Some of the islets were still uninhabited, covered with a dense low growth which served as cover for game and even for wolves.
The advantage of the breech-loader now began to assert itself, for the Austrian skirmishers who covered the front of the guns could only load when standing up, while the Prussians lay down or fired from cover.
The stony plains which cover so large a part of the country are often covered with acacia jungle, and in the dry water-courses a kind of wild palm, the dom, abounds, from the leaves of which baskets and mats are woven.
In alluvial deposits the richest ground is usually found in contact with the "bed rock"; and, when the overlying cover of gravel is very thick, or, as sometimes happens, when the older gravel is covered with a flow of basalt, regular mining by shafts and levels, as in what are known as tunnel-claims, may be required to reach the auriferous ground.
He directed that the movements of the troops when they drew near the allied outposts should be covered as far as possible by accidents of ground, for there was no great natural screen to cover his strategical concentration.
