United States or Cameroon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At many spots a spectator may perceive in one survey the stone ruin of the Danmonian's habitation, and hypaethral temple or forum, the heather-clad debris left by Elizabethan streamers of alluvial tin, the inky peat-ridges from which a moorman has just cut his winter firing. But the first-named objects, with kindred fragments that have similarly endured, chiefly fire imagination.
On the ninth day since Hugh's departure, the day when fast riding might make his return possible before nightfall, Mora rose early. At the hour when she had been wont to ring the Convent bell, she was walking swiftly over the moors and climbing the heather-clad hills.
But the heather-clad hills of Heswall, and the old red sandstone ridge, which form the ancient borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an efficient shelter from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness. Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I learned to know their every bank and gutter.
Then the beauty of the scenery amidst which we took our repast was such as I cannot attempt to describe. A walk of an hour or so would bring us into the presence of an old castle, or amongst the rocky furze and heather-clad hills, amidst clear rapid streams, so that, but for the distant peeps of the city, one might think that he was far from the busy haunts of men and boys.
The vegetation and aspect of the country are transformed. Instead of the vine, the peach, and the olive, we are in a region of scant fruitage, and only the hardiest crops, apple orchards sparsely mingled with fields of oats and rye. And yet again we seem to be traversing a Scotch or Yorkshire moor so vast and lonely the heather-clad wastes, so bleak and wild the heavens.
High up among the heather-clad hills which form the broad dividing barrier between England and Scotland, the little river Esk brawls and bickers over its stony bed through a wild land of barren braesides and brown peat mosses, forming altogether some of the gloomiest and most forbidding scenery in the whole expanse of northern Britain.
On one such August morning, they had taken the train from London to Haslemere, with Dolly of course by their side, and then had strolled up Hind Head by the beautiful footpath which mounts at first through a chestnut copse, and then between heather-clad hills to the summit.
She had no idea what the words of the dear old psalm had been to the young Highlander like water to a parched soul, bringing back memories of childhood, wooded glens, heather-clad hills, rippling burns, and above all the old grey kirk where the Scotch laddie used to sit beside his mother that dear mother in whom his whole soul was wrapped up and join lustily in the psalms.
The only industry of any kind which I saw between Skibbereen and Bandon was a slate quarry which they told me shipped a great quantity of slates besides supplying local demands. As we advanced eastward we left the heather-clad mountains behind us, the landscape softened down considerably, and became almost empty of inhabitants.
The roads were hard and clean, and the twenty-five-mile run over them, winding through the valleys and climbing the ridges with the heather-clad, rock-crowned hills on all sides, now sliding down a slope or shooting along a level, or taking a rise in what seemed a flying leap, was by far the most wonderful experience that Norah and her aunt had ever had.
Word Of The Day