Branton Hills

“ Anyway, talk or no talk, Gadsby said that it should stand as a building for man, woman and child; rich or poor; and, barring its "film show," without cost to anybody. Branton Hills' folks could thus swim, do gymnastics, talk on public affairs, or "just sit and gossip", at will. So it was finally built in a charming park amidst shrubs and blossoms; an additional honor for Gadsby.
But such buildings as Branton Hills now had could not fulfill all functions of so rapidly growing a city; for you find, occasionally, a class of folks who cannot afford a doctor, if ill. ”

“ Though this was a school graduation, Mayor Gadsby said it would do no harm to point out a plan for still adding to Branton Hills' public spirit:—
"This town is too plain; too dingy. Brick walls and asphalt paving do not light up a town, but dim it. So I want to plant all kinds of growing things along many of our curbs. In our parks I want ponds with gold fish, fancy ducks and big swans ”

“ Fall with its rubbish from months of labor: corn-stalks, brown, dry grass, old twigs lying around, wilting plants; bright colorings blazing in distant woodlands; chill winds crawling in through windows, at night. And Spring! Pick-up, paint-up, wash-up Spring!! So, as I said, Branton Hills got around to Thanksgiving Day ”

“ For miles across the plain the men who follow the trail watch the steep outlying shoulder of the Brandon Hills for a landmark. When they leave the Souris valley the hills are blue with distance and seem to promise wooded slopes, and maybe leaping streams, but a half-day's journey dispels the illusion, for when the traveller comes near enough to see the elevation as it is, it is only a rugged bluff, bald and bare, and blotched with clumps of mangy grass, with a fringe of stunted poplar at the base. ”

“ Mount Bannerman stands at the eastern end of the hills; a little to the west is a deep and narrow gorge, the bed of which is strewn with great boulders and slabs of rock. The hill is capped with a conglomerate of quartz, sandstone and ironstone pebbles, some of the quartz fragments being as large as hen's eggs and polished quite smooth. From its summit an apparently high range can be seen to the North; to the East and South nothing but sand-ridges; to the South-West a prominent square hill, the highest point in a broken table-range, bears 226 degrees. ”

“ Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a spot it is.... You drive up and down a narrow, hilly lane, catching peeps of mountains and sunset through thick, overhanging trees; you turn sharp up through a gate under dark firs and larches ”

“ To everybody who knows English literature Brantwood is a household name. On the steep slope of the eastern hills, wood-embowered, with moorland above, and a green field below the highroad, washed by the ripples of the lake on which his boats rocked—one of which, The Jumping Jenny, he had designed, painted 'a bright blue with a Greek scroll pattern round the gunwale'—it is in all respects a true poet's paradise. The opinion of Wordsworth was that it commanded the finest view of Coniston 'Old Man' that was to be had anywhere. ”

“ Twice in the course of the next few minutes, Brant stopped to make inquiries, for the street he sought was in a strange part of the city, a mile of more from the business section. He never before had ventured into the picturesque maze of narrow streets, far remote from the haunts of inquisitive tourists. The winding, alleylike thoroughfares were dirty, ill-lighted, and swarming with life.
When the street was found, the number corresponding to that on the envelope revealed a squat, stucco building with huge shutters, railed balcony, and a bolted door that opened into a patio. ”

“ A good riverside road from Braunton village by degrees becomes an indifferent road; then, ceasing to be a road of any kind, becomes a more and more sandy lane, which, in its turn, insensibly degenerates to a track, and—there you are! You must not, however, imagine this sandy waste to be without its own peculiar beauties, or barren of vegetation. The winds have blown the immense accumulation of shifting sand into fantastic hummocks and weird hollows, where the dry surface is ribbed by their eddies, just as the retreating tide ribs the wet sand of the shore ”

“ Their dwellings were transformed into block-houses. The women were taught the use of weapons, and stood sentinels when the men were at work. Half-grown children were educated for scouts, and taught to discern the Indian trail, and every man worked armed in his field. Such was the condition of the dwellers of Tryon county during almost the whole time of the war.
Brant's first hostile movement of consequence, after his return to Oghkwaga, was the destruction of a small settlement at Springfield, at the head of Otsego lake, ten miles west of Cherry Valley. ”

“ Ten minutes away from Barnstaple Station, and I saw a hawk hovering above the hillside, so quickly do the signs of habitation drop away among these hills and valleys.
We leave the valley of the Yeo, and climb the steep gradients to Bratton Fleming and Blackmoor Gate, across the wind-swept open moors, bare and brown in the afternoon sunshine. Fold behind fold lies the countryside in great brown curves, here a cluster of trees in a sheltered valley, there a lonely farm ”

“ Almost as soon as this era of upheaval first started, as soon as the first land of the Black Hills was elevated above the great sea, the forces of erosion set to work. Wind and rain worked their terrifying magic on the slowly rising terrain, carving away the softer rocks and the loose dirt and leaving only the granite outcroppings. Down from the sides of the great dome poured the waters of melting snows, gushing springs, and torrential rainfalls, digging out rivers, canyons, and the deep and narrow cuts which characterize this beautiful region. ”

“ Past the church and the lonely parsonage are the wide moors, high, wild, and desolate, up above the world, solitary and silent. This gray, sad-looking parsonage, so close to the still sadder churchyard, is a spot of more than ordinary interest, for it was the home of the Brontës—that wonderfully gifted and extraordinary family! Charlotte Brontë shared with her sisters their intense love for the wild, black, purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church which is built at the summit of the one long narrow street. All round the horizon are wave-like hills. ”

“ The thing to remember is that the Black Hills are not hills at all. They are mountains, the highest mountains east of the Rockies, with Harney Peak rising to a height of 7,242 feet above sea level. Inasmuch as the prairie floor averages, at the four entrances to the Hills, only 3,200 feet in elevation, these are mountains of considerable stature. ”

“ There are some very large and of evident military formation, in the Wyoming Valley.
While, therefore, every inquiry of the white man concerning these remains in America has ended as it began, leaving the subject of investigation as deep in obscurity as before, the opinion of a man of Brant's information and sagacity, thoroughly conversant, as he was, with the traditions of his own people, may not be unacceptable to the curious reader. ”

“ Behind us and afar rose the distant heads of black hills. The valley was charming with its bright glad green, a tapestry of flowery grass, willow copses where the grouse ran in and out, and long lines of aspen, beech, and cotton-wood, while pine and cedar, cypress and scattered evergreens, crept up the cranks and crannies of the rocks. ”

“ The road winds and curves in an interminable pattern, finding its way, by trial and error it seems, among the great granite spires that give the region its name. These “needles,” through the last of which the highway actually plunges in a tunnel, are the remains of a great granite plateau which once covered that entire portion of the Black Hills. Contrary to popular opinion, the rocks are not outthrusts, the 34 result of some ancient upheaval, but the last thin vestiges of this once-solid plateau. The age-old process of erosion has carved them into the shapes they now have ”

“ Brandt's house was situated far up in the hills of Broom County, where few men enter from the outer world, and from which the inhabitants—a strange, mixed people—seldom come to lend picturesqueness to more civilized surroundings. ”

“ Several times a hollow cleft in the slope below the road—a cleft walled by trees, but grass-bottomed—guides the eye out towards it. All along good roads led down to the vale, and an equal number of rough roads climbed the hillside up to the Plain. I was to go down, not up, and I looked with regret at the clear ridge and the rampart of Bratton Castle carved on it against the sky, the high bare slopes, the green magnificent gulleys and horizontal terraces, the white roads, and especially a rough cartway mounting steeply from Edington between prodigious naked banks. ”

“ After climbing a gently sloping 'hog-back' for about eight miles, you are at the top of the divide and one thousand feet higher than Hot Springs, which may be seen on the left. Looking ahead you can see Harney Peak, the highest mountain in the Black Hills district ”

“ It is up and down, and generally rising; that is to say, the further east a person goes the higher the hills become, and the more irregular they are, until the county line is reached. There are a number of places where there are quite high hills, and some deep elevations, and other places where perhaps a whole section would be what we call rolling land. There are no very steep hills or very high hills in a particular section, but it is what I would call, generally speaking, hilly land, the whole of it, and a rising tendency going towards the east. ”

“ It is bounded on the south by the Needles and the snowy precipices of which they once formed part: but its greatest celebrity is owing to the wonderful diversity and brightness in the cliffs on the opposite side, which are composed of sand, clay, and ochreous earths, disposed in alternate vertical strata: and as the torrents of winter carry away vast masses of the soil, forming numerous deep ravines—an endless variety of the most beautiful peaks and romantic forms are thus produced. The colored strata vary in thickness from a sheet of paper to several yards ”

“ These hills were composed of hard gravel, covered with two or three inches of {262} black loam. In the deep vales the mountain torrents had swept away the soil, and left the strata bare for miles along their courses. The mountain flax and the large thistle flourished everywhere. The timber was the same in kind as we had passed the three last days. The groves were principally confined to the lower portions of the ravines which swept down from the snowy heights. The Anahuac range in the west appeared to dip deeper in the horizon, and recede farther from us. ”

“ A considerable village, about four miles from Chale, and five from Newport; it stands charmingly sheltered in a curve of the downs with a southern aspect; has a pretty church; and boasts of the finest old mansion in the island, called NORTHCOURT, built in the reign of James I. This venerable pile has lately been thoroughly repaired: a necessary operation by the bye that has stripped it for a few years of its greatest ornament—the rich drapery of ivy which invested its lofty gray walls and pinnacles: hills, clothed with hanging woods and plantations, rise boldly around it ”

“ High as it is, Harney Peak is by no means the typical mountain which tourists come to expect after a trip through Colorado, for example, or western Wyoming. It is older by ages than the precipitous and craggy Rockies, and the winds and waters have worked their slow erosion on it, cutting away what high shelves and escarpments might originally have existed and leaving it, except at the top, a gentle and easy mountain that may be climbed over a trail which will scarcely tax the laziest tourist. ”

“ The Formation of the Black Hills
One of the most rewarding features of a visit to the Black Hills is the opportunity for the average individual, who has no technical training, to see with his own eyes a museum of the earth’s ages and a living sample of practically every one of the many aeons of the planet’s history.
The Hills, which is to say the rock substances of the region, are older by hundreds of millions of years than the stone out-juttings of the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ The pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church-tower, white through the storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to His protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also." There is no loveliness of Alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. ”

“ The hills that occur within this inner region of the Central Lowlands are usually more or less isolated, and are invariably formed by outcrops of igneous rock. Their outline and general aspect vary according to the geological character of the rocks of which they are composed—some forming more or less prominent escarpments like those of the Bathgate Hills and the heights behind Burntisland and Kinghorn, others showing a soft rounded contour like the Saline Hills in the west of Fifeshire. ”