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THE hills are almost totally covered
with dark heath, and even that appears checked in its
growth. What is not heath is nakedness, a little
diversified now and then by a stream rushing down the
steep. An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving
harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of
hopeless sterility." Such is Dr Johnson’s picture of a
Highland landscape. Captain Burt writes to the same
effect, and calls the hills monstrous excrescences," rude
and offensive to the sight," "of a dismal gloomy brown,"
and, most of all, disagreeable when the heath is in
bloom." He says that if an inhabitant of the south of
England were to be brought blindfold into some narrow,
rocky hollow, enclosed with these horrid prospects, amid
there to have his bandage taken off, he would be ready to
die with fear, as thinking it impossible he should ever
get out to return to his native country." Our Gaelic
poets, from Ossian downwards, had a higher idea of
highland scenery, and they have found many in these last
days to agree with them. Shelley says—
"I love all waste
And solitary places where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be."
Currer Bell tells us that her "sister
Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose
bloomed in the bleakest of the heath for her; out of a
sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an
Eden. She found in time bleak solitude many and dear
delights, and not the least and best loved was-liberty."
Dora Wordsworth writes—"I can always walk over a moor with
a light foot; I seem to be drawn more closely to nature in
such places than anywhere else, or rather I feel more
strongly the power of nature over me, and am better
satisfied with myself for being able to find enjoyment in
what unfortunately to many persons is either dismal or
insipid." Sir Walter Scott writes to Washington Irving
(Introduction to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel"—"I
like the very nakedness of the land; it has some thing
bold, stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for
some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is
like ornamental garden land, I begin to wish myself back
again among my own honest grey hills," and then he adds,
in words that cannot but touch the heart of all true
Scotsmen, "and if 1 did not see the heather at least
once a year I think I should die!" Dr Johnson used to
say, "Let us take a walk down Fleet Street" -let us take a
walk now and again to the moors, to Connage, Sliamore, or
Lurg, and if we know anything of their secret, instead of
being "astonished and repelled," we shall be sure "to find
enjoyment," and return invigorated in mind and body.
"And what comes next? a lovely moor
Without a beaten way,
And grey clouds sailing slow before
A wind that will not stay."
- George Macdonald.
As we look around, one thing that
strikes us is the number of terraces. They are very marked
in the line of the Nethy, and speak powerfully of the
far-off days of ice and glaciers. Another thing very
notable is the wonderful effects of water power. We see
this in miniature in the tiny stream that ‘‘trickles under
moss, whose liveliest green betrays the secret of its
silent course." We see it still more clearly in the deep
channels cut by the streams through the mosses, but we see
it on time grandest scale in the ravines made by the
rivers through the drift amid gravel in the course of the
ages. Habakkuk (iii. 9), sees in this the hand of God,
"Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers." in many places
on the moors and hillsides we may observe cairns and hut
circles, the latter generally near a spring, memorials of
our rude forefathers.
The plant that thrives best in the
moors is the Heather. It is hard and wiry, and adapted to
the moors as the camel is to the desert. Other plants have
no chance against it, save in specially favoured spots.
Everywhere we find the struggle for existence. As Mr Grant
Allen says—"The very fact that plants can hardly move at
all from the spot where they grow makes the competition in
the end all the fiercer. They are perpetually intriguing
among stones and crannies to insert their roots here, and
to get beforehand on their rivals with their seedlings
there; they fight for drops of water after summer showers,
like the victims shut up in the Black Hole of Calcutta;
they spread their leaves close in rosettes along the
ground, so as to monopolise space, and kill down
competition; they press upwards towards the sun, so as to
catch the first glance of the beautiful rays, and to grasp
before their neighbours at any floating speck of carbonic
acid. This is no poetic fancy. it is sober, and literal,
biological truth." Besides the Heather, or Ling (Calluna
vulgaris), and the two heaths (Erica cincrea
and E. tetralis), there are many other plants worth
noticing. Here you may find the oldest of plants,
the Lycopodium, which dates back to the geological
period called the Silurian. Of this there are two
varieties, the Stags’ Horn Club Moss and the finer and
rarer Alpine (L. Alpinum). Club mosses were
formerly thought
good for eye complaints. The
yellow dust from the seed burns rapidly, and was at one
time used for producing imitation lightning on the stage.
Here also you may find the curiousest of plants,
the Flesh-eating Sundew
(Drosera rotundifolia).
Like the Butterwort and
Venus Fly—trap, the Sundew has the power of feeding upon
insects. When a fly alights on the leaf, it is held fast.
The hairs or tentacles bend slowly inward towards it, and
on touching it they pour out an acid fluid, that acts like
digestive juice, enabling the plant to absorb the
dissolved matter as food.
Th is
curious process is well
described in the quaint lines by Mr Alfred Knight—
"You really mean it?
You round—leaved plant of modest
size
Eats little moths and ants and flies?
Whv, yes, I’ve seen
it!
Those clammy paws are gills and snares:
The gems that crown those ruddy hairs
And look like drips of morning dew
Are baits, ye insect world, for you,
And hide a purpose dire
and
bloody,
Ye thirsty strollers,
O’er each honeyed
flow'r and stem and leaf
Which each for you its dewdrop wears,
If ever you should come to
grief
On yonder hairs,
How vain your dolours!
They’ll hold you
with their balls of glue
Till they have made a meal of you.
Then shun, ye
little insect bands,
The Drosera,
whose pepsin glands
Do work for stomach, claws, and
molars!"
Here also
von may find the usefullesr
of plants—the Grass, in various forms. The
Cotton-grass (Eriophorum), with its white, silky,
cotton-like heads, is conspicuous in the miry places. This
plant sends out at first a dark shoot, called in Gaelic
Ceann dubh, black head. At this stage it is sweet and
juicy, and deer come from far to feed upon t. In
Sutherland it is found very useful, and supplies sheep
with nourishment when other food is scarce. Mr Dixon, in "
Field and Fern," says:—"The Cotton plant or mossy grasses
in the lower ranges lie very little above sea level, and
tide the sheep through the winter and spring months, when
those on the Border hills are generally hid in snow
wreaths on the summits. This plant is, in fact, as much
the making of Sutherland as its prototype is of
Manchester." Mr Ruskin has the following beautiful passage
as to the "Grass of the Field":—
Follow but for a little time the
thought of all that we ought to recognise in these words.
All spring and summer is in them, the walks by silent
scented paths, the rests in noonday heat, the joy of the
herds and flocks, the power of all shepherd life and
meditation, the life of sunlight upon the world falling in
emerald streaks and soft blue shadows, when else it would
have struck on the dark mould or scorching dust ; pastures
beside the pacing brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly
hills; thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of
lifted sea crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth
in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet
softening in their fall the sound of loving voices."
Here in the moor you may also find the
beautifullest of our plants. Tastes differ. Some
would put one flower first and some another. Linnaaeus
knelt before the gorse or broom when he first saw it in
its golden splendour. Burns also sings its praises as more
loved than the flowers of foreign lands—
"Far dearer to me are yon humble broom
bowers,
Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly unseen,
And where, lightly tripping among the sweet flowers,
A-listening the linnet, oft wanders my Jean."
But perhaps with most the Fox-glove has
the pre-eminence. The proper name is Folks-glove,
that is, the Glove of the Fairies. In Gaelic it is called
Lus m òr,
for its height and
stateliness, and Meuran-na-muathan sith, "Fairy
Thimbles." It was believed to be peculiarly sensitive to
the presence of these good folk, and its frequent bendings
and bowings were regarded as salutations made to them. The
Fox-glove does not grow amongst the heather, but in gravel
banks and sunny places by the streams.
The moors are largely frequented by
birds, especially in summer. Here you may watch the
curious flight of the peewit, and listen to the shrill cry
of the curlew, the whistle of the plover, and the sweet
song of the lark, now rarely heard in our fields. Grouse
are common. Once when crossing a moor in winter a curious
thing happened. There was a very strong breeze, and a
covey of grouse that had been started flew down the wind
close to the ground with amazing swiftness. A little ahead
there was a wire fence, and it seemed likely some of the
birds had come against it. This turned out to be the case.
One bird lay at the foot of the fence quite dead, and
following on two more were found, stiff and frozen, that
had come to grief previously. What we see and what we feel
in moorland rambles depends mostly on ourselves. "We
receive but what we give." Memories and associations will
vary with various minds.
"I cross’d a moor with a name of
its own,
And a use in the world no doubt;
Yet a handsbreadth shines alone of it,
Mid the blank miles round about.
For I picked up in the heather,
And there I put aside in my breast
A moulted feather—an Eagle’s feather—
Well, I forget the rest."
Once in the Cathedral of Antwerp a
grand funeral service was being performed. When the
procession had passed out, I picked up a spray of heath
that had fallen from the coffin. It spake to me then of
the clear homeland, but now it has another voice, and
tells of friends that have passed away, and glorious
things to he seen no more. |
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