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In considering the existence of inland peat-bogs, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are subterranean forest-beds on various parts of our coasts, which also rest upon their own beds of peaty matter, and very possibly, when in the future they are covered up by marine deposits, they will have fairly started on their way towards becoming coal.
Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, is the favourite resort of the fern owl.
Times without number he had been chased on the moors; often he had been hidden cunningly in shepherd's cottages, twice he had eluded the dragoons by immersing himself in peat-bogs, and once he had been wounded.
It is the place and time for dark deeds, for the heart grows savage; and if two enemies met in the hollow of the mist only one would go away. I climbed the hill above the Howe burn-head, keeping the wind on my right cheek as the girl had ordered. That took me along a rough ridge of mountain pitted with peat-bogs into which I often stumbled.
Huge continuous heaths spread before, behind, and around us, in hopeless barrenness now level and interspersed with swamps, green with treacherous verdure, or sable with turf, or, as they call them in Scotland, peat-bogs, and now swelling into huge heavy ascents, which wanted the dignity and form of hills, while they were still more toilsome to the passenger.
In Ireland there are no forests, but in the peat-bogs are found remains of mighty trees that once lifted their outstretched branches to the sun. Are these remains of stately forests symbols of a race of men that, too, have passed away? In any wayside village of Leinster you can pick you a model for an Apollo. He is in rags, is this giant, and can not read, but he can dance and sing and fight.
When, at night, they reached the banks of the Tyne, and had made their way across the ford, they found themselves in evil case, for all their baggage and provisions were far behind, stuck in the bogs, or stumbling up the mountain-sides, and they had nothing to eat but a single loaf, which each man had carried strapped behind him, and which had a taste of all the various peat-bogs into which he had sunk.
Huge continuous heaths spread before, behind, and around us, in hopeless barrenness now level and interspersed with swamps, green with treacherous verdure, or sable with turf, or, as they call them in Scotland, peat-bogs, and now swelling into huge heavy ascents, which wanted the dignity and form of hills, while they were still more toilsome to the passenger.
Here there reigned such a wonderful peace, interrupted only by the song of birds. There were soft outlines in the distance, and everywhere the scent of balsams. Of course it was all very desolate; a vast swamp dominated by sterile ridges of boulder-strewn hills; an immense land of peat-bogs and mosses, grey and green and purplish, upon which only the caribou and the birds appeared able to live.
They are numerous in the Lake Stations of Wangen, Mooseedorf, and St. Aubin. The peat-bogs of Scania have yielded a bone fish-hook seven centimetres long, which is considered very ancient, and the Museum of Stettin possesses one, also very old, found in a gnarly deposit of Pomerania.
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