Where the twin rivers set back the tides from the bay, the Land of the Little Duck begins. The tides come head-on past the Golden Gate and the river answers to their tremendous compulsion far inland, past the point where the Sacramento and San Joaquin flow together. On the lee side of the headland which makes the southern pilaster of the Gate, sits San Francisco, making of the name she borrowed from the bay a new and distinguished1 thing, as some women do with their husbands' titles. A better location for a city is Carquinez Strait; the Mexican comandante resident at Sonoma would have had it there, bearing the name of his wife, Francesca. Said he to the newly arrived American authorities, "Do so, and I will furnish you the finest site in the world, with State house and Residence complete." But it appears the land has chosen its own name. [108]
All the years after the Pope had divided the New World between Spain and the Portuguese2, the harbour lay hidden. Cabrillo, Drake, Maldonado, Juan de Fuca, Viscaino passed it in the night or veiled in obscuring fogs. And then Saint Francis showed it clear and lovely to Don Gaspar Portola, having for that revelation led him with holden eyes past his journey's objective. Likewise, when the time was ripe, he put it into the mind of the Yankee alcalde at Yerba Buena, a trading-post in the neighbourhood of Mission Dolores, that if the hamlet should be called San Francisco it might catch by implication the vessels3 clearing all ports of the world for San Francisco bay.
O Chance, Chance! says the historian and turns another page. But it is my opinion that among the birds to which Saint Francis preached was included the Little Duck.
The piers4 of the city front east, they face the Berkeley Hills, the Oaklands, the lands of the Sycamore, or, as the first settlers named them, the Alamedas. From thence vast settlements take their name, feeding the city as sea-birds do, from their own breasts. Back and forth5 between them the shuttling ferries weave thin webs of glistening6 wakes, duck-bodied tugs7 chugg and scuttle8, busy [109] still at world-building. From the promontory9 which makes the northern barrier of the Gate, Tamalpias swims out of atmospheric10 blueness. On its seaward slope, hardly out of reach of the siren's bellowing11 note, Muir Park preserves the ancient forest, rooted in the litter of a thousand years. And round about the foot of city and mountain the waters of the bay are blue, the hills are bluer. The hills melt down to greenness in the spring, the water runs to liquid emerald, flashing amber12; the hills are tawny13 after rains, the waters tone to the turbid14, clayey river-floods; land and sea they pursue one another as lovers through changing moods of colour; they have mists for mystery between revealing suns. Unless these things count for something, San Francisco is the very worst site in the world for a city. You take your heart in your mouth every time you go out to afternoon tea in the tram-cars that dip and swing like cockles at sea. They cut across streets so steep that grass grows between the cobbles where no traffic ever passes, to plunge15 down lanes of dwellings16 perched precariously17 as sea-birds' nests on the bare bones of hills that for true hilliness shame Rome's imperial seven. The bay side of the peninsula is mud, the Pacific side is sand. There great wasteful18 dunes19 [110] blow up, they shift and pile, they take the contours of the wind-lashed waters—the very worst site in the world for a great city's pleasure-ground, and yet somehow it is there.
For this city is one of those which have souls; it is a spirit sitting on a height, taking to itself form and the offices of civilisation20. This is a thing that we know, because we have seen the land shake it as a terrier shakes a rat, until the form of the city was broken; it dissolved in smoke and flame. And then as a polyp of the sea draws out of the fluent water form and perpetuity for itself, we saw our city draw back its shapes of wood and stone, and statelier, more befitting a spirit that has endured so much. Nobody knows really what a city is except that it is something more than a collocation of houses. From Telegraph Hill, where the old semaphore stood, which signalled the far-between arrivals of ships around the Horn, you can see the trade of the world pass and repass the pillars of the Gate, the wall-sided warships21. But none of these things really explain how San Francisco came to be clinging there to the leeward22 of a windy spit of land, like a great, grey sea-bird with palpitating wings.
True to her situation, San Francisco is nothing [111] if not dramatic. One recalls that the earliest foundation was dedicated23 to Our Lady of Dolors, Nuestro Señora de Dolores; the Indians fought here as they did nowhere else against Christian24 dominion25. There were more burials than baptisms, and in the old cemetery26 of Yerba Buena the dead were so abandoned of all grace that the sand refused to hold them. One who spent his boyhood in the shifting purlieus of the old Laguna told me how in the hollows where the scrub oaks shrugged27 off the wind and the sand waved like water, the nameless coffins28 were covered and uncovered between a night and day. But if the dead could not hold their tenancy, the living succeeded. They did it by the very force of that dramatic instinct awakened29 by the plot and counterplot of natural forces.
No Greek tragedy moved to more relentless30 measures than the moral upheaval31 of '56, when the whole city, in solemn funeral train behind the victim of one of those wild outbursts of lawlessness peculiar32 to the "gold rush," saw the lifeless bodies of the perpetrators hanging from the upper windows of the Vigilance Committee. Fifty years later came a wilder rout33, down streets searched out by fire, snatching at humour as they ran, as so many points of contact for the city's rebuilding. [112]
The very worst location in the world, as I have remarked, is this windy promontory past which the grey tides race, but so long as a city can dramatise itself, one situation will do as well as another in which to render itself immortal34.
The bay of San Francisco with its contingencies35 is one of the most interesting of inland yachting waters, full of adventurous36 weather. It is possible to sail in one general direction from Alviso to the city of Sacramento, a hundred and fifty miles, and that without attempting the thousand miles of estuary37 and slough38 through which the waters slink and wind.
At this season of the year the river is pushed backward by the tide a matter of ten miles or more above Sacramento City: on the San Joaquin it is felt as far as Crow's Landing. At Antioch it begins to be saltish, and down through Suisun and Carquinez the river-water fights its way as far as San Pablo before its identity is wholly lost. At flood-times it may be traced, a yellowish, turgid streak39, as far as Alcatraz. This is the islet of the albatross which lies south of the tide race, as Tiburon is on the north, fragments all of them of that salt-rimed ledge41 outside the gate where hoarse42 sea-lions play, and brother to the castellated cloud [113] far along on the sea's horizon, the very capital of the kingdom of the Little Duck.
The Faralone Light is the last dropped astern by the Island steamships43 sagging44 south to the equator; it is also the sea-birds' city of refuge. This is the great murre rookery of the west coast, and formerly45 thousands of dozens of eggs were regularly taken from the Faralones to the San Francisco market; but since the islands became a Government station the murres have no enemy but the pirates of the air. In clefts46 and ledges47 close against the wall-sided cliffs they defend their shallow nests against the sheering gulls49, or, hard beset50, will push their single, new-hatched nestling into the friendlier sea, darting51 to break its fall with incredible swiftness, for a swimming gait is one of the things that come out of the shell with the native-born at the Faralones. On the same shelving rocks puffins rear their ratty young in burrows52 or under sheltering boulders53, and the ashy petrel, the "little Peter" of the sea, walking by night before the storm, comes ashore54 here to hide his seldom nest. On the south Faralone the fierce cormorant55 builds her house of painted weed, which often the gulls steal from her as fast as she brings it ashore, for the gulls are the grafters of [114] the sea-birds' city. This particular variety, known as the western gull48, neither fishes for himself nor forages56 for building material. He feeds on the eggs and nestlings of his neighbours, or waits to snatch the day's catch from the beak57 that brought it up from the sea. He has the virtue58 of all predatory classes, an exemplary domesticity. His nest is soft and clean, his nestlings handsome. The western gull is often found marauding far up the estuary of Sacramento, but it is his congener, the herring gull, who follows the long white wake the ferries make ploughing the windy bay; or, distinguished among the silent shore birds for multitude and clamour, scavenges its reedy borders.
Except for the promontories60 north and south, and the bold front of the Berkeley Hills opposing the Gate, the inland borders of the bay are flat tide-lands and sea-smelling lagunas. Stilts61, avocets, herons, all the waders that haunt this coast or visit it in their seasonal62 flights, may be seen stalking the shallows for minnows, or where the marsh63 grass reddens, poised64 like some strange tide-land blossom, lifted on two slender stems. Low over them any clear day may be seen the grey old marsh hawk65 sailing, or the "duck hawk," the peregrine of falconry, following fiercely in the wake of the [115] migrating hordes66 of water-fowl. All about Alviso the guttural cry of the black-crowned night-heron sounds eerily67 above the marshes68, along with the peculiar "pumping" love-song of the bittern.
For some reason the air of the marshes is friendly to the mistletoe infesting69 the oaks and sycamores which stand back from the tide-line; but the marshes themselves are treeless. They have their own sorts of growth, cane70 and cat-tails and tule, goosefoot, samphire, and the tasselled sedges. This samphire of Shakespeare, l'herbe de Saint Pierre of the Normandy Marshes, is the glory of the Franciscan tide-lands; miles of it, barely above the level of the slow-moving water, spread a magic carpet of blending crimsons71, purples, and bronzes. Under the creeping mists and subject to the changes of the water, beaten to gold and copper72 under the sun, it redeems73 the flat lines of the landscape with a touch of Oriental splendour.
For it is a flat kingdom, that of the Little Duck—the hills hanging remotely on the horizon, the few trees and scattered74 hugging the low shore of the sloughs75 as the shipwrecked cling to their rafts, desperate of rescue. The rich web of the samphire, the shifting colour of the water, faintly [116] reminiscent of Venice, borrow another foreign touch from the names under which the borders recommended themselves to attention:—Sausalito, "little willows77," Tiburon, Corta Madero, San Quentin, San Raphael. Approached from the water, these names, with the exception of San Quentin, do no more than stir the imagination. San Quentin, on one of those courtesy islands newly rescued from the primordial78 mud, shows itself uncompromisingly for what it is, one of those places for the sequestration of public offenders79, which is itself such an offence to our common humanity—to say nothing of our common sense. Free tides, free sails go by, and long, untrammelled lines of birds; south above the blue bay and bluer shore, the ethereal blue dome59 of Diablo lifts into the free air. Across the upper end of San Pablo Bay, which is really the north arm of the bay of San Francisco extending inland, Mare80 Island lies so low on the water that if it had not been made a naval81 reserve station it is difficult to know to what other use it could be put. One expects to have the land dip and swing from under like the ship's deck. It is in line with the guns which lie beside the Gate like watchful82, muzzle-pointed dogs, and commands the whole upper bay and the opposing [117] bluffs83 of Contra Costa in a manner highly commendable84 to those curious persons whose chief excitement lies in anticipating an Asiatic invasion. Nevertheless, along with the bastions of San Quentin it strikes, somehow, the note of human distrust amid all this charm of light and line and elusive85 colour, as if suddenly one should discover the tip of a barbed tail under the skirt of some seductive stranger.
Between San Quentin and the Straits, all about the curve of the bay, winding86, wide-mouthed sloughs give access to a land as fertile as Egypt. A slough is a mere87 wallow of unprofitable waters, waters unused by men and still reluctant of the sea. Pushed aside by the compelling tides, too undisciplined to make proper banks for themselves, they are neglected by all but a few fringing willows and shapeless sycamores in which the herons nest.
Often at evening the white-faced ibis can be seen flying in long, voiceless lines, just clearing the twilight-tinted water, to their accustomed night perches88 in the wind-beaten willows. They return there, if undisturbed, year after year, accompanied in few and far-between seasons by the egret and the snowy heron, grown man-shy, or if they but knew [118] the purpose for which their nuptial89 plumage is sacrificed, woman-shy, and seldom seen even by the most wishful eyes.
At Napa a few bull-headed oaks come down almost to the tide-line, and in Sonoma a clump90 of alien blue gums huddles91 aloof92 and unregarded, but from the water little is visible beside the stilted93 cabins of some gun club or the ramshackle resorts of the flat-nosed, slow craft that wind on mysterious errands between the sunken lands. Whole families of half-amphibious humans appear to live comfortably on these drifting scows, but one never by any chance catches them doing any distinctive94 thing.
The waters of the sloughs come down from the little inland valleys, where summer nests and broods in a blue haze95 along the redwood-serried hills. Whether it is white with cherry bloom at Napa, or purple with winy clusters at Sonoma, there is always something interesting going on there of the large process by which granite96 mountains are made food for man. It is worth a visit if only to learn that a country which does that sort of thing supremely97 well, finds it also worth while to do it beautifully. Yachting off San Rafael, it is possible to catch at times the scent76 of roses on an off-shore wind above the salt smell of the marshes. [119]
The last rip of the tide is through the Straits of Carquinez into the back-water of Suisun. From here on, it is a rhythmic98 heaving to and fro as of well-matched wrestlers, the river-water is set back to Crow's Landing on the San Joaquin, and miles above Sacramento it returns again past Antioch and the Suisun islands. It is lost in a wilderness99 of tules, through which the sluggish100 currents blindly wind. Here we have nothing to do with men, our business is all with the tribe of the Little Duck: mallard, teal, tern, coot, heron, eared grebe, and awkward loon101.
The tule is a round leafless reed. It springs up along the tide-lands or in the stagnant102 back-water of the rivers, or by any least dribble103 of a desert spring. No condition daunts104 it but absolute dearth105 of water; far-called, it travels on the wind over mountain ranges, over great wastes of waterless plain to find the one absolute condition, a pool—white rimmed106 with alkali or poisonous green with arsenic107. I have seen it flourish by springs so charged with mineral that each slender column is ringed with its stony108 deposit, but I do not recall any standing109 water where tules are not. The stems are filled with papery pith so light that the Indians of the San Joaquin made boats of bundles [120] of them, faggoted together and tied upon a wooden frame.
Year by year the tules reclaim110 the muddy confluence111 of the twin rivers. They make an annual growth, die palely, and are beaten down by the wind; between their matted stems the young green comes up again. In the Land of the Little Duck, miles upon miles of them, and not one other thing, stand up on either side the winding water-lanes, man-high and impenetrable.
The Tulare—the place of the tule—is the haunt not only of water-birds but innumerable insect-catchers, and especially of the red-winged blackbirds. In the spring these betake themselves to the reed-fringed marshes in hundreds, building their nests in such neighbourly proximity112 that the young can hop113 from rim40 to rim of the tight-slung, grassy114 hammocks. Great clouds of the young birds can be seen, just before mating and after nesting in the fall, rising from the low islands of the river-junction. In the season also the male yellow-headed blackbird may be heard singing his sweet but noisy cheering-song to his sombre mate as she weaves marsh grass and wet pond-weed together as a foundation for her home, always prudently115 completed some weeks in advance of any need of it. [
Where the tules thin out along the moving currents, numerous woven balls of marsh vegetation hang like some strange fruit safely above the summer rise of the waters. These are the nests of the tule wren116, built by the industrious117 male, with who knows what excess of parental118 care or what intention to deceive. All the while he is at work upon them, in one, the least conspicuous119 and apparently120 the least skilfully121 built, the mother bird nurses the brown nestlings with which, suddenly at the end of July, all the whispering galleries of the tulares are alive.
One who has the courage to penetrate122 deeper within the tulares, past the crazy wooden landings of nameless ports at which the flat scows put in, past the broken willows where the herons nest and the weedy back-waters lie all smoothly123 green with the deceptive124 duck-weed, will see many wished-for sights. Just before dawn and after nightfall the inner marshes are vocal125 with the varied126 cries of coot and mallard and the complaining skirl of the mud-hen, the whistling redwing, the bittern booming from his dingy127 pool, and all the windy beat of wings. But by day a stillness falls through which the clicking whisper of the reeds and the croon of the great rivers cradling to the sea reaches the sense almost with sound. The air is all alive with [122] the metallic128 glint of dragon-flies; now and then the plop of some shining turtle dropping into the smooth lagoon129, or the frightened splash of a marsh-nesting bird, flecks130 the silence with a flash of sound. Here one might see all the duck kind leading forth their young broods, or the eared grebe swimming with her day-old nestlings on her back. If the day is dark—black clouds with lightnings playing under—one may hear the voice of the loon sliding through his sonorous131 scale to shaking, witless laughter. Or perhaps the day's sight might be a flock of pelicans132 on their way to their nesting-ground in Buena Vista133, breasting the shallows, and with beating wings driving a school of minnows into some tiny inlet where they may be scooped134 up in the pouched135 bills, a dozen to a mouthful. Better still, some morning mist might rise for you suddenly on a strip of sandy shore the cranes had chosen for their wild dances, from which the stately measures of the Greek are said to be derived136. Against the yellow sand, as on the background of a vase, the dipping figures and white outstretched wing draperies make the connection clear to you for the moment, along with some other things long overlaid in the racial memory.
Always at evening in the tulares the air is [123] winnowed137 by the clanging hordes of geese and ducks. Triangular138 flights of teal wing by you, whizzing like bullets, hazy139 with speed. Beach-nesting birds, paddlers in the foodful creeks140, go seaward. Now and then some winged frigate141 of the open sea, an albatross perhaps blown inland on a storm, will climb the air to the sea-going wind. Low on the twilight-coloured waters the tule fog creeps in.
You emerge properly from the vast intricacies of the tulares—if you emerge at all, and are not completely mazed142 and lost in them—at Sacramento, a city but barely rescued from the marsh, and still marsh-coloured with the damp-loving lichens143. La Dame144 aux Camelias, to the eye, rich in that exotic blossom as no city in the world, but with a past, oh, unmistakably, and a touch of hectic145 disorder146. The Russians possessed147 her, and then the breed of Jack148 Hamlin, and then—but it is unfair to list the lovers of a lady of so much charm and such indubitable capacity for reformation. Sacramento is the State capital, the geographical149 pivot150 of the great twin valleys; she divides with Stockton on the San Joaquin the tribute of their waters. It was here on her banks that the overland emigrant151 trains sat down to wait for the [124] subsidence of waters in the new world of the West, from here they scattered to all its hopeful quarters.
If the part the city has played in history has been that of a hostel152, a distributing station, at least she has played it to some purpose. There are few empires richer than the land the twin rivers drain.
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1
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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piers
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| n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 )；（常设有娱乐场所的）突堤；柱子；墙墩 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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tugs
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| n.猛拉( tug的名词复数 )；猛拖；拖船v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的第三人称单数 ) | |
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scuttle
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| v.急赶，疾走，逃避；n.天窗；舷窗 | |
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promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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atmospheric
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| adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的 | |
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bellowing
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的现在分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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precariously
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| adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地 | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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warships
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| 军舰，战舰( warship的名词复数 )； 舰只 | |
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leeward
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| adj.背风的；下风的 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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coffins
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| n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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contingencies
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| n.偶然发生的事故，意外事故( contingency的名词复数 )；以备万一 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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slough
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| v.蜕皮，脱落，抛弃 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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steamships
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| n.汽船，大轮船( steamship的名词复数 ) | |
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sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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clefts
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| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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47
ledges
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| n.（墙壁，悬崖等）突出的狭长部分( ledge的名词复数 )；（平窄的）壁架；横档；（尤指）窗台 | |
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48
gull
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| n.鸥；受骗的人；v.欺诈 | |
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49
gulls
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| n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 ) | |
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50
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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51
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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52
burrows
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| n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 )；翻寻 | |
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53
boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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54
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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55
cormorant
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| n.鸬鹚，贪婪的人 | |
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56
forages
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| n.牛马饲料( forage的名词复数 )；寻找粮草 | |
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57
beak
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| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
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58
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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59
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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60
promontories
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| n.岬，隆起，海角( promontory的名词复数 ) | |
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61
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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62
seasonal
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| adj.季节的，季节性的 | |
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63
marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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64
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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65
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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66
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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67
eerily
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| adv.引起神秘感或害怕地 | |
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68
marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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69
infesting
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| v.害虫、野兽大批出没于( infest的现在分词 )；遍布于 | |
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70
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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71
crimsons
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| 变为深红色（crimson的第三人称单数形式） | |
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72
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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73
redeems
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| 补偿( redeem的第三人称单数 )； 实践； 解救； 使…免受责难 | |
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74
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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75
sloughs
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| n.沼泽( slough的名词复数 )；苦难的深渊；难以改变的不良心情；斯劳(Slough)v.使蜕下或脱落( slough的第三人称单数 )；舍弃；除掉；摒弃 | |
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76
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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77
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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78
primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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79
offenders
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| n.冒犯者( offender的名词复数 )；犯规者；罪犯；妨害…的人（或事物） | |
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80
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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81
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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82
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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83
bluffs
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| 恐吓( bluff的名词复数 )； 悬崖； 峭壁 | |
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84
commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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85
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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86
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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87
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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88
perches
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| 栖息处( perch的名词复数 )； 栖枝； 高处； 鲈鱼 | |
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89
nuptial
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| adj.婚姻的，婚礼的 | |
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90
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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91
huddles
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| （尤指杂乱地）挤在一起的人（或物品、建筑）( huddle的名词复数 )； （美式足球）队员靠拢（磋商战术） | |
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92
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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93
stilted
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| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
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94
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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95
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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96
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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97
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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98
rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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99
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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100
sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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101
loon
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| n.狂人 | |
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102
stagnant
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| adj.不流动的，停滞的，不景气的 | |
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103
dribble
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| v.点滴留下，流口水；n.口水 | |
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104
daunts
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| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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105
dearth
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| n.缺乏，粮食不足，饥谨 | |
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106
rimmed
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| adj.有边缘的，有框的v.沿…边缘滚动；给…镶边 | |
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107
arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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108
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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109
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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110
reclaim
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| v.要求归还，收回；开垦 | |
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111
confluence
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| n.汇合，聚集 | |
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112
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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113
hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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114
grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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115
prudently
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| adv. 谨慎地，慎重地 | |
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116
wren
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| n.鹪鹩；英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
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117
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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118
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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119
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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120
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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121
skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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122
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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123
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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124
deceptive
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| adj.骗人的，造成假象的，靠不住的 | |
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125
vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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126
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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127
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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128
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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129
lagoon
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| n.泻湖，咸水湖 | |
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130
flecks
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| n.斑点，小点( fleck的名词复数 )；癍 | |
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131
sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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132
pelicans
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| n.鹈鹕( pelican的名词复数 ) | |
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133
vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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134
scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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135
pouched
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| adj.袋形的，有袋的 | |
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136
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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137
winnowed
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| adj.扬净的，风选的v.扬( winnow的过去式和过去分词 )；辨别；选择；除去 | |
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138
triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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139
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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140
creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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141
frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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142
mazed
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| 迷惘的，困惑的 | |
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143
lichens
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| n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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144
dame
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| n.女士 | |
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145
hectic
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| adj.肺病的；消耗热的；发热的；闹哄哄的 | |
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146
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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147
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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148
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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149
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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150
pivot
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| v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的 | |
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151
emigrant
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| adj.移居的，移民的；n.移居外国的人，移民 | |
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152
hostel
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| n.（学生）宿舍，招待所 | |
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