There was comparative fertility and luxuriance down below in the
rare green dales. The narrow meadows stretching along the brookside
seemed as though the cows could really satisfy their hunger in the
deep rich grass; whereas on the higher lands the scanty herbage was
hardly worth the fatigue of moving about in search of it. Even in
these 'bottoms' the piping sea-winds, following the current of the
stream, stunted and cut low any trees; but still there was rich
thick underwood, tangled and tied together with brambles, and
brier-rose, [sic] and honeysuckle; and if the farmer in these
comparatively happy valleys had had wife or daughter who cared for
gardening, many a flower would have grown on the western or southern
side of the rough stone house. But at that time gardening was not a
popular art in any part of England; in the north it is not yet.
Noblemen and gentlemen may have beautiful gardens; but farmers and
day-labourers care little for them north of the Trent, which is all
I can answer for. A few 'berry' bushes, a black currant tree or two
(the leaves to be used in heightening the flavour of tea, the fruit
as medicinal for colds and sore throats), a potato ground (and this
was not so common at the close of the last century as it is now), a
cabbage bed, a bush of sage, and balm, and thyme, and marjoram, with
possibly a rose tree, and 'old man' growing in the midst; a little
plot of small strong coarse onions, and perhaps some marigolds, the
petals of which flavoured the salt-beef broth; such plants made up a
well-furnished garden to a farmhouse at the time and place to which
my story belongs. But for twenty miles inland there was no
forgetting the sea, nor the sea-trade; refuse shell-fish, seaweed,
the offal of the melting-houses, were the staple manure of the
district; great ghastly whale-jaws, bleached bare and white, were
the arches over the gate-posts to many a field or moorland stretch.
Out of every family of several sons, however agricultural their
position might be, one had gone to sea, and the mother looked
wistfully seaward at the changes of the keen piping moorland winds.
The holiday rambles were to the coast; no one cared to go inland to
see aught, unless indeed it might be to the great annual horse-fairs
held where the dreary land broke into habitation and cultivation.
Somehow in this country sea thoughts followed the thinker far
inland; whereas in most other parts of the island, at five miles
from the ocean, he has all but forgotten the existence of such an
element as salt water. The great Greenland trade of the coasting
towns was the main and primary cause of this, no doubt. But there
was also a dread and an irritation in every one's mind, at the time
of which I write, in connection with the neighbouring sea.