HEATHER BURNING. 



of this awful comparatively recent visitation is this 

 I was accustomed to set 'muirburn' when a boy of 

 nine or ten. 



''The primeval heath of our mountains was strong, 

 bushy and, when dry in spring, exceedingly inflam- 

 mable. I was a mountain child, for on one side of 

 my dwelling the Heather withered and bloomed up to 

 the door ; and when one thinks of the 'bonny blooming 

 Heather' it is quite refreshing; it blooms when all 

 things around it are withering, during the later 

 months of harvest, but then, oh then, it puts on such 

 a russet robe of beauty a dark evening cloud tipped 

 and tinged with red a mantle of black velvet spangled 

 with gold ; and its fragrance is honey steeped in myrrh. 

 Yet when withered in March and April, it is an object 

 of aversion to the sheep farmer, who prefers green 

 grass and tender sward; and he issues to impatient 

 boyhood the sentence of destruction. Peat follows 

 peat, kindled at one end and held by the other the hill- 

 side or the level muir swarm with matches; carefully 

 is the ignition communicated to the dry and wide- 

 spread Heath ; from spot to spot in lines and in circles 

 it extends and unites the wind is up, and one con- 

 tinuous blaze is the almost immediate consequence. 

 It is night, dark night the clouds above catch and 

 reflect the uncertain gleam. The Heathfowl wing 

 their terrified flight through, above, and beneath the 

 rolling and outspreading smoke. The flame gathers 

 into a point; and at the more advanced part of the 

 curvature, the force and blaze is terrible. A thousand 

 tongues of fire shoot up into the density, and imme- 

 diately disappear. Who now so venturous as to dash 



us 



