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168 THE FLAX-FLOWER. 
1836. You came, in the midst of those stony and 
heathy wildernesses, upon a few turf-erections, 
without windows and without chimneys ; the wild 
grasses of the moor and the heath itself grew 
often upon the roof, for all had originally been cut 
from the mountain-side ; and, but for the smoke 
which issued from the door, or the children that 
played about it, you might have doubted of its 
being a human dwelling. Miserable, however, as 
such homes may appear at first sight, they are, as 
it were, the natural growth of the mountain-moor- 
land, and the eye soon finds in them much that is 
picturesque and characteristic. 
About such places as these are frequently, too, 
patches of cultivated ground ; the one of potatoes, 
and perhaps oats or barley, the other of flax. 
Thus grow, at the very door of this humble 
human tenement, the food and clothing of the 
family. How essential this growth is to them, may 
be seen from the nature of the ground. It is fre- 
quently the most difficult that can be conceived 
to bring into cultivation; one mass, as it seems, 
of stones, with the scantiest intermixture of soil. 
These stones, many of which are of immense size, 
