It is a five-mile road through a
beautiful country, where there is practically no cultivation,
and the green hills, with brown woods in their hollows, and
here and there huge masses of grey and reddish Bath stone
cropping out on their sides, resembling gigantic castles and
ramparts, long ruined and overgrown with ivy and bramble,
produce the effect of a land dispeopled and gone back to a
state of wildness.
A thaw had come that morning, ending the severest frost
experienced this winter anywhere in England, and the valley
was alive with birds, happy and tuneful at the end of January
as in April. Looking down on the stream the sudden glory of a
kingfisher passed before me; but the sooty-brown water-ouzel
with his white bib, a haunter, too, of this water, I did not
see. Within a mile or so of Wells I overtook a small boy who
belonged there, and had been to Shepton like me, noticing the
birds. "I saw a kingfisher," I said. "So did I," he returned
quickly, with pride. He described it as a biggish bird with a
long neck, but its colour was not blue--oh, no! I suggested
that it was a heron, a long-necked creature under six feet
high, of no particular colour. No, it was not a heron; and
after taking thought, he said, "I think it was a wild duck."
Bestowing a penny to encourage him in his promising researches
into the feathered world, I went on by a footpath over a hill,
and as I mounted to the higher ground there before me rose the
noble tower of St.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176