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They were drawing near to the grey hill-country of the Emyn Muil, the southern march of Wilderland.
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I don't know whether Tolkien intended it, but this mention of the grey hill-country made me think of the Green Hill Country on the map of the Shire. It brought home to me how far they've come, & what they've all been through since leaving Bag End. Its odd how such 'echoes' are so powerful in stirring memories. The lands they're now passing through are so different to the ones the Hobbits had grown up in. Its like, after leaving Lorien the Land becomes truly strange - a new phase in their journey has begun. So far we've been travelling through landscapes familiar to us from Bilbo's journey. Now we'll enter the world of Men.
This is, as
Esty says, a transitional chapter - a journey by river, various dangers faced & overcome, the appearance of the Nazgul on a Fell Beast, & the sight of the Eagle, whose significance will become apparent later. And yet, in the midst of this 'travelogue' Tolkien gives us one of his most profound explorations of Elven psychology, in Legolas' account of the Elves relationship to time:
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‘Nay, time does not tarry ever,’ he said; ‘but change & growth is not in all things & places alike. For the Elves the world moves, & it moves both very swift & very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, & all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because the y do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last.’
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Time is
not a constant for Elves. It moves both very swift & very slow - they seem to have a dual perception. they seem to be out of synch with the world outside their realms. The passing seasons are simply repetitions. Its as if they are watching a film loop, with the same events passing endlessly before their eyes.
How many other writers could introduce ideas like his into a ‘transitional’ chapter & make it work?