156 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



heavier in the ear if they believed in this; the pilchards 

 should be as v^^ater boiling in the bay; and they should 

 have wings as of the white birds that lounged about the 

 precipices of the coast. And all the time the three seals 

 lay with their heads and backs above the shallows and 

 watched. Perhaps the men believed his word; perhaps 

 they dropped him over the precipice to see whether he 

 also flew like a gull : but here is the church named after 

 him. 



All along the coast (and especially where it is lofty and 

 houseless, and on the ledges of the crags the young grey 

 gulls unable to fly bob their heads seaward and try to 

 scream like their parents who wheel far and near with 

 double yodeling cry), there are many rounded barrows 

 looking out to sea. And there are some amidst the sand- 

 hills, bare and corrugated by the wind and heaved up like 

 a feather-bed, their edges golden against the blue sky or 

 mangily covered by drab marram grass that whistles 

 wintrily; and near by the blue sea, slightly roughened as 

 by a harrow, sleeps calm but foamy among cinder- 

 coloured isles; donkeys graze on the brown turf, larks 

 rise and fall and curlews go by; a cuckoo sings among 

 the deserted mines. But the barrows are most noble on 

 the high heather and grass. The lonely turf is full of 

 lilac scabious flowers and crimson knapweed among the 

 solid mounds of gorse. The brown-green-grey of the dry 

 summer grass reveals myriads of the flowers of thyme, of 

 stonecrop yellow and white, of pearly eyebright, of golden 

 lady's fingers, and the white or grey clover with its purest 

 and earthiest of all fragrances. Here and there steep 

 tiacks descend slantwise among the thrift-grown crags 

 to the sea, or promise to descend but end abruptly in 



