Gordon Stables

“ A quiet and delightful meadow it is, quite at the back of the little village of Chryston, and on the brow of a hill overlooking a great range of valley with mountains beyond.
The sky to-night is glorious to behold. In the east a full round moon is struggling through a sea of cumulus clouds. Over yonder the glare of a great furnace lights up a quarter of the sky, the flashing gleams on the clouds reminding one of tropical wild-fire. But the sky is all clear overhead, and in the northern horizon over the mountains is the Aurora Borealis. ”

“ Toddie's delight on arriving at the Isle of Good Hope knew no bounds.
When she stood on the beach and gazed around her at the bay with its peaceful waters, the waves breaking with low and mournful boom on the reef outside, the feathery cocoanut palms stirred by the breeze, the flowery pandanus groves, the little cottage, with its rustic porch and its walks of silvery sand, across which the wild flowers were now trailing, she smiled and sighed, and tears filled her eyes.
"Oh, how romantic!" she said, "and yet how mournful!" "Still," she added, "I think I should have liked the life." ”

“ Then flames follow, shooting up into the sky many hundreds of feet, lighting up the scene with a lurid glare, while down the snow-clad sides of the great cone streams of fiery lava rush in fury, crimson, blue, or green. And gigantic rocks are precipitated into the air—rocks so large that, as they fall upon the ice miles distant from the burning crater, they smash the heaviest floes, and sink through into the sea. Great stones, too, are incessantly emitted, like balls of fire, that burst in the air, and keep up a sound like that of the loudest artillery. ”

“ Sunset on the sea. So close to the ocean is the old castle built that, looking from the window which almost overhangs it, nothing else can be seen but the golden-tipped waves, golden-tipped even to the far-off horizon, and breaking with pleasing murmur on the beach beneath. The mountains that rise inland from the castle are either wholly green, or patched with purple heather. In a room overlooking the sea, in high-backed cushioned chair, sits a lady,—but little past the prime of life, perhaps, though her hair is like the snow. ”

“ There was nought of life to be seen anywhere, save that single horseman on his trusty steed who stopped for a moment on an upland ridge to gaze around him. Not a tree; hardly a bush; the very grass itself in stunted patches, with rough boulders lying here and there as if they had been rained from the heavens. No signs of house nor habitation, only the sharply undulating plain, wherever the eye might turn, and far away on the western horizon, hills or mountains snow-clad, glimmering white in the uncertain light of moon and stars. ”

“ The sun is still high in the heavens, summer days are long, I’ll go and look for my linnet’s nest; I haven’t seen one this year yet. The heather is green as yet, and here and there on the moorland is a bush or patch of golden furze, not tall and straggling like the bushes you find in woods, that seem to stretch out their necks as if seeking in vain for the sunlight, but close, compact, hugging the ground, and seeming to weigh down the warm summer air around it with the sweetness of its perfume. ”