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Updated: May 31, 2025
The evening was so still that Trollhätta's Fall was as audible in the deep stillness, as if it were a chorus from a hundred water-mills ever one and the same tone. In one, however, there sounded a mightier crash that seemed to pass sheer through the earth; and yet with all this the endless silence of nature was felt.
We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.
The water-mills of Tretton and the town of Tretton had grown and been expanded within his domain, and the management of the sales in Mr. Grey's hands had been judicious. The revenues were double now what they had been when Mr. Scarborough first inherited it.
This arrangement enabled the water to act upon the wheel with the maximum of effect in all states of the river; and it so generally recommended itself, that it very soon became adopted in most water-mills both at home and abroad.
The Tarn, its sportive mood over, the portals of its magnificent gorge closed, now flows amid sunny hills, quitting the wild Lozere for the more placid Aveyron; immediately around us are little farmsteads, water-mills, and gardens, whilst opposite, like a black thundercloud threatening a summer day, the Causse Noir looms in the distance!
She followed the slave into the cellar when he went to fill the amphorae, and into the poultry-yard amongst the scraggy and ragged fowls, all beak, claws, and feathers, who flew swifter than eagles before the knife of the black cook. Often at night, on the straw, instead of sleeping, he built for Thais little water-mills, and ships no bigger than his hand, with all their rigging.
His life is a mere counterfeit patent, which, nevertheless, makes many a country justice tremble. Don Quixote's water-mills are still Scotch bagpipes to him. He hath run through divers parcels of land, and great houses, beside both the counters.
Almost the greatest loss to country scenery is the decay of the ancient windmills and water-mills. The first has robbed the hilltops of a most picturesque feature, while in the valleys and little glens the roaring, creaking, dripping wheel sounds no longer, except in favoured spots where it still pays to grind the corn in the old way.
I was lecturing to a crowd of East End Londoners at Toynbee Hall on village life in ancient and modern times, and showed them views of the old village street, the cottages, manor-houses, water-mills, and all the charms of rural England, and after the lecture I talked with many of the men who remembered their country homes which they had left in the days of their youth, and they all wished to go back there again, if only they could find work and had not lost the power of doing it.
Towards the river, also, many were adorned with wooden balconies, sheltered by the far-advancing angles of the roofs; whilst beneath, upon the water, the piles of the bridge were encumbered by many water-mills, to the incessant noise of which, habit probably reconciled the inhabitants of the houses above.
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