Explore "Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch" by Brian Penton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He was not so sure when he came out again in the morning. The crystal dawn revealed to him the immensity, crudity and indifference of the world in which he proposed to act. Rising to the west on abrupt escarpments cut through by gullies still gloomy and moonstruck, falling to the east in wave after wave of untinted greyness, the bush was a gigantic fist in which the homestead lay like a grain of sand, a thing of such oceanic antiquity that his little time-bound heart might well falter at thoughts of conquest here.
Through McGovern's window came the sound of lusty breathing. Cabell paused in the act of pouring a bucket of water over his body and considered his slender arms and legs. A conviction of inadequacy completed itself.