"
The head of the canon was only a couple of miles from the road;
but it was in a nearly impenetrable thicket of chaparral, where
young oaks had grown up so high that their tops made, as it were, a
second stratum of thicket. Alessandro had never ridden through it;
he had come up on foot once from the other side, and, forcing his
way through the tangle had found, to his surprise, that he was near
the highway. It was from this canon that he had brought the ferns
which it had so delighted Ramona to arrange for the decoration of
the chapel. The place was filled with them, growing almost in
tropical luxuriance; but this was a mile or so farther down, and to
reach that spot from above, Alessandro had had to let himself
down a sheer wall of stone. The canon at its head was little more
than a rift in the rocks, and the stream which had its rise in it was
only a trickling spring at the beginning. It was this precious water,
as well as the inaccessibility of the spot, which had decided
Alessandro to gain the place at all hazards and costs. But a wall of
granite would not have seemed a much more insuperable obstacle
than did this wall of chaparral, along which they rode, vainly
searching for a break in it.
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