JASPER ST. AUBYN. 303 



sheer and precipitous from the very brink of the stream, rifted 

 and broken into angular blocks and tall columnar masses, from 

 the clefts of which, wherever they could find soil enough to 

 support their scanty growth, a few stunted oaks shot out almost 

 horizontally with their gnarled arms and dark-green foliage, and 

 here and there the silvery bark and quivering tresses of the 

 birch relieved the monotony of colour by their gay brightness. 

 Above, the clifts were crowned with the beautiful purple 

 heather, now in its very glow of summer bloom, about which 

 were buzzing myriads of wild bees, sipping their nectar from its 

 cups of amethyst. 



" The hither side, though rough and steep and broken, was 

 not in the place where Jasper stood precipitous; indeed it 

 seemed as if at some distant period a sort of landslip had 

 occurred, by which the summit of the rocky wall had been 

 broken into massive fragments, and hurled down in an 

 inclined plane into the bed of the stream, on which it had 

 encroached with its shattered blocks and rounded boulders. 



"Time, however, had covered all this abrupt and broken 

 slope with a beautiful growth of oak and hazel coppice, among 

 which, only at distant intervals, could the dun weather-beaten 

 flanks of the great stones be discovered. 



" At the base of this descent, a hundred and fifty feet perhaps 

 below the stand of the young sportsman, flowed the dark arrowy 

 stream — a wild and perilous water. As clear as crystal, yet as 

 dark as the brown cairn-gorm, it came pouring down among 

 the broken rocks with a rapidity and force which showed what 

 must be its fuiy when swollen by a storm among the mountains, 

 here breaking into wreaths of rippling foam where some unseen 



