NATURE IN ENGLAND 25 



and insignificant; shows no frowning walls, no tre- 

 mendous cleavage ; nothing overhanging and precipi- 

 tous; no wrath and revel of the elder gods." 



Even in rugged Scotland nature is scarcely wilder 

 than a mountain sheep, certainly a good way short 

 of the ferity of the moose and caribou. There is 

 everywhere marked repose and moderation in the 

 scenery, a kind of aboriginal Scotch canniness and 

 propriety that gives one a new sensation. On and 

 about Ben Nevis there is barrenness, cragginess, 

 and desolation; but the characteristic feature of 

 wild Scotch scenery is the moor, lifted up into 

 mountains, covering low, broad hills, or stretching 

 away in undulating plains, black, silent, melancholy, 

 it may be, but never savage or especially wild. 

 "The vast and yet not savage solitude," Carlyle 

 says, referring to these moorlands. The soil is 

 black and peaty, often boggy; the heather short 

 and uniform as prairie grass; a shepherd's cottage 

 or a sportsman's "box" stuck here and there amid 

 the hills. The highland cattle are shaggy and pic- 

 turesque, but the moors and mountains are close 

 cropped and uniform. The solitude is not that of 

 a forest full of still forms and dim vistas, but of 

 wide, open, sombre spaces. Nature did not look 

 alien or unfriendly to me; there must be barrenness 

 or some savage threatening feature in the landscape 

 to produce this impression; but the heather and 

 whin are like a permanent shadow, and one longs 

 to see the trees stand up and wave their branches. 

 The torrents leaping down off the mountains are 



