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From below their feet the tract of low woodland rolled right down to the edge of the sea, like a broad tossing river, swelling into great billows of gray or dark green, where the taller olives or fir-trees grew, and broken here and there with islets of many-colored stone. With the rest came up the chaplain, who had recovered by this time his breath, and, to a certain extent, his equanimity.
Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and zigzags like flashes of lightning.
Towards West-Northwest, it is nations called Fir-trees; numerous; all their traffic is with the English. All those north nations are rovers, as was said, living on fish and game or wild-oats which is abundant on the shores of their lakes and rivers. In lake Ontario, south side, the five Iroquois nations; our enemies; about 1200 warriors live on indian corn and by hunting.
Places served by this District Company had pleasant-sounding suburban names such as Kew Gardens, Richmond, Wimbledon. Reading the names, he felt a sick nostalgic yearning for the wind that blows through fir-trees, for the dust that falls on highroads, for the village street and the friendly nod for home. He ate some food at an eating-house near Blackfriars, and then wandered aimlessly for hours.
Just then they passed a little clump of fir-trees. In a moment there rushed out of these trees a number of men in crape masks, stopped the horses, surrounded the carriage, and opened it with brandishing of bludgeons and life-preservers, and pointing of guns.
They liked to sit by the hazelwoods on the "neck" and open nuts with stones; or, if there were no nuts, they played with leaves or pegs or the soft brown cones that drop from the branches of fir-trees in the beginning of spring.
How to the young child the fir-trees seemed to touch the sky, how his heart leaped up at the sight of the rainbow, how he sat at his mother's feet and pricked into paper the tissued flowers of her dress, how he chased the bright butterfly, or in his tenderness feared to brush even the dust from off its wings, how he learnt sweet lessons and said innocent prayers at his father's knee; trifles like these, yet trifles which may have been rendered noble and beautiful by a loving imagination, have been narrated over and over again in the songs of our poets.
Several boats laden with stone had been sunk in the channel. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom of the stream. A boom was formed of trunks of fir-trees, strongly bound together, and fastened by great cables to the shore. Relief from the fleet, with the river thus closed against it, seemed impossible.
"I promise," said she, "and now, father, pray pray for " She could say no more; hut rising she went alone up the steps that led to Esslingen Castle. The people, still on their knees, followed her lithe figure till it was hidden for a time by the fir-trees that grew along the heights; then, as she emerged again and appeared at the hill-top, the multitude gave vent to their feelings in prayer.
To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.
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