“One must give them a chance,” Flinders said. “The growth of a hybrid poplar or even a eucalyptus may be very little in the first seasons.”

“A long-term project, in other words,” said Edrich.

“In other words,” Flinders agreed.

Rodriguez-O’Hearn addressed him down the table. “Why, Mr. Flinders, have we been subjected to so much erosion since classical times?”

Flinders looked at him. “In the main, sir, it is due to overgrazing.”

Edrich said, “Correct.”

How does he know it’s correct? Flinders wondered irritably. He went on to speak of the movement of soil at certain elevations and in certain winds, the presence of useful or destructive insects, the receptivity of the land—all the circumstances, in fact, which had led to the selection of the trees at El Attara. “In conditions such as these,” he said, looking along the row of fatigued faces, “the drought-resistant species has the only hope for survival.”

“And it is this type you are concerned with?” asked Rodriguez-O’Hearn.

Flinders nodded. “Very often these don’t give dramatic results. You see—some of the most valuable types in the world are unspectacular. But they hold their own by … perseverance.”

The slides had been set up, and the technician asked for permission to turn out the lights. Flinders got up and stood by the screen. In the dark he could not find Edrich’s ruler, and at first, being a rather awkward man, he got in the way of the picture. The slides were in color and, although Flinders had no skill whatever as a photographer, they did derive a certain clarity from the sharp air and splendid light of the countryside.

The first slide had been taken from a hilltop; it was a panorama of the area to the south of El Attara. The contours of this country were European rather than African, and Flinders had often found it possible there to imagine how France or Italy might have looked before spaciousness was diminished by overpopulation. The hills were sometimes covered by green grasses so short that after heavy rain the soil showed through in violet streaks. This picture, however, had been taken in summer, and the pebbled course of a dry stream wound through a valley of orange groves and cypress trees. The next pictures were of a depleted slope, furrowed by weather, on whose receding earth a number of sheep were pessimistically feeding.

Flinders said, “This is the site we chose for the first plantation.”

The pictures that followed were so repetitious that he could not help wondering why he had taken them. The same hillside, and a large area nearby, were shown in various stages of preparation—but these preparations were so gradual and so little obvious to the layman that there seemed to have been no purpose in recording them.