10 



BRITISH MOSSES. 



Following the track that leads off the moor, we find that by degrees it takes 

 the form of a road ; that is to say, the cart-tracks become deeper, the grass more 

 worn, the loose bits of granite lying about promiscuously are rather smaller. 

 Then a hedge appears on each side, of granite rocks of various sizes, large or 

 small as they fitted or filled in. All the rocks are crusted with lichen, and long 

 bents of grass straggle from the crevices. The hedge begins to be bushy with 

 heath and whortleberry ; presently we see a stunted hawthorn, which shows us by 

 its growth from which way the wind blows ; and now we reach a hamlet set in a 

 hollow of the hill's great shoulder, and the first trees we have seen are the 

 sycamores among the rough walls of its cottages. Such lovely children come 

 out to look at us as we hardly believed were found out of picture-frames, with 

 great hazel and blue eyes and long lashes, and scarlet blood mantling in their 

 cheeks, and golden hair curling over their heads ; and there is a general assort- 

 ment of domestic animals, goats, pigs, a stray sheep or two, huge-horned red 

 oxen going along in a leisurely way, and a flock of geese. At a sudden turn 

 of the road the valley opens upon us ; the curves of its steep sides passing up 

 into the lines of the tree trunks and rocky buttresses, which make one wild 

 beauty, and farther down the rocks becoming fewer and the coppices larger. The 

 road is cut, terrace-like, in the side of the hill ; the green of the grass on the slopes 

 and hollows above meets the blue of the sky ; here the slope is broken by a 

 rock, there is furze in blossom, and on the opposite side is a slope as steep, set 

 over with hawthorns, milk-white each one, and the mountain ash waves, and 

 the clumps of hazels have mossy stones beneath them ; and, after the open moor, it 

 seems as though we never before appreciated trees and shade. The hedges are 

 passed, and the turf on each side comes close to the road ; and far down is the 

 brook, now tumbling, roaring, leaping over the boulders, and now quiet in dark 

 purple pools. Eock, and smooth slope, and coppice, and turf spread by the 

 brook, and oaks stretching their limbs across the stream, and shade of hawthorn, 

 and the voice of the woodpigeon from the thicket, and the joyous song of the 

 water, and everywhere the flowers and the mosses, and the look up the stream 

 to the purple moor it and we have come from, and the grey church tower with trees 

 clustering round it, and the bridge of piles of rock with slabs laid across from one 

 pile to another, — such our valley is. And the farmer who cultivates it will say that 

 for more than two hundred years it has been in the hands of his family, and that 



