NATURE IN ENGLAND. 25 



It was this turfy and grassy character of these 

 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 canvas 

 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, gener- 

 ally without loose bowlders, shelving rocks, or sheer 

 precipices ; often rounded, feminine, dimpled, or im- 

 pressing one as if the rock had been thrust up be- 

 neath 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 satu- 

 rated sponge. "Where I expected a dry course, I 

 found a wet one. The thick, springy turf was ooz- 

 ing with water. Instead of being balked by preci- 

 pices, 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 



