ENGLISH DRIVING 181 



with its single arch the narrow, but violent, torrent of 

 the beck, brown and swollen from last night's rain ; 

 and" once on the opposite side the ascent begins, the 

 road widening out here and there into a green lane 

 or common, where the geese hiss and cackle at us, 

 barely floundering away from under our horses' feet. 

 We begin to leave the region of the sycamore, the 

 mountain ash, and the larch, while the foxglove and 

 blackberry grow scarcer by the roadside. Now we 

 emerge into a great inclosure of, say, a hundred acres, 

 in which, though there are still patches of succulent 

 green pasture, dotted with mushrooms or here and 

 there spots of grey stone peeping through the sward, 

 the coarser grasses and rushy tussocks of the moor 

 begin to predominate. A whole herd of young cattle 

 come dancing round us, and the temper of the old 

 bull who watches us, sulky and motionless, as we 

 ride by, is a source of inward anxiety, until we reach 

 the gate in the high wall which is the boundary of the 

 real moor. Now we are fairly in the open and on 

 the heather, a flock of anxious peewits hovers close 

 round our heads, screaming and turning over in the 

 air : the wheatear evades us in a succession of short, 

 jerky flights, curtseying at us in derision at each pause 

 upon a stone, and so, making our way through moss 

 hags, over stones, and carefully round boggy places, 



