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I thought I must have dropped before we reached his village. This was an osier-bed at the water's side, where the whole river rushed through a rocky gorge not more than fifty to sixty yards broad. There were perhaps nearly a hundred Indians here, two-thirds of whom were women and children. Their habitations were formed by interlacing the tops of the osiers.
Let any ingenious little prowler in an osier-bed get two thickish willow-rods and fasten them at the ends with a bit of wire, so as to make two hoops. These hoops are then to intersect each other half-way up, one being perpendicular, to form the handle and the bottom of the basket, the other being placed horizontally, to form the rim. More wire will be needed to fix them in their positions.
She pulled on mechanically, with a long, regular stroke, and one by one scenes, happy river-scenes out of past years, came back to her with wonderful vividness. Looking about her she saw an osier-bed dividing the stream, and beside it the opening into the willow-shaded backwater which she remembered. She turned the boat's head into it.
On one side the backwater flowed sluggishly on around the osier-bed; on the other it hurried smoothly, silently away, to broaden suddenly before it swept in white foam over an open weir into a deep pool below. She trembled violently and the oars moved feebly in her hands, chill for all the warmth of the afternoon.
But the floor of the valley was an osier-bed, and the burst of sunshine had set alight the coarse orange hair of the young plants. "Oh, they are lovely!" cried Ellen; "but yon hillside is just an insult to them."
He did not even know which way the moor-hen went just now, when I inquired, having a message to send to my relations by the osier-bed yonder.
On Chiswick Eyot, which is entirely planted with osiers, there are standing at the time of writing six stacks of bundles set upright. Each stack contains about fifty bundles of the finest rods, nine feet high. Thus the eyot yields at least three hundred bundles. This osier-bed is cut quite early in the year, usually in January, and by February all the fresh rods are planted.
The young osiers should then be put in. These should be taken from a nursery in which they have been "schooled" for one year, as in that case they will produce a crop fit to cut one year earlier than if the cuttings have been put at once in the new osier-bed.
A flock of sandpipers remained there for some weeks, and during the summer numbers of sedge-warblers have nested on and around the eyot; the cuckoo has been a regular visitor to the osier-bed in the early morning, probably with a view to laying its eggs in the sedge-warblers' nests.
Above, on the bank, another species of willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly.
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