These further slopes were clothed with wood.

I remember, on the first day that I watched, the forest beyond was black and dense like a cloud resting on the hill; the Nestor and our own country was soaked with sun.
"That's a fine forest," I said to my companion.
"Yes, the forest of S----, stretches miles back into Galicia." It was Nikitin that day who spoke to me.

We turned carelessly away.

Meanwhile how difficult and unpleasant those first weeks at Mittoevo were! We had none of us realised, I suppose, how sternly those days of retreat had tested our nerves.

We had been not only retreating, but (at the same time) working fiercely, and now, when for some while the work slackened and, under the hot blazing sun, we found nothing for our hands to do, a grinding irritable reaction settled down upon us.
I had known in my earlier experience at the war the troubles that inevitably rise from inaction; the little personal inconveniences, the tyrannies of habits and manners and appearances, when you've got nothing to do but sit and watch your immediate neighbour.