Sylvia's Lovers

This is, perhaps, enough of a description of the town itself. I have

said that the country for miles all around was moorland; high above

the level of the sea towered the purple crags, whose summits were

crowned with greensward that stole down the sides of the scaur a

little way in grassy veins. Here and there a brook forced its way

from the heights down to the sea, making its channel into a valley

more or less broad in long process of time. And in the moorland

hollows, as in these valleys, trees and underwood grew and

flourished; so that, while on the bare swells of the high land you

shivered at the waste desolation of the scenery, when you dropped

into these wooded 'bottoms' you were charmed with the nestling

shelter which they gave. But above and around these rare and fertile

vales there were moors for many a mile, here and there bleak enough,

with the red freestone cropping out above the scanty herbage; then,

perhaps, there was a brown tract of peat and bog, uncertain footing

for the pedestrian who tried to make a short cut to his destination;

then on the higher sandy soil there was the purple ling, or

commonest species of heather growing in beautiful wild luxuriance.

Tufts of fine elastic grass were occasionally to be found, on which

the little black-faced sheep browsed; but either the scanty food, or

their goat-like agility, kept them in a lean condition that did not

promise much for the butcher, nor yet was their wool of a quality

fine enough to make them profitable in that way to their owners. In

such districts there is little population at the present day; there

was much less in the last century, before agriculture was

sufficiently scientific to have a chance of contending with such

natural disqualifications as the moors presented, and when there

were no facilities of railroads to bring sportsmen from a distance

to enjoy the shooting season, and make an annual demand for

accommodation.

There were old stone halls in the valleys; there were bare

farmhouses to be seen on the moors at long distances apart, with

small stacks of coarse poor hay, and almost larger stacks of turf

for winter fuel in their farmyards. The cattle in the pasture fields

belonging to these farms looked half starved; but somehow there was

an odd, intelligent expression in their faces, as well as in those

of the black-visaged sheep, which is seldom seen in the placidly

stupid countenances of well-fed animals. All the fences were turf

banks, with loose stones piled into walls on the top of these.