper
under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging
thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats
were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows
themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw
here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of
an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering
through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking
in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously
still.
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