4 FRESH FIELDS 



hear the cattle ripping off the lush grass in the 

 fields. One feels as if he could eat grass himself. 

 It is pastoral paradise. We can see the daisies and 

 buttercups ; and from above a meadow on the right 

 a part of the song of a skylark reaches my ear. In- 

 deed, not a little of the charm and novelty of this 

 part of the voyage was the impression it made as 

 of going afield in an ocean steamer. We had sud- 

 denly passed from a wilderness of waters into a ver- 

 durous, sunlit landscape, where scarcely any water 

 was visible. The Clyde, soon after you leave 

 Greenock, becomes little more than a large, deep 

 canal, inclosed between meadow banks, and from 

 the deck of the great steamer only the most charm- 

 ing rural sights and sounds greet you. You are at 

 sea amid verdant parks and fields of clover and 

 grain. You behold farm occupations — sowing, 

 planting, plowing — as from the middle of the 

 Atlantic. Playful heifers and skipping lambs take 

 the place of the leaping dolphins and the basking 

 swordfish. The ship steers her way amid turnip- 

 fields and broad acres of newly planted potatoes. 

 You are not surprised that she needs piloting. A 

 little tug with a rope at her bow pulls her first this 

 way and then that, while one at her stern nudges 

 her right flank and then her left. Presently we 

 come to the ship-building yards of the Clyde, where 

 rural, pastoral scenes are strangely mingled with 

 those of quite another sort. "First a cow and then 

 an iron ship," as one of the voyagers observed. 

 Here a pasture or a meadow, or a field of wheat or 



