AMONGST THE HEATHER. 51 



on the West Dart before darkness falls, mindful of the moor- 

 men's rhyme 



" River of Dart, river of dart, 

 Every year thou claimest a heart." 



Plenty of granite ribs broken from the moor's backbone strew 

 his path on both sides, and their grey glimmer will long be un- 

 subdued by night, as Browning has noted, with the subtle 

 observation of a true poet 



" Piled stones that gleam unground away 



By twilight's hungry jaws, which champs fine all beside 

 I' the solitary waste we grope through." {Fifine). 



And still heather is everywhere around, and runs down the 

 peninsula in front till it fitly enough dips down between the 

 Land's End and the Scilly Isles into that legendary imagina- 

 tive fairy-land, the long-lost Lyonnesse, 



" A land of old, upheaven from the abyss, 

 By fire to sink into the abyss again." 



We must end with one more sketch from the " land of brown 

 heath and shaggy wood." It is an afternoon late in September, 

 giving another aspect of heather, and one well known to many 

 an Englishman. A few hours of fine weather are delusively 

 succeeding several days of persistent rain. The birches are 

 dropping masses of gold, the fir woods impenetrable depths of 

 gloom, whence come and go aerial whispers, preludes of 

 approaching storm, but, like Cassandra's forebodings, utterly 

 distrusted by two sanguine sportsmen who are striding over the 

 blanched heather-blooms on the open moor. Grouse have 

 already packed, and the gillie and couple of dogs which have 

 descended the slope before them have been worse than useless 

 on the upper corries. It is in no contented mood, therefore, 

 that they come down the hill-track by the shieling to the loch. 

 Its sullen surface, streaked with one flying sunbeam, and open- 

 ing in the distance upon a grey sea ruffled into white, around 



