Midsummer to Michaelmas 
Gang owre the Drumaw and yont the lea, 
An’ doun by the side of yonder sea 
Your bairn lies greeting like to dee, 
With a big teardrop in his ee. 
Drumaw is a high hill near the sea in East Borderland. 
On the Drumaw there used to be a British fort, one of the 
few relics of the early Britons; it was also used by the 
Saxons, sometime occupants of the Border. In Kaffraria 
the natives call the Rainbow the Great Queen’s Girdle, 
which is rather a nice name, I think. The Roumanians 
have a fancy the Rainbow is the bridge whereby the angels 
travel between Heaven and earth. But I like best the 
quaint conceit of the Algonquin Indians, preserved in 
“ Hiawatha,” where old Nokomis sings that the Rainbow is 
the heaven of flowers : 
All the wild flowers of the forest, 
All the lilies of the prairies, 
When on earth they fade and perish, 
Blossom in that heaven above us. 
But, after all, what is more beautiful than its being the 
visible token of God’s promise to his creatures ! The 
Funkia or Swamp Lilies are almost out now, and the 
Sweet-pea hedge is looking very pretty. The Lily Garden 
has been devastated by Moles, the grass has been torn up 
in every direction ; it looks as though a herd of Fairy 
Cows had been romping wildly over it. He may be useful 
as a provider of pulverised earth, but he is a great trial to 
Gardeners ; the Demon Mole, as Keats, I think, calls him ; 
the Little Gentleman in Black Velvet, as the Jacobites called 
him, drinking his health, after the death of William of 
Orange. Elder-leaves are said to drive away Moles if 
spread about where they haunt. I think I must try this 
receipt. 
July 14. — A beautiful day. Boy and I have been busy 
superintending the upraising of an old Arborvitae-tree 
which had been blown down by the gale of yesterday. Boy 
ran to and fro with a little hatchet, cutting off small 
branches and directing the men at work, and, like the fly 
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