206 THE LAND'S END 



but refuse to arrange themselves in their proper 

 place and order, and the result is a mere confusion. 

 I can but go down to a distance of a mile or two 

 from the hills and, turning my back to the sea, look 

 at the prospect before me, and omitting all the small 

 details speak only of its shape and colour. On the 

 right hand and on the left it stretches away to the 

 horizon, and it rises before me up to the rock-crowned 

 peaks and ridges of the hills, the slopes and the moor 

 below splashed and variegated with dead heath-brown, 

 darkest green, and dull red, the hues of heather, 

 furze and dead bracken ; and everywhere among the 

 harsh, rough, almost verdureless vegetation appear 

 the granite boulders and masses of rock cropping out 

 of the earth. A scene that enchants with its wildness 

 and desolation ; also, on wet days and when the air 

 is charged with moisture, with its novel and strikingly 

 beautiful colour. 



The colour of bracken, living or dead of a plant 

 so universal and abundant is familiar to everybody, 

 yet I would like now to dwell at some length on its 

 winter colour because it is a strange thing in itself 

 one of the most beautiful hues in nature which appears 

 in a dead and faded vegetation after the beech-like 

 brilliant autumn tints of russet, gold and copper- red 

 have vanished, and glows and lives again as it were, 

 and fades and vanishes only to return again and yet 

 again, right on to the time when the deep undying 

 roots shall thrust up new stems to uncurl at their tips, 

 spreading out green fresh fronds to cover and conceal 

 that mystery, even as we cover our dead, beautiful in 



