AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 121 



some said it was useless to attempt it on account 

 of the May and June frosts, and others said that the 

 owners objected to the ground being broken up! 

 I also asked several farmers why they did not cut 

 bracken, which was plentiful enough, to serve as 

 bedding for the cows, since they could not get straw. 

 They answered that occasionally a farmer did so, 

 but it was not the custom and they thought the cows 

 did just as well without any bedding at all! 



I pitied the cows ; but perhaps they were right ; it 

 may well be that the domestic animals, like their 

 masters, have become adapted during many genera- 

 tions to a starvation land, to lie in winter on a hard 

 cold stone floor and to keep alive on the smallest 

 amount of food of the poorest kind, and yet to flourish 

 in a way and yield milk. 



But though they appear to be a contented, they are 

 not a happy-looking or a lively people. They have 

 colourless faces and for good looks or brightness or 

 intelligence compare badly with the inhabitants of 

 the adjoining districts and with the people of England 

 generally, north and south. The children are naturally 

 more attractive than the adults; they have the 

 brightness proper to their time of life, which makes 

 their dirty little faces shine; but it is rare to find a 

 pretty one. What has made this people of the Peak 

 what they are, so unlike their neighbours, so wholly 

 absorbed in their own affairs and oblivious of the 

 world outside; mentally isolated, like the inhabitants 

 of a lonely island ? It was a depressing experience to 

 converse with youths and young men of an age when 



