30 By Leafy Ways. 



and there rise the orderly masses of granite that 



seem 



' Piled by the hands of giants 

 For god-like kings of old.' 



Here, the brown expanse is seamed with the deep 

 workings of long forgotten miners ; there, are faintly 

 traced the hut circles of still earlier dwellers on the 

 heath. 



Few figures now are seen on these broad solitudes, 

 beyond the wandering herds of ponies. But these 

 sad-coloured wastes that will flame with golden 

 asphodel, those leagues of dreary moorland that will 

 glow with the tender hues of the heather, are the 

 favourite covert cf the blackcock. Yonder bright- 

 green morass set round with sombre rushes is the 

 haunt of snipe and curlew. 



At times the strange alarm of the ring-ouzel from his 

 perch on some stunted thorn-tree breaks the stillness. 

 A pipit flits restlessly among the furze. A solitary 

 raven wanders across the waste. Far up in the blue 

 sky sounds the faint carol of a soaring lark, just audible 

 above the sigh of the rustling sedges, and, save for 

 these, there lies over all the bare brown moorland 

 the silence of a desert. 



