ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Wild Life in a Southern County. Richard Jefferies
Читать онлайн.Название Wild Life in a Southern County
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066206512
Автор произведения Richard Jefferies
Жанр Документальная литература
Издательство Bookwire
At the slightest unwonted sound or movement, she first stretches her neck up for a hurried glance, then, as the labouring folk say, ‘quats’—i.e. crouches down—and in a second or two runs swiftly to cover, using every little hollow of the ground skilfully for concealment on the way, like a practised skirmisher. The ants’ nests, which are so attractive to partridges, are found in great numbers along the edge of the cornfields, being usually made on ground that is seldom disturbed. The low mounds that border the green track are populous with ants, whose nests are scattered thickly on these banks, as also beside the paths and waggon-tracks that traverse the fields and are not torn up by the plough. Any beaten track such as this old path, however green, is generally free from them on its surface: ants avoid placing their nests where they may be trampled upon. This may often be noticed in gardens: there are nests at and under the edge of the paths, but none where people walk. It is these nests in the banks and mounds which draw the partridges so frequently from the middle of the fields to the edges where they can be seen; they will come even to the banks of frequented roads for the eggs of which they are so fond.
Now that their courting-time is over, the larks do not sing so continuously. Later on, when the ears of wheat are ripe and the reapers are sharpening their sickles, if you walk here, with the corn on either hand, every ten or twenty yards a cloud of sparrows and small birds will rise from it, literally hiding the hawthorn bush on which they settle, so that the green tree looks brown. Wait a little while, and with defiant chirps back they go, disappearing in the wheat.
The sparrows will sometimes flutter at the top of the stalk, hovering for a few moments in one spot as if trying to perch on the ears; then, grasping one with their claws, they sink with it and bear it to the ground, where they can revel at their leisure. A place where a hailstorm or heavy rain has beat down and levelled the tall corn flat is the favourite spot for these birds; they rise from it in hundreds at a time. But some of the finches are probably searching for the ripe seeds of the weeds that spring up among the corn; they find also a feast of insects.
Leaving now the gnarled hawthorn and the cushion of thyme, I pass a deserted sheep-pen, where in the early year the tender lambs were sheltered from the snow and wind. Mile after mile, and still no sign of human life—everywhere silence, solitude. Hill after hill and plain after plain. Presently the turf is succeeded by a hard road—flints ground down into dust by broad waggon-wheels bearing huge towering loads of wool or heavy wheat. Just here the old track happens to answer the purposes of modern civilisation. Fast this, and again it reverts to turf, leaving now the hills for a mile or two to cross a plain lying between a semicircle of downs; and here at last are hedges of hawthorn and hazel and stunted crab tree.
Round black marks upon the turf, with grey ashes scattered about and half-consumed sticks, show where the gipsies have recently bivouacked, sheltered somewhat at night by the hedges. Near by is an ancient tumulus, on which grows a small yet obviously aged sycamore tree, stunted by wind and storm, and under it the holes of rabbits—drilling their habitations into the tomb of the unknown warrior. In his day, perhaps, the green track wound through a pathless wood long since cleared. Soon the hedges all but disappear, the ground rises once more, nearing the hills; and here the way widens out—first fifty, then a hundred yards across—green sward dotted with furze and some brake fern, and bunches of tough dry grass. Above on the summit is another ancient camp, and below two more turf-grown tumuli, low and shaped like an inverted bowl. Many more have been ploughed down, doubtless, in the course of the years: sometimes still, as the share travels through the soil there is a sudden jerk, and a scraping sound of iron against stone.
The ploughman eagerly tears away the earth, and moves the stone to find a thin jar, as he thinks—in fact, a funeral urn. Like all uneducated people, in the far East as well as in the West, he is imbued with the idea of finding hidden treasure, and breaks the urn in pieces to discover—nothing; it is empty. He will carry the fragments home to the farm, when, after a moment’s curiosity, they will be thrown aside with potsherds, and finally used to mend the floor of the cowpen. The track winds away yet further, over hill after hill; but a summer’s day is not long enough to trace it to the end.
In the narrow valley, far below the frowning ramparts of the ancient fort that has been more specially described, a beautiful spring breaks forth. Three irregularly circular green spots, brighter in colour than the dry herbage around, mark the outlets of the crevices in the earth through which the clear water finds its way to the surface. Three tiny threads of water, each accompanied by its riband of verdant grasses, meander downwards some few yards, and then unite and form a little stream. Then the water in its channel first becomes visible, glistening in the sun; for at the sources the aquatic grasses bend over, growing thickly, and hide it from view. But pressing these down, and parting them with the hand, you may trace the exact place where it rises, gently oozing forth without a sound.
Lower down, where the streamlet is stronger and has worn a groove—now rushing over a floor of tiny flints, now partly buoyed up and chafing against a smooth round lump of rubble—there is a pleasant murmur audible at a short distance. Still farther from the source, where, grown wider, the shallow water shoots swiftly over a steeper gradient, the undulations of its surface cross each other, plaiting a pattern like four strands interwoven. The resemblance to the pattern of four rushes which the country children delight to plait together as they wander by the brooks is so close as almost to suggest the derivation of the art of weaving rushes, flags, and willows by the hand. The sheep grazing at will in the coombe eat off the herbage too closely to permit of many flowers. Where the springs join and irrigate a broader strip there grows a little watercress, and some brooklime, said to be poisonous and occasionally mistaken for the cress; a stray cuckoo-flower shows its pale lilac petals in spring, and a few bunches of rushes are scattered round. They do not reach any height or size; they seem dry and sapless, totally unlike the tall green succulent rush of the meadows far below.
A water-wagtail comes now and then; sometimes the yellow variety, whose colour in the spring is so bright as to cause the bird to resemble the yellowhammer at the first glance. But besides these the spring-head is not much-frequented by birds; perhaps the clear water attracts less visible insect life, and, the shore of the stream being hard and dry, there is no moisture where grubs and worms may work their way. Behind the fountain the steep green wall of the coombe rises almost perpendicularly—so steep as not to be climbed without exertion. At the summit are the cornfields of the level plain which here so suddenly sinks without warning. The plough has been drawn along all but on the very edge, and the tall wheat nods at the verge. From thence a strong arm might send a flat round stone skimming across to the other side of the narrow hollow, and its winding course is apparent.
Like a deep groove it cuts a channel up towards the hills, becoming narrower as it approaches; and the sides diminish in height, till at the neck a few rails and a gate can close it, being scarcely broader than a waggon-track. There, at the foot of the down, it ends, overlooked by a barn, the home of innumerable sparrows, whose nests are made under the eaves, everywhere their keen eyes can find an aperture large enough to squeeze into.
Looking down the steep side of the coombe, near the bottom there runs along a projecting ledge, or terrace, like a natural footway. On the opposite side is another corresponding ledge, or green turf-covered terrace; these follow the windings of the valley, decreasing in width as it diminishes, and gradually disappearing. In its broadest part one of them is used as a waggon-track, for which it is admirably adapted, being firm and hard, even smoother than the bottom of the coombe itself. If it were possible to imagine the waters of a tidal river rising and ebbing up and down this hollow these ledges would form its banks. Their regular shape is certainly remarkable, and they are not confined to this one place. Such steep-sided narrow hollows are found all along the edge of this range of downs, where they slope to the larger valley which stretches out to the horizon. There are at least ten of them in a space of