The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan

The Courts of the Morning had recovered the peace which till a year ago had been theirs since the beginning of time. Where had once been the busy depot was now only shaggy downland, and a few blackened timbers, over which Nature had begun to spin her web. Choharua looked down again upon meadow and forest as free from human turmoil as the blue spaces of ocean beyond. Only at the head of the seaward gully were there signs of life. A small group of tents had been set up, almost on the spot where Barbara and the Gobernador had first looked down the four thousand feet of green dusk to the landlocked bay. The ruins of the powerhouse and the chute were already masked with creepers and tall grasses, and only certain scars on the hillside, not made by the winter rains, told that there man had once wrought and striven.

The day was passing from the steady glare of afternoon to the light airs which precede twilight. The sun was nearing a broad belt of amethyst haze which lay on the western horizon, and the face of Choharua was beginning to break up into shadows. The party who occupied the tents had come there by sea, and made their way up the rugged steps of the ravine to the plateau. The reason of their journey was apparent, for between the ravine and the mountain, on a mound which rose like a sentinel above the meadows, could be seen a tall wooden cross. Presently that would be replaced by a stone memorial, to mark the resting-place of him who had been the Gobernador of the Gran Seco.