Ettrick Forest

“ Before that wind the fire would leap the canyon in flaming bounds, and on the opposite level was the thick pitch-pine forest of Penetier proper. So far we had been among the foot-hills. We dared not enter the real forest with that wild-fire back of us. Momentarily we stood irresolute. It was a pause full of hopelessness, such as might have come to tired deer, close harried by hounds.
The winding brook and the brown slope, comparatively bare of trees, brought me a sudden inspiration.
“Back-fire! Back-fire!” I cried to my companions, in wild appeal. “We must back-fire. It's our chance! ”

“ He followed her up the steep side of the cañon, through brush so dense that they were quickly out of sight, and through a bewildering fragrance. At the top they were in the dark forest again, and pushed along as best they could. They found themselves among the straggling outposts of an under-forest of fronds. A few redwoods spread their spiked arms above it, but the sun touched many a rustling fan. The heights beyond lifted away irregularly, [151] in steeps and galleries and higher levels, a gracious blue mist softening the austerity of the crowding trees. ”

“ From every side the birds poured forth their song. It was the season of love, and who could be more completely "in season" than was De Forest? The roads were in splendid condition, and they bowled along rapidly, carrying on an animated conversation. When they arrived in Philadelphia, De Forest drove to Mitchell's restaurant, opposite Independence Hall, where Mrs. Maroney alighted, and he drove off to stable his horses, intending to return at once and order a hearty dinner. ”

“ Golden sunshine bathed the slopes, planted with Scotch fir, all irregular in chance groups or singly, mingled with silver birch, and it made a harmony in gold and silver and bronze, for the bracken was turning already.
It seems a pity that most of those who come from afar should see the New Forest under its least gracious aspect. Unluckily the holiday time is late summer, just when the full, heavy leafage takes on its most monotonous green, dim and jaded after a dry season, gloomy in a wet one; when flowers are few and birds are silent. ”

“ At first we clamber over the roots and fallen trunks of trees; but by degrees we leave the forest girdle behind, and precipices and snow, with a scant growth of heather, become our sole companions. Keeping the track where the slope of the hill is gentlest, we pass on the right Loch Etichan, lying like a drop of ink at the base of a huge dark mural precipice—yet it is not so small when seen near at hand. This little tarn, with its back-ground of dark rocks interspersed with patches of snow, might strongly remind the Alpine traveller of the lake near the Hospice of the Grimsel. ”

“ In the same way in a forest there are always some worthless trees, trying to crowd out the ones which are of more value. As the trees of better value are always sought for their timber, that gives the worthless stuff a good chance to get ahead. One of the duties of a Forester, looking after his section of the forest, is to see that every possible chance is given to the good over the bad."
"It's really like having people to deal with!" cried Fred in surprise. "It sounds as if a tree were some kind of a human being." ”

“ HE HATES the forest. It is strange country to him. He did well at the patch of cut turf for a town-bred man, but he will not get much farther. It would be child’s play to a black tracker, but to any ordinary detective the secrets of the forest are not easily learned from the trails. And daily the signs that the black tracker would look for are disappearing. Every blade of grass, dead leaf or twisted heather sprig is gradually slipping back into its place. In two days’ time any clue which the ground may offer now at that spot will be gone as though it had never existed. ”

“ From time to time, as we climbed up the slope, I looked back. The higher I got the more hideous became the outlook over the burned district. I was glad when Herky led the way into the deep shade of level forest, shutting out the view. It would take a hundred years to reforest those acres denuded of their timber by the fire of a few days. But as hour after hour went by, with our trail leading through miles and miles of the same old forest that had bewitched me, I began to feel a little less grief at the thought of what the fire had destroyed. ”

“ Ivra cried back to the youngest Forest Child. "Hurry and follow."
Before they had gone on their way five minutes more the Forest Children were up with them, tugging at buckles and sandal strings as they ran, begging not to be left behind. Soon they came to Big Pine Hill, a hill deep in the forest with no trees but a giant pine at the top. The Wind Creatures had built a slide there by brushing away the snow and leaving a broad track of shining blue ice. ”

“ Lastly, from its very nature, the New Forest is ever beautiful, at every season of the year, even in the depth of winter. The colouring of summer is not more rich. Then the great masses of holly glisten with their brightest green; the purple light gathers round the bare oaks, and the yews stand out in their shrouds of black. Then the first budding branch of furze sparkles with gold, and the distant hill-side glows with the red layers of beech-leaves. And if a snow-storm passes up from the sea, then every bough is suddenly covered with a silver filigree of whitest moss. ”

“ Then, when the summer comes, and the woods are green and dark, the honey-buzzard skims round the tops of the trees; and the snipe, whose young have not yet left the swamps, goes circling high up in the air, “bleating,” as the common people here call the noise of its wings, each time it descends in its waving, wandering flight; whilst out on the open spaces the whinchat, known throughout the Forest, from its cry, as the “furze hacker,” jerks itself from one furze branch to another; and flitting along with it fly a pair of Dartford warblers. ”

“ Wootton, the Odetune of Domesday; Stockeyford and Stockleigh, the woody place; Ashley, the ash ground; besides Staneswood, Arnwood, and Testwood, all more or less afforested in Domesday, clearly show its character.
After all, the best evidence is not from such arguments, but in the simple fact that the New Forest remains still the New Forest. Had the land been in any way profitable, modern skill, and capital, and enterprise, would have certainly been attracted. But its charms lie not, and never did, in the richness of its soil, but in its deep woods and wild moors. ”

“ Nevertheless, the sharp dead branches, more numerous in a cedar forest than elsewhere, struck and stung us as we passed. We climbed a ridge, and found the cedars thinning out into open patches. Then we faced a bare slope of sage and I saw Emett below on his big horse.
Foxie bolted down this slope, hurdling the bunches of sage, and showing the speed of which Emett had boasted. The open ground, with its brush, rock and gullies, was easy going for the little mustang. I heard nothing save the wind singing in my ears. Emett's trail, plain in the yellow ground showed me the way. ”

“ He does not, however, in the Forest, so much skim the milk, or play pranks with the chairs, but, as might be expected from the nature of the country, misleads people on the moors, turning himself into all sorts of shapes, as Shakspeare, Spenser, and Jonson, have sung. There is scarcely a village or hamlet in the Forest district which has not its "Pixey Field," and "Pixey Mead," or its "Picksmoor," and "Cold Pixey," and "Puck Piece." At Prior's Acre we find Puck's Hill, and not far from it lies the great wood of Puckpits; whilst a large barrow on Beaulieu Common is known as the Pixey's Cave. ”

“ It grows in Chewton Glen, in all the lanes in the neighbourhood, on Ashley Common, close to the Osmanby Ford River, and rears its golden-brown pannicles in the boggy thickets near Rufus’s Stone. But before it, in beauty, stands the lady-fern, with its delicate fronds and its tender green, growing in the open spaces of the beech woods, as at Stonehard and Puckpits, and bending over the Forest streams in large leafy clumps. Then, too, in all the large woods grows the sweet-scented mountain fern (Lastrea Oreopteris) ”

“ Some of our people saw him hasting by the lake near the fall, and the little men were running after him, but he escaped them, and went into the forest."
"Who are the little men?" Forrester asked.
"They are men like monkeys," replied the man, holding his hand about four feet from the ground to indicate their height. "They are the men who take the wood from us."
On further questioning, the men explained that the country beyond the falls was destitute of large trees, and the little men paid the villagers for timber cut in the forest. ”

“ They live chiefly in the various droves and rides of the Forest, driven from place to place by the policeman, for to this complexion have things come. One of their favourite halting-places is amongst the low woods near Wootton, where a dozen or more brown tents are always fluttering in the wind, and as the night comes on the camp-fires redden the dark fir-stems. ”

“ Michael, who haunted the further side of the Forest, was a broad-shouldered giant and was dressed like a raftsman. Some of the wood-cutters who had seen him declared his boots were so big that an ordinary full-grown man could have stood upright in one of them and yet not have reached to the top of it.
A young Black Forester, named Peter Munk, is said to have had a very extraordinary adventure with these two wood-spirits. Peter lived with his mother, who was a widow, in the very heart of the Forest. ”

“ I'm going back up in the hills with him to sort out a valley or two for summer range."
"We don't need any extra range now," Billie said. "Why pay grazing fees before we need the room."
"Just to get our wedge in first," Harris explained. "We can get grazing permits on the Forest now—right in the best grass valleys. Each year we'll throw some cows up there to hold our rights. There'll always be good grass on the Forest Reserves for they won't permit overstocking. The day will come when we'll be glad to have permits to summer-feed a thousand or so head on the Forest. ”

“ The distant chimes ring louder and nearer as you cross the borderland of sleep. And then outside the tent some little woods noise snaps the thread. An owl hoots, a whippoorwill cries, a twig cracks beneath the cautious prowl of some night creature--at once the yellow sunlit French meadows puff away--you are staring at the blurred image of the moon spraying through the texture of your tent.
The voices of the rapids have dropped into the background, as have the dashing noises of the stream. Through the forest is a great silence, but no stillness at all. ”

“ Gradually the bitterness seemed to go away; my body relaxed and sank into the soft, fragrant pine-needles; the great shadowy trees mixed with the surrounding darkness. When I awoke it was broad daylight, and Dick was shaking my arm.
“Hunt up the horses while I get the grub ready,” he said, curtly.
As the hollow was carpeted with thick grass our horses had not strayed. I noticed that here the larger trees had been cut, and the forest resembled a fine park. ”

“ A still more interesting business, but one not so easily seen, is the gathering them in from the Forest. Men on clever, well-trained ponies go out, armed with long stock whips, driving the startled creatures together, often into bogs to secure them.
Westward and southward towards Holmsley the moor is broken into heights and hollows, giving a magnificently varied outline, and diversified with wooded enclosures on the lower slopes. Here the fallow deer may often be met with, though the red hardly come so far south. ”

“ The drift, which spreads over the whole of the New Forest, is not very interesting. No elephants’ tusks, or elks’ horns, so far as I know, have ever been discovered. A few species of Terebratula and Pecten, some flint knives, and the os inominatum, of probably Bos longifrons, mentioned farther on, are the only 237 things at present found. Still, in one way, it is most interesting, as completely disproving the Chroniclers’ accounts that, before its afforestation by the Conqueror, the district of the Forest was so fertile. ”

“ It's easy enough to see how a forest could be destroyed, but I should think that every one could get out of the way easily enough. It must take a tree a long while to burn, even after it gets alight, especially if it's a big one."
"A big forest fire, fanned by a high wind, and in the dry season," answered the Chief Forester, "could catch the fastest runner in a few minutes. The flames repeatedly have been known to overtake horses on the gallop, and where there are no other means of escape the peril is extreme." ”

“ He still follows the hounds on foot, and when there were deer in the Forest, naturally killed them. Wrestling and cudgel-playing have been continued till the last few years close to the northern boundaries of the Forest. The old Hock-tide games were till a late period kept up in the northern parts, and “Hock-tide money” was not so very long ago paid as an acknowledgment for certain Forest privileges. Heartiness and roughness still go hand in hand with him as with his forefathers. But a heaviness of intellect is always visible, and, as with all his race, a sadness oppresses his mirth. ”

“ During the Great War a large number of trees were felled and the usually silent woods re-echoed with the noises of a Canadian lumber camp. About this time great flocks of migratory jays from central Europe were noticed in the eastern parts of the Forest. For the pedestrian who toils over the Forest roads in the height of summer there is one form of wild life in evidence that claims his whole attention, and that is the virulent and audacious forest fly. Only the strongest "shag" and gloved hands can keep this horrible creature at bay. ”