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And it was enclosed of high walls with battlements, and within were fair halls whereof the windows showed in the outer walls, and in the midst was an ancient tower that was compassed round of great waters and broad meadow-lands.
Abundant evidence in support of the important truth we are discussing, may be derived from other well known facts. Thus, the trade of Holland in cheese may be adduced in proof and illustration thereof. We know that cheese is derived from the plants which serve as food for cows. The meadow-lands of Holland derive the nitrogen of cheese from the same source as with us; i.e. the atmosphere.
It is for them, then, to turn their attention to the land, which is their chief source of wealth. Let them buy it up, or gain it by long leases, inch by inch and acre by acre, until not only the bleak bogs and wild mountains of Connaught are again their own, but the rich meadow-lands and smiling wheat-fields of Munster and Leinster.
Steve and Bill Royce, riding side by side, had mounted one of the flat, treeless hills in the upper valley and were now sitting silent while Royce fumbled with his pipe and Steve sent a long, eager look down across the open meadow-lands dotted with grazing cattle. Suddenly their two horses and the other horses browsing in a lower field, jerked up their heads, all ears pricked forward.
And then I also often saw that there was blue color below the ice and thought it was stones, or soil and pasture-land, and then come the woods, and they go down farther and farther, and there are some boulders in them too, and then come meadows that are already green, and then the green leafy-woods, and then our meadow-lands and fields in the valley of Gschaid.
'Yes, he said at last, 'it is time to get up, and then he rose from the ground. They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on and on, inspecting their garden.
We passed through the meadow-lands, studded with slumbering flocks; we followed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source in the mountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom of stunted, misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which makes one of the signs of the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in all her pomp of light, mid-heaven amongst her subject stars, gleamed through the fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay the relics of antediluvian races, and rested in one flood of silvery splendour upon the hollows of the extinct volcano, with tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler sward, covering the gold below, Gold, the dumb symbol of organized Matter's great mystery, storing in itself, according as Mind, the informer of Matter, can distinguish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing.
Altogether this valley is rich in beautiful meadow-lands; consequently one sees many scattered homesteads and cottages, with fine herds of sheep, and a tolerable number of horses; cows are less plentiful. The church at Reikiadal is among the neatest and most roomy of those which came under my observation.
For as we near the valley, puffs of hot, scented air come up to meet us, the tinkle of the cow-bell greets our ears, and we realize that it is only given to those who have braved the perils, who have searched for the deep things of the ancient mountains and found out the precious things of the lasting hills, to thoroughly appreciate the pleasant, homely quietness of the meadow-lands.
To the right of the Bassin a broad canal, constructed by Napoleon in 1810, extends in a straight line eastwards, contained within dykes which raise it above a wide expanse of level meadow-lands intersected by ditches, and dotted here and there by the white-walled cottages with red roofs and green outside shutters which are so typical of Flemish scenery.
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