the steep sides of the hills are clothed in oak and ash covert, in
which, three months ago, you could have shot more cocks in one day
than you would in Berkshire in a year. Pleasant little glimpses there
are, too, of grey stone farm-houses, nestling among sycamore and
beech; bright-green meadows, alder-fringed; squares of rich red
fallow-field, parted by lines of golden furze; all cut out with a
peculiar blackness, and clearness, soft and tender withal, which
betokens a climate surcharged with rain. Only in the very bosom of
the valley, a soft mist hangs, increasing the sense of distance, and
softening back one hill and wood behind another, till the great brown
moor which backs it all seems to rise out of the empty air. For a
thousand feet it ranges up, in rude sheets of brown heather, and grey
cairns and screes of granite, all sharp and black-edged against the
pale blue sky; and all suddenly cut off above by one long horizontal
line of dark grey cloud, which seems to hang there motionless, and yet
is growing to windward, and dying to leeward, for ever rushing out of
the invisible into sight, and into the invisible again, at railroad
speed. Out of nothing the moor rises, and into nothing it ascends,--a
great dark phantom between earth and sky, boding rain and howling
tempest, and perhaps fearful wreck--for the groundswell moans and
thunders on the beach behind us, louder and louder every moment.

Let us go on, and up the street, after we have scrambled through the
usual labyrinth of timber-baulks, rusty anchors, boats which have been
dragged, for the purpose of mending and tarring, into the very middle
of the road, and old spars stowed under walls, in the vain hope that
they may be of some use for something some day, and have stood the
stares and welcomes of the lazy giants who are sitting about upon
them, black-locked, black-bearded, with ruddy, wholesome faces, and
eyes as bright as diamonds; men who are on their own ground, and know