The mills of Garau
We came to a neck; the path mounted a little to push
through a cleft so narrow that the saddle-bags could not go
through together and had to be unloaded; and as I stood
waiting there, eight ibex, four young ones and four does,
leaped below our feet across the torrent boulders, and raced
up into the sunlight along a slanting ledge of strata that shot
peach-coloured into the sky. There was no water in the
stream, except a pool or two by some willows where we rested,
which dried up again lower down. The descent grew gender;
the trees spaced more openly; reddish stubble land appeared,
ploughed by the little tribe of Ali Shirwan who own the
Garau stream: their tents, not more than three or four, were
hidden in a tributary valley out of sight. The Garau also
was dry, but a little clear watercourse, led down from
Walantar between damp earthy banks, fed the mill and the
maize and bean-fields below it.
I ruscelletti che dai verdi colli
Di Casenrino scendon giuso in Arno,
Facendo i lor canali e freddi e molli.
It was amusing, in this severe land, to think of the tilled
and tended Tuscan fields, and it was pleasant, in the mellow
light, to come upon signs of humanity, hemmed in by solitude,
for the mills of Garau and their tents have no neighbours but
woods and mountains for many hours on every side. Only
one mill can be seen: a small half-pyramid of stones put to-
gether without mortar, and not krge enough for me to sleep
in. The miller, with a curly beard, was digging in his field.
He had no flour for our supper, but he mounted an old mare
and galloped off to get some from the tents whose smoke rose
from behind the hill. We made our camp under an oak tree
in the open. The cockerel was sacrificed and neatly arranged
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