Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/133

Rh I saw no living thing in my course across this desert; the heron, that beautiful and solitary bird, rejected it for a haunt; and even the wild moor-fowl, which in the fowler's proverb feeds on the heather-top, sought neither food nor shelter amid the brown and dreary wilderness.

"I came at last to a thick and gloomy plantation of Scotch firs, which, varying the bleak desolation of the moor, gave me the assurance that, some thirty years before, the hand of man had been busied in the region. A fence of loose stone, surmounted by a rude cope or cornice of rough sharp rock, presented an effectual barrier to sheep and even deer. The latter animals will overleap a high wall of firm masonry, but turn back from a very slender impediment which threatens insecure footing.

"The soil had in many places proved ungenial to Scotch firs, the hardiest of all forest trees; they grew in dwarfish and stunted clumps, and exceeded not the altitude of ordinary shrubs. In passing along the side of the fence, I came to a hollow, where the masses of high green bracken betokened a richer soil. Here the trees, striking deep into the mossy loam, towered up into a beautiful and extensive grove, relieved in their gloomy appearance by the wild cherry and mountain ash, at that time covered with bloom. Behind me the moor spread out high and uneven, full of quagmires and pits, out of which the peasants of Annan Vale cut peats for fuel.

"I observed, winding through the field of bracken, a kind of trodden way, resembling a hare-road, which, passing over the fence, by the removal of the cope-stones, dived directly into the bosom of the wood. The path, too, seemed marked with men's feet; and, with the hope of its leading me to some human abode, I entered the plantation. The wood, fair and open at first, became thick and difficult; the road, too, grew sinuous and perplexing; and I was compelled to pull aside the thick masses of boughs, and, gliding gently into the aperture, make the best of my way by sleight and stratagem.

"I had proceeded in this way nearly half a mile, when I came to the foot of one of those vast rocks which tower up so abrupt and unexpectedly on many of the Scottish heaths. It semeed [sic] a pile of prodigious stones huddled rudely together in the careless haste of creation, rather than a regular rock. Deep chasms, and openings resembling caves, were