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Updated: June 17, 2025
"True," answered the youth; "and in a few years agricultural innovation will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a single furze-blossom for the bee or a tuft of green-sward for the grasshopper; but, however unpleasant the change may be for us foot-travellers, we must not repine at what they tell us is so sure a witness of the prosperity of the country."
The Frenchman sprang nimbly to the saddle, and, driving his spurs into the flanks of his horse, shot out from the pen like a bolt of lightning. For the first three hundred yards or so he galloped directly towards the guerilleros. These stood leaning upon their saddles, or lay stretched along the green-sward.
The château, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path.
He would have brayed with delight, but, had he done so, he would have dropped the roses, so he restrained himself till he had laid them before his master's nose. Instantly the Knight began to devour them, as did the faithful donkey, when, a stupor coming over them, they couched down on the green-sward.
For a distance of about half a mile inland from the beach the ground was carpeted with a smooth velvety green-sward, the rest of the island appeared to be densely wooded.
As they reached the green-sward, dropping down in a constant stream, they rushed forward to the water, scrambling into it in thirsty crowds, and falling upon their knees to drink. Some of them filled their canteens and went on. "They intend to take the hills," thought I. I knew there was no water for miles in that direction.
I brought out my fiddle and played, and ate and drank between-whiles. Then they all grew merry; the old man smoothed the grim wrinkles out of his face, and emptied glass after glass, the old woman chattered away heaven knows about what, and the maids began to dance together on the green-sward.
A day or two after, therefore, I brought home another load of it Then I picked out a smooth level spot upon the green-sward, and having prepared a great number of short wooden pegs, I strained a line of the matweed about ten feet long, tying it at each end to a peg, and stuck a row of pegs along by that line, about two inches asunder; I next strained another line of the same length, parallel to that, at the distance of forty feet from it, and stuck pegs thereby, corresponding to the former row; and from each peg on one side, to the opposite peg on the other, I tied a like length of my mat-line, quite through the whole number of pegs; when the work looked like the inside of a harpsichord.
Pat's meaning was soon made plain, that night, to a dozen or so of his friends, whom he visited personally and induced to accompany him to a sequestered dell in an out-of-the-way thicket where the moonbeams struggled through the branches and drew a lovely pale-blue pattern on the green-sward.
The future fort was begun on the centre of the level patch of green-sward at the foot of the flat rock by the spring, where the party had originally encamped. A square was traced on the ground to indicate the stockade; and within this, Stanley marked off an oblong patch, close to the back stockade, for the principal dwelling-house, facing the river.
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