James Childs paintings

James Childs paintings
John Singleton Copley paintings
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida paintings
They don't hurry on the southward journey. They drift along easily, not far each day, though they keep moving. As they reach the foothills of the mountains, the great masses split again onto many different paths, thinning out, for it's pleasanter to be few on a trail than to come after great numbers of people and trudge in the dust and litter they leave. Up in the heights and passes where there are only a few ways to go, they have to come together again. They make the best of it, with cheerful greetings and offers to share food, fire, shelter. Everyone is kind to the children, the half-year-olds, who find the steep mountain paths hard going and often frightening; they slow their pace for the children.
And one evening when it seems they have been struggling in the mountains forever, they come through a high, stony pass to the outlook—South Face, or the Godsbeak Rocks, or the Tor. There they stand and look out and out and down and down to the golden, sunlit levels of the south, the endless fields of wild grain, and some far, faint, purple smudges—the walls and towers of the Cities under the Sun.
On the downhill road they go faster, and eat lighter, and the dust of their going is a great cloud behind them.