1 64 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



the shore that I knew it was the sea. More common is 

 the calm dark-blue sea in mid-summer, over which go 

 criss-cross bands of lighter hue, like pale moorland paths 

 winding about a moor. 



In a stern land like Cornwall that so often refuses the 

 consolations of grass and herb and tree, the relentings are 

 the more gracious. These are to be found in a whole 

 valley where there are sloping fields of corn and grass 

 divided by green hedges, and woods rich and misty and 

 warm, and the bones of the land are buried away until 

 it ends in a bay where high and cavernous dark rocks 

 stand on either side of blue water and level sand. Often 

 all the sweetness of the country round seems to have run 

 into one great roadside hedge as dewdrops collect in the 

 bosom of a leaf. The stones of the original wall are 

 themselves deeply hidden in turf, or from the crevices 

 ferns descend and the pale blooms of pennywort rise up; 

 the lichen is furry and the yellow or pink stonecrop is 

 neat and dense; ivy climbs closely up and hangs down in 

 loose array. Up from the top of the wall or mound rise 

 bramble and gorse and woodbine over them, or brier and 

 thorn and woodbine again; and the tallest and massiest 

 of foxgloves cleave through these with their bells, half 

 a hundred of them in rows five deep already open and 

 as many more yet in bud, dense as grapes, dewy, mur- 

 murous; and below the foxgloves are slender parsleys, 

 rough wood sage and poppies. At the foot of the wall, 

 between it and the road, is a grassy strip, where the 

 yarrow grows feathery with gilded cinque foil and tor- 

 mentil — or above nettles as dense as corn rise large discs 

 of white hog parsnip flower, a coarse and often dirty 

 flower that has a dry smell of summer — or bramble and 



