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The Land of Little Rain-Part13_Mary Hunter Austin(1868-1934)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Every subsequent owner of Greenfields bought it with Amos in full

view. The last of these was Diedrick. Along in August of that



year came a week of low water. Judson's ditch failed and he went

out with his rifle to learn why. There on the headgate sat



Diedrick's frau with a long-handled shovel across her lap and all

the water turned into Diedrick's ditch; there she sat



knitting through the long sun, and the children brought out her

dinner. It was all up with Amos; he was too much of a gentleman to



fight a lady--that was the way he expressed it. She was a very

large lady, and a longhandled shovel is no mean weapon. The next



year Judson and Diedrick put in a modern water gauge and took the

summer ebb in equal inches. Some of the water-right difficulties



are more squalid than this, some more tragic; but unless you have

known them you cannot very well know what the water thinks as it



slips past the gardens and in the long slow sweeps of the canal.

You get that sense of brooding from the confined and sober floods,



not all at once but by degrees, as one might become aware of a

middle-aged and serious neighbor who has had that in his life to



make him so. It is the repose of the completely accepted instinct.

With the water runs a certain following of thirsty herbs and



shrubs. The willows go as far as the stream goes, and a bit

farther on the slightest provocation. They will strike root in the



leak of a flume, or the dribble of an overfull bank, coaxing the

water beyond its appointed bounds. Given a new waterway in a



barren land, and in three years the willows have fringed all its

miles of banks; three years more and they will touch tops across



it. It is perhaps due to the early usurpation of the willows that

so little else finds growing-room along the large canals. The



birch beginning far back in the canon tangles is more

conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the



permanence of its drink assured. It stops far short of the summer

limit of waters, and I have never known it to take up a position on



the banks beyond the ploughed lands. There is something almost

like premeditation in the avoidance of cultivated" target="_blank" title="a.在耕作的；有教养的">cultivated tracts by certain



plants of water borders. The clematis, mingling its foliage

secretly with its host, comes down with the stream tangles to the



village fences, skips over to corners of little used pasture lands

and the plantations that spring up about waste water pools; but



never ventures a footing in the trail of spade or plough; will not

be persuaded to grow in any garden plot. On the other hand, the



horehound, the common European species imported with the colonies,

hankers after hedgerows and snug little borders. It is more widely



distributed than many native species, and may be always found along

the ditches in the village corners, where it is not appreciated.



The irrigating ditch is an impartial distributer. It gathers all

the alien weeds that come west in garden and grass seeds and



affords them harbor in its banks. There one finds the European

mallow (Malva rotundifolia) spreading out to the streets



with the summer overflow, and every spring a dandelion or two,

brought in with the blue grass seed, uncurls in the swardy soil.



Farther than either of these have come the lilies that the Chinese

coolies cultivate in adjacent mud holes for their foodful



bulbs. The seegoo establishes itself very readily in swampy

borders, and the white blossom spikes among the arrow-pointed



leaves are quite as acceptable to the eye as any native species.

In the neighborhood of towns founded by the Spanish



Californians, whether this plant is native to the locality or not,

one can always find aromatic clumps of yerba buena, the "good herb"



(Micromeria douglassii). The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught

to the mission fathers by the neophytes, and wise old dames of my



quaintance" target="_blank" title="n.相识；熟人，相识的人">acquaintance have worked astonishing cures with it and the succulent

yerba mansa. This last is native to wet meadows and distinguished



enough to have a family all to itself.

Where the irrigating ditches are shallow and a little



neglected, they choke quickly with watercress that multiplies about

the lowest Sierra springs. It is characteristic of the frequenters



of water borders near man haunts, that they are chiefly of the

sorts that are useful to man, as if they made their services an



excuse for the intrusion. The joint-grass of soggy pastures

produces edible, nut-flavored tubers, called by the Indians






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