Shall it be a land of plenty, green, well-watered meadows, the pleasant homes of man, though savage, not unfriendly?
O hope, unutterable! or is it (O despair!) another of those dreadful woods, starving solitude under the high-arched gum-trees.
Onward he crept; and the line on the horizon grew broader and darker: onward, still; he was exulting, he had conquered, he was bold and hard as ever.

He got nearer, now within some dozen miles; it was an indistinct distance, but green at any rate; huzza--never mind night-fall; he cannot wait, nor rest, with this Elysium before him: so he toiled along through all the black night, and a friendly storm of rain refreshed him, as his thirsty pores drank in the cooling stream.
Aha! by morning's dawn he should be standing on the edge of that green paradise, fresh as a young lion, and no thanks to any one but his own shrewd indomitable self.
Morning dawned--and through the vague twilight loomed some high and tangled wall of green foliage, stretching seemingly across the very world.

Most sickening sight! a matted, thorny jungle, one of those primeval woods again, but closer, thicker, darker than the park-like one before; rank and prickly herbage in a rotting swamp, crowding up about the stately trees.

Must he battle his way through?
Well, then, if it must be so, he must and will; any thing rather than this hot and blistering sand.

If he is doomed by fate to starve, be it in the shade, not in that fierce sun.