United States or Mozambique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And in her sleep she dreamed that she stood in the darkness of the same peat-moss which had held Thomas and his prayers all the night long. She thought she was kept in there, till she should pray enough to get herself out of it. And she tried hard to pray, but she could not.
For there are islands in the sea which have escaped the destroying deluge of peat-moss, outcrops of firm and fertile land, which in the early Middle Age were so many natural parks, covered with richest grass and stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat and boar, as the streams around swarmed with otter and beaver, and with fowl of every feather, and fish of every scale.
So they drove along by the side of the sea, the level and well-made road leading them through miles and miles of rough moorland, with here and there a few huts or a sheepfold to break the monotony of the undulating sky-line. Here and there, too, there were great cuttings of the peat-moss, with a thin line of water in the foot of the deep black trenches.
Lemnos: October 1915. Born and bred in a studio, and brought up among the cloud-swept mountains of Westmorland, amid the purple heather and the sunset in the peat-moss puddles, barrack-life soon became like penal servitude. I was like a caged wild animal. I knew now why the tigers and leopards pace up and down, up and down, behind their bars at the Zoo.
One night, in the end of October, James Dow was walking by the side of his cart along a lonely road, through a peat-moss, on his way to the nearest sea-port for a load of coals. The moon was high and full. He was approaching a solitary milestone in the midst of the moss. It was the loneliest place.
I could show you everywhere the green banks and knolls of earth, which Scotch people call "kames" and "tomans" perhaps brought down by ancient glaciers, or dropped by ancient icebergs now so smooth and green through summer and through winter, among the wild heath and the rough peat-moss, that the old Scots fancied, and I dare say Scotch children fancy still, fairies dwelt inside.
It was the custom in all the houses of Glamerton to rest the fire; that is, to keep it gently alive all night by the help of a truff, or sod cut from the top of a peat-moss a coarse peat in fact, more loose and porous than the peat proper which they laid close down upon the fire, destroying almost all remaining draught by means of coal-dust.
Donald Farquharson, in Glendee, deposes that, in June, 1750, Alexander Macpherson sent for him, and said that he was much troubled by the ghost of the serjeant, who insisted that he should bury his bones, and should consult Farquharson. Donald did not believe this quite, but trembled lest the ghost should vex him. He went with Macpherson, who showed the body in a peat-moss.
On either side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing a singular mirage. We seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the edge of the embankment. Here and there a group of trees or a cottage, emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was.
But they had a fair stock of oatmeal laid in, and that was the staff of life, also a tolerable supply of fuel, which neighbours had lent them horses to bring from the peat-moss. With the cold weather the laird began again to fail, and Cosmo to fear that this would be the last of the good man's winters.
Word Of The Day