The Pagan's Progress by Gouverneur Morris

Fear and hate and love eats up the miles even as the sun eats up the white mist of the morning. But the distance that was between the two men neither increased nor diminished; it became terribly hot, and the going was arduous. Tough, spiky bushes covered the plain to the height of a man's knee but they seemed less to grow out of the deep, shifting dust, than to be stuck into it.

The progress the men made was rather by a succession of leaps than by straight running. It was like trying to make speed over an unequal beach covered with knee-deep water, and it told upon them fearfully.