14 Wild Life in a Southern County 



CHAPTER II. 



A DROUGHT — ANCIENT GARRISON OF THE ENTRENCHMENT — TRA- 

 DITIONS OF FOREST — CTTRIOTTS PONDS — A MIRAGE. 



Once now and then in the cycle of the years there comes 

 a summer which to the hills is almost like a fever to the 

 blood, wasting and drying up with its heat the green 

 things upon which animal life depends, so that drought 

 and famine go hand in hand. The days go by and grow 

 to weeks, the weeks lengthen to months, and still no rain. 

 The sun pours down his burning rays, which become 

 hotter as the season advances ; the sky is blue and beau- 

 tiful over the hills — beautiful, but pitiless to the bleating 

 flocks beneath. The breeze comes up from the south, 

 bringing with it white clouds sailing at an immense height, 

 with openings between like azure lakes or aerial Mediter- 

 raneans landlocked by banks of vapour. 



These, if you watch them from the rampart, slowly 

 dissolve ; fragments break away from the mass as the 

 edges of the polar glaciers slip off the ice-cliff into the sea, 

 only these are noiseless. The fragment detached grows 

 visibly thinner and more translucent, its margin stretching 

 out in an uneven fringe : the process is almost exactly like 

 the unravelling of a spotless garment, the threads wavering 

 and twisting as they are carried along by the current, 

 diminishing till they fade and are lost in the ocean of blue. 

 This breaking of the clouds is commonly seen in weather 



