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The manor house, the home of the Walshes, now a farm, preserves the old hall. Flax Bourton, a parish 5 m. The small Perp. church is noteworthy for the 12th-cent.
I have preserved the spinning wheel on which mother converted flax yarn into thread, which she sold to aid in the support of the family, but soon the entire burden fell on her, for father's illness developed into consumption, from which he died in March, 1823.
At Volkmarsen and other places in Hesse the people used to observe which way the wind blew the flames, and then they sowed flax seed in that direction, confident that it would grow well.
Garden-tillage and spade-farming are not learnt in a day, especially when they depend as they always must in temperate climates for their main profit on some article which requires skilled labour to prepare it for the market on flax, for instance, silk, wine, or fruits.
Each member of the family has a pallet of coarse cloth stuffed with fluffy flax, which is placed at night on the floor, on benches, on part of the top of the huge stone or brick stove, or on a platform laid close up under the ceiling on beams extending from the stove to the opposite wall of the living-room. The place on the stove is reserved for the aged and the babies.
Bread must not be put into the oven, nor cakes on the coal, unless there is time before the Sabbath comes in for the surface to become encrusted. Concerning the Sabbath lamp. . M. Wherewith may one light the Sabbath lamp? Not with wicks made with cedar moss, or raw flax, or silk fibre, or weeds growing in water, or ship moss.
Although it is infinitely stronger in its raw state than any other flax or hemp, yet when boiled with potash it becomes so exceedingly weak as not to bear the operation of weaving but with the utmost difficulty. A gentleman once showed me a pair of trousers made of this material. They appeared quite rough and nearly worn out, though they had been used but for a few weeks.
The blue flowers of the slender-leaved flax, combined with the bright hues of the scarlet acanthus, a flower peculiar to the country. A few cassowaries were bounding over the plain, but it was impossible to get near them. The Major was fortunate enough, however, to hit one very rare animal with a ball in the leg.
How clearly I remember Father working with it in the bright, sharp March days, breaking it, then swingling it with a long wooden sword-like tool over the end of an upright board fixed at the base in a heavy block. This was to separate the brittle fragments of the bark from the fibres of the flax.
The suburbs already have been noticed, where in the gardens wheat, barley, ghusub, ghafouly, the flax plant, common vegetables and flowers, a few roses and jessamines, are cultivated, with the noble date-palm overshadowing all. Every garden has its well, or wells. Sweet water is scarce. The spring crops are six weeks in advance of those in Tripoli.
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