NATURE IN ENGLAND 23 



mountains — I am tempted to say their cushionary 

 character — that no reading or picture viewing of 

 mine had prepared me for. In the cut or on can- 

 vas they appeared like hard and frowning rocks; 

 and here I beheld them as green and succulent as 

 any meadow-bank in April or May, — vast, elevated 

 sheep-walks and rabbit-warrens, treeless, shrubless, 

 generally without loose bowlders, shelving rocks, or 

 sheer precipices; often rounded, feminine, dimpled, 

 or impressing one as if the rock had been thrust up 

 beneath an immense stretch of the finest lawn, and 

 had carried the turf with it heavenward, rending it 

 here and there, but preserving acres of it intact. 



In Scotland I ascended Ben Venue, not one of 

 the highest or ruggedest of the Scotch mountains, 

 but a fair sample of them, and my foot was seldom 

 off the grass or bog, often sinking into them as into a 

 saturated sponge. Where I expected a dry course, 

 I found a wet one. The thick, springy turf was 

 oozing with water. Instead of being balked by 

 precipices, I was hindered by swamps. Where a 

 tangle of brush or a chaos of bowlders should have 

 detained me, I was picking my way as through a 

 wet meadow-bottom tilted up at an angle of forty- 

 five degrees. My feet became soaked when my 

 shins should have been bruised. Occasionally, a 

 large deposit of peat in some favored place had 

 given way beneath the strain of much water, and 

 left a black chasm a few yards wide and a yard or 

 more deep. Cold spring-runs were abundant, wild 

 flowers few, grass universal. A loping hare started 



