Sylvias Lovers | Page 2

and children lounged for hours, almost as if they revelled in the
odours of train-oil.
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.
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,