After penetrating through the brush, matted as it was with briars, for a few hundred feet, he entered an open space, that surrounded a low, green hillock, which was crowned by the decayed blockhouse in question.
I've come to the top of the hill here and I can see the whole of Kefar Qila and it is just very difficult to describe the scale of the devastation here, the destruction.
Evolution is walking around this landscape blind, it doesn't plan or have foresight, so organisms often get stuck on top of these little hills, called local optima.
For the hill, oddly enough, was quite as flat on top as it had looked from a distance: a great level tableland which the storm tore across without resistance.
Her small observatory, perched atop the highest hill, was her sanctuary, where she spent countless nights peering through her trusty telescope, observing the twinkling stars and the galaxy's vast expanse.