But a little way off, the
solid bricks of woodland that lay squarely on slope and hill-top were
not green, but russet and grey, and ever less russet and more grey as
they drew off into the distance. As they drew off into the distance,
also, the woods seemed to mass themselves together, and lie thin and
straight, like clouds, upon the limit of one's view. Not that this
massing was complete, or gave the idea of any extent of forest, for
every here and there the trees would break up and go down into a
valley in open order, or stand in long Indian file along the horizon,
tree after tree relieved, foolishly enough, against the sky. I say
foolishly enough, although I have seen the effect employed cleverly
in art, and such long line of single trees thrown out against the
customary sunset of a Japanese picture with a certain fantastic
effect that was not to be despised; but this was over water and level
land, where it did not jar, as here, with the soft contour of hills
and valleys. The whole scene had an indefinable look of being
painted, the colour was so abstract and correct, and there was
something so sketchy and merely impressional about these distant
single trees on the horizon that one was forced to think of it all as
of a clever French landscape.
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