68 IN CARLYLE S COUNTRY. 



the most general impression. I recall how clean and 

 naked the country looked, lifted up in broad hill 

 slopes, naked of forests and trees and weedy, bushy 

 growths, and of everything that would hide or ob- 

 scure its unbroken verdancy, the one impression 

 that of a universe of grass, as in the arctic regions it 

 might be one of snow ; the mountains, pastoral soli- 

 tudes ; the vales, emerald vistas. 



Not to be entirely cheated out of my walk, I left 

 the train at Lockerby, a small Scotch market town, 

 and accomplished the remainder of the journey to Ec- 

 clefechan on foot, a brief six-mile pull. It was the 

 first day of June ; the afternoon sun was shining 

 brightly. It was still the honeymoon of travel with 

 me, not yet two weeks in the bonuie land ; the road 

 was smooth and clean as the floor of a sea beach, and 

 firmer, and my feet devoured the distance with right 

 good wilL The first red clover had just bloomed, as 

 I probably would have found it that day had I taken 

 a walk at home ; but, like the people I met, it had a 

 ruddier cheek than at home. I observed it on other 

 occasions, and later in the season, and noted that it 

 had more color than in this country, and held its 

 bloom longer. All grains and grasses ripen slower 

 there than here, the season is so much longer and 

 cooler. The pink and ruddy tints are more common 

 in the flowers also. The bloom of the blackberry is 

 often of a decided pink, and certain white, umbellif- 

 erous plants, like yarrow, have now and then a rosy 

 tinge. The little white daisy ("go wan," the Scotch 



