"
He tried to project his mind into those of the Professors, as though they
were a team of straying bullocks whose probable action he must determine
before he set out to look for them.
On reflection, he concluded that the hidden property was not likely to be
far from the spot on which he now was. The Professors would wait till
they had got some way down towards Sunch'ston, so as to have readier
access to their property when they wanted to remove it; but when they
came upon a path and other signs that inhabited dwellings could not be
far distant, they would begin to look out for a hiding-place. And they
would take pretty well the first that came. "Why, bless my heart," he
exclaimed, "this tree is hollow; I wonder whether--" and on looking up he
saw an innocent little strip of the very tough fibrous leaf commonly used
while green as string, or even rope, by the Erewhonians. The plant that
makes this leaf is so like the ubiquitous New Zealand _Phormium tenax_,
or flax, as it is there called, that I shall speak of it as flax in
future, as indeed I have already done without explanation on an earlier
page; for this plant grows on both sides of the great range. The piece
of flax, then, which my father caught sight of was fastened, at no great
height from the ground, round the branch of a strong sucker that had
grown from the roots of the chestnut tree, and going thence for a couple
of feet or so towards the place where the parent tree became hollow, it
disappeared into the cavity below.
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