ABSTRACT
The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them …. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and flagpole lost in it …. Once, I remember, we came across a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears that the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts …. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
