Silverland

SILVERLAND.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "GUY LIVINGSTONE," &c.
George A. Lawrence
Difficile est, propris communia dicere.
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1873.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
SILVERLAND.

CHAPTER I.
ON a certain afternoon in last October, we drove seawards over the Cornish uplands. It was the seventh day of the week, and over all things there brooded a very Sabbath calm; we were out of earshot of the stream-ripples in the dell; even the leaves were silent in the covert-belt where we sprung the first woodcock of the season yester-even; there was never a wave or rustle in the ferns and grasses fringing the high field-banks; and the air was still as a dream.
Ere long, the silence was troubled with a sound, vague and faint from distance at first, but waxing in volume and distinctness, till it might be likened to the beat of a mighty drum, heavily muffled such an one as used to be smitten long ago in the courtyard of the Great Khan when the battali Tartary was set in array. Said my companioi answering the question of my eyes,
"The ground-sea is on to-day. There will trouble with the nets, before morning!"
I did not wonder that he said it gravely; for, as the hop-bins are to those whose ensign is the White Horse of Hengist, and the wine-vats to the Rhinelander, so are the pilchard-seines to every true Cornishman bred and born within hail of the coast.
Soon, we came to a narrow gorge, trending shorewards so steeply, that at sight thereof an up-country horse might have sweated from, fear; but our hardy moorland galloway scuttled down it without breaking his trot, till we halted on the wide stretch of ribbed brown sand underlying the cliff-walls. A sight awaited us there to me, at least, wonderful and strange.
On the ocean we were looking over the Atlantic, remember, with never a rock or islet nearer than Cape Race there was no more sign of storm than in the air; for the sullen heave and welter in the offing was not discernible from where we stood. Only two or three thin white lines of foam, following each other regularly, showed that there was stir in the waters where they began to shoal: but each great billow, on reaching a certain point, upheaved itself with a motion, slow and solemn, yet inexpressibly suggestive of strength, till it was reared like a wall betwixt us arid the low westering sun; and then, curving ponderously, fell with a dead massive shock, that seemed to make the very sands shake and quiver. And the sound. Well I have listened to many voices of the sea; to the hiss of the under-tow, ravaging pebble ridges; to the rattle of the surf, grinding great boulders as the mill grinds corn; to the crash of waves repulsed from granite bulwarks; to the thunder of billows, penetrating into the bowels of the land through caverns that have never seen the sun: but, before or since, I have heard nothing like this sombre monotone.
After a while, we considered what manner of turmoil it must have been in mid-ocean, of which those rollers were but the faint outward ripple; and, speaking of the humours of the Atlantic, I called to mind a certain storm wherein I was buffeted some eight years agone the storm that proved the sea-worthiness of the Monitors, off Cape Hatteras, with fatal issue. And so we fell to talking of men and scenes, encountered in that same luckless journey; and to my comrade's question, " Would you like to see them all again? " I made answer, carelessly, as one is wont to speak of any scheme utterly vague and impracticable,
"I should like it of all things."
The subject dropped then; and, during a fortnight of better wild shooting than has often fallen to my lot, it was not again recurred to. Turnips thrive right well on the light upland soil; and the birds plentiful enough for reasonable desireswill actually lie, even in late October, to steady setters; furthermore, snipe and fowl are not among the myths of North Cornwall. Therefore, as you may guess, I carried away grateful memories when I set my face eastwards: but the memory of those words spoken on the sea-shore, was not among them. I was much taken aback when, in the January ensuing, my host appeared before me, and quoth lie,
"Have you forgotten what you said, that Sunday afternoon down in Trevenna Cove? I must start within a fortnight for the West for the very far West. Am I to go alone?"
Albeit I fully endorsed his purpose when I heard the nature of his errand, I fell into a great perplexity. Travel across the Atlantic and the Kocky Mountains in mid- winter, with all possible advantages of convoy thrown in, is not tempting; and, under ordinary