HEY: SOME WORD PICTURES TAKEN FROM NATURE. 2t7 
falls in a long shaft on the shore. Not far off rises the little gray 
-church, in whose yard is the unmarked grave of Cook’s father. The 
sands are lonely—only a distant figure on either hand—very uniform 
too ; a thin broken line of sea-coal and a few blackened stalks of 
Laminaria mark high-water line. I have gathered a handful of late 
poppies in a field near. Their full bright scarlet looks strange 
amid these pallid November tints, as sometimes the sun sets crimson 
when the earth is wrapt in winter snows. For all the bright tiny 
flowers that deck these sandy hollows in such numbers—purple 
astragalus, pink thyme, and yellow lotus-—are over. Only a few 
blooms of the white variety of the storksbill linger on in nooks that 
catch the sun’s full warmth. 
May 4TH, 1891. AYTON. 
My feelings in leaving the plain for this breezy hill may be com- 
pared to those of a fly which has just crawled up the side of a milk 
jug into which it had fallen, and now stands drying its wings on the 
rim, n my way up, I passed a quantity of green hellebore, 
flourishing under the shelter of an old stone wall. The bright green 
flowers contrast beautifully with the young leaves, which are at 
present of a deep vinous purple tint, reminding one of Sophocles’ 
éwOra xueodv. The view from this hill, inconsiderable as it is, is 
quite Surprising. Immediately at my left opens the mouth of Forge 
Valley. Close to the river are groups of alder, wearing a very red 
tinge just before the opening of the leaf. Higher up, a few larches 
shine out, dressed in their spring emerald. Beyond extend the 
brown reaches of Seamer Moor, crowned with its round beacon 
tower. Before me stretches the long vale of Pickering, where the 
white smoke of many trains rising above plantations of dark pines 
marks the route of the railway line. For some little distance the 
course of the Derwent may be distinguished by the tall stiff alders 
that line its banks——that curious devious river which seems to have 
shrunk from the embrace of Neptune just when he was prepared to 
receive her. I suppose the real explanation of the Derwent’s inland 
flight is the massing of a great ice-barrier near Filey, damming up the 
water and so forcing the river to break itself a way through the 
Howardian Hills. Above the vale rises the long swelling range of 
the wolds, ribbed here and there, like a giant carcase, with many 
white roads, At their base many villages are visible, venerable from 
their antiquity. I can never look at these chalk hills without a vision 
of those ancient peoples that lived and laboured, hunted and fought, 
and at last died and were buried upon them-——whose arrows and axes 
the farmer’s plough and the drainer’s spade turn up in such numbers, 
July 1891. 
