About midday
But the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that . He came presently to talus , and among the rocks he noted -- for he was an observant man -- an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands . He picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk , and found it helpful . About midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight . He was stiff and weary ; he sat down in the shadow of a rock , filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down , and remained for a time , resting before he went on to the houses . They were very strange to his eyes , and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became , as he regarded it , queerer and more unfamiliar . The greater part of its surface was lush green meadow , starred with many beautiful flowers , irrigated with extraordinary care , and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece .