Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/143

Rh IME has healed the wounds, effaced the scars. Many years ago man—commercial, go-ahead man—saw the red sandstone outcrop amidst the bracken and beneath the smooth-holed beeches; he saw and calculated, then brought his tools of steel and iron, Ruthlessly he backed down the ancient timbers and dug out their roots; he soothed the undulations, nature's lines of beauty and grace; he filled in the little valleys and the hollow where for ages the brook had worked so patiently; he laid down branches and barrow-loads of broken stones where the ground was soft and made a road. Along this road, little more than a track amongst the trees, he dragged his lumbering carts, scoring deep gashes and ruts in the sweet earth, the leaf-mould of hundreds of years. The thunder of blasting-powder startled the ringdoves a mile away and set the pheasants crowing; its smothering fumes tainted the scented air. He hacked off masses of rock and shaped them with his clinking chisels, and soon great red walls appeared, and ladders were lowered to enable the worker to reach the more difficult spots. So the pit deepened, and the scar became larger and redder.

Round the thatched sheds, thatched with straw and the bracken he had destroyed, was a litter of broken pots and bottles, empty tins, rusty iron, and waste paper; it was the chaos of untidy man. But in the country round, and in the towns, walls were built, substantial stone houses were erected, and stately square-towered churches, and the tortured, tool-hacked stone lost its brilliant natural red and darkened to a beautiful weathered grey or brown.