Lancaster Sound

“ He did not know when more lights leaped out above the altar; when a monk passed up the side-aisle, brushing him with black garments; when, obeying the tolling bell, a half-score villagers drifted in for the midnight service.
Then—sudden, strong, majestic—the chant of the monks clashed into the silence. The sound brought Windham to his feet, with pulses hammering in his ears. ”

“ A person who had had no experience of prairie life would have failed to hear the sound at all; but all three of our friends heard it distinctly.
Ward Lancaster had detected the direction of the sound, and was peering out on the prairie in the hope of discerning the cause of it. All at once he gave utterance to a suppressed exclamation, and then added, as he turned his head. ”

“ Tempest did not know of this until the last of those four days, when Depache and Myers were swimming in the litthe lake that lipped the knees of the sparse trees with so different a sound from the thunder of the Slave, and Dick, in the smoke of the mosquito-smudge, was mending a tear in his tunic by button-clips and talking idle animal-talk to the splint-legged dog at his elbow. Tempest came out of his tent, and looked round.
"Where are the men?" ”

“ But it's such a ghastly thing to break a man's back. He could live quite a while with a broken back."
The sound of his voice steadied him somewhat. It seemed the only human thing in this cold, barren place where he knelt alone under his sin with that Eye watching.
"I must get help," he said, and stood up. For a minute he stood as if in thought, but he was not thinking. "Certainly I must get help," he said again, and turned down the beach and went back to the camp.
Among the little stones Myers was building a driftwood fire and putting on the kettle to boil. ”

“ The flickering shadows had gone at the first sound, and the two men had Tufnell by the arms. They swept him back to the hut and shut the door.
"Aisy! Would ye wake the whole camp on us?" cried Macintosh. "Ye saw it, did ye? An' ye'd had the sinse of a white mouse ye'd have seen it for the last toime! Barrow an' I were after the gintlemin with the rifles then."
"But you couldn't have shot it. It—it isn't human; its eyes showed that. You couldn't have killed it. But it will kill me if it comes again. Don't leave me, you fellows—don't leave me!" ”

“ A horseshoe inserted in the pavement at Horseshoe Corner in the town, and renewed from time to time, is said to mark the place where a shoe was cast by John of Gaunt’s horse.
The chief industries are cotton-spinning, cabinet-making, oil cloth-making, railway wagon-building and engineering. Glasson Dock, 5 m. down the Lune, with a graving dock, is accessible to vessels of 600 tons. The Kendal and Lancaster canal reaches the town by an aqueduct over the Lune, which is also crossed by a handsome bridge dated 1788. The town has further connexion by canal with Preston. ”

“ But the river that was to minister to the greatness of Lancashire, and through Lancashire to aid so materially in the development of industrial Britain, was, of course, no sudden creation. It may have been for ages nothing but quiet or dead water, but Nature in her slow and sure way was all the while working in its favour. For centuries, vessels, as they sailed up and down the west coast, passed by the Mersey, and found their way instead up the Dee to Chester, or up the Ribble to Preston, and occasionally up the Lune to Lancaster. ”

“ Finds the city of Lancaster,
In praiseworthy competition
With the spirit of the present.
Still the waxing, waning moonlight,
Sees her changing with the cycle.
Now the light’ning wires unite her
With the world in speedy transit ”

“ The proud city of Lancaster,
Still perpetuate her warriors,
Still preserve her men of valor.
They are resting on their laurels,
In an everlasting quiet;
They have passed the rolling river,
To the arméd hosts of heaven;
They have joined another Captain,
While we linger in the rearguard. ”

“ Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants. ”

“ They cry to her, and she does not answer; she calls to them, and they do not heed; for though the eyes look abroad on the same beauty, the ears gather the same music, the spirit and meaning are fled, leaving only soulless mirages and jangled wires. But to-night Lancaster came back again to his kingdom. ”

“ A ridge of rocky eminences shelters Lancaster on the east, whence they decline into the low and uninteresting country, that stretches to the Channel.
The appearance of the northern Fells is ever changing with the weather and shifting lights. Sometimes they resemble those evening clouds on the horizon, that catch the last gleams of the sun; at others, wrapt in dark mist, they are only faintly traced, and seem like stormy vapours rising from the sea. But in a bright day their appearance is beautiful ”

“ The smell of tar mixed warm with the long-gathering odors of pearl-shell heaps, refuse of every kind, bilge-water, gum-trees, and moist, decaying vegetation back in the bush; and in the vivid light North's shadow crouched, squat and ink-black, at foot of his tall, easy-moving body.
There was a shimmer of heat down the foreshore where the Bangalo palms sloped seaward; and North looked through it with his clear, far-seeing eyes grown suddenly restless at sight of the long excursion-steamer, gay with awnings, which lay out from the stub wharf beyond the corner of Flannigan's hotel. ”

“ At this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, that swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county up and down, and regularly subsiding about sunset, united with the permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel of labour, to point the thoughts pathetically upon that counter vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are continually travelling. ”

“ She was more than pretty, this girl—she was rarely beautiful. She was of medium height and size, and her figure was symmetry itself, all its delicious curves and slender outlines defined at their best by the close-fitting black jersey waist she wore buttoned up to the graceful white throat that had a trick of holding itself high, as if innocently proud of the fair face that shone above it—the face that Captain Lancaster gazed at in wonder for a moment, and then in the most lively and decided disapprobation. ”

“ The land is brought to a high state of cultivation, and the entire region seems almost like an extensive park.
Lancaster, the county-seat of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is situated on the Conestoga River, seventy-three miles from Philadelphia. This river, which is a tributary of the Susquehanna, is made navigable by nine locks and slack-water pools, from Lancaster to its mouth at Safe Harbor, eighteen miles distant. Considerable trade is brought to the city by its means; while Tidewater Canal opens up navigable communication to Baltimore, by way of Port Deposit. ”

“ The sea had turned to molten copper, and every ragged frond of the Bangalo palms, every loop of the mangrove roots stood livid and distinct in the angry yellow light that swept the foreshore. The prickling sense of coming storm was in the motionless air where sea-birds were flying low and the tide made little uneasy moans. By the split-rail fence confining the larger elements of Flannigan's dust-heap, North stopped suddenly.
"You'd best wait till to-morrow," he said. "There is every sign of a bad storm."
"I can be back in half an hour." She glanced at the sky. ”

“ Many days and nights he wandered
O’er the turf of good old Garrard,
Now in sight, perchance in hearing,
Of the birds and beasts and reptiles,
[7] Roaming wild and roaming lonely,
In the groves of fair Lancaster. ”

“ And the monarchs of the forest,
Of the forest bought with bloodshed,
Fell with echoes loud and startling,
’Mid the lonely hills and valleys.
And the white man built a city,
In the woodland once so peaceful,
In the woodland once so warlike,
Built a fair and goodly city,
’Twas the city of Lancaster,
Yes, a stranger travelled westward,
From the land of trade and commerce,
Of William Penn and “loving brothers,”
And the stranger’s name was Paulding.
With his compass, chain, and log-book,
He marked out this modest city,
[9] On the pattern of his birthplace,
And they christened it Lancaster. ”

“ Lancaster is the largest inland town in North America, and contains about nine hundred houses, built chiefly of brick and stone, together with six churches, a court-house, and gaol. Of the churches, there is one respectively for German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Moravians, English Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics. The streets are laid out regularly, and cross each other at right angles. ”

“ In the neighbourhood of Lancaster, are the dangerous sands alluded to in the above poem. They are fordable at low water; but darkness, fogs, or unexpected tides, have led to many melancholy accidents. ”

“ Nor is the scenery around Lancaster tame. There are beautiful eminences, which may be termed the voluptuous breasts of Nature, on which thin mists from the river float for a covering. Amidst all the undulations of the glens also, harsher features may be seen, which the deep woods have not altogether concealed. At the distance of five miles from the town, there is a rugged mountain, at the foot of which a cave, called Dunald Mill Hole, formed of natural rock, and vaulted with great strength, may well attract the curiosity of the stranger. ”

“ Now and then, on fine and perfectly tranquil evenings towards sunset, Lancaster Castle may be distinguished; if the tide be in, Morecambe Bay, and even Coniston.
Quite as interesting, every way, as the Pike, and more so in some respects, are the great reservoirs belonging to the Liverpool Waterworks, altogether out of sight from the railway, but as a spectacle from the hill–side undeniably one of the most charming in the county. The area of the entire water–surface is five hundred acres ”

“ Who was light and lithe of person,
Who was full of life and vigor,
Who had visited the city,
The good city of Lancaster;
Who had joined her sports and pastimes,
Eager for the hour’s amusement,
Ever foremost in adventure ”

“ There was a flush on his face, a frown between his eyebrows.
"You did not, really, did you?" she asked, naïvely.
"I did," curtly.
"Don't tease him about it. He was furiously angry because you ran away and came by yourself," said De Vere. He was beginning to turn the tables on Lancaster now, and he enjoyed it immensely.
"But I did not come by myself. My friends where I boarded—Mrs. Norton and her husband—came with me. I did not know Captain Lancaster was coming for me. If I had known I should have waited," apologetically.
"You do not know what you missed by not waiting," said De Vere. ”

“ There is a friery in the town, and the church of it was standing within memory. When they pulled down the Roman wall, they found many great toads alive in the thickness of it, and where in all appearance there could be no passage for them from without. The town of Lancaster lies upon the eastern declivity, before the castle.
CONCANGIOS. Water-crook.
Through a very hard road, but not an unpleasant country, we entered Westmorland. The river Can is very rapid, and full of cataracts, as running chiefly over the rock, and having a great descent. ”

“ In the history of Lancaster.
Of the offices and store-rooms,
Of the dwellings and the households,
Of affairs of public moment,
Of the hidden and domestic,
[107] Of the groups of Mystic Brothers,
Of the Masons and Odd-Fellows,
Of ye ancient Sons of Temperance,
All the secrets of the bygone,
Speaking from the smoking ruins.
So there rose another structure,
Phœnix-like, upon the ashes.
Where the merchants and the tradesmen,
Can pursue their avocations. ”

“ ON the strip of No Man's Land where sea and township pledged each other in cocoanut-husks, empty meat-tins, seaweed, fruit-rinds, and broken coral from the Great Barrier Reef, North was watching his tar-pot bubble and smoke on a driftwood fire that burned white in white sunshine. The still heat of a Queensland summer rose at him from the sand and weighted the air. The soundless sea, where a pearling-lugger rode with reefed sails, was like oil. ”

“ LANCASTER CASTLE
“A TRADITION PREVAILS THAT THIS FORTRESS HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY TAKEN BY CROMWELL, AND THAT HE PLANTED HIS CANNON ON A CIRCULAR MOUNT AT THE SOUTH-WEST SIDE OF THE TOWN, ON HILL MEADOW.”—Baines’s History of Lancashire.
Well does Lancaster deserve the name which the Romans gave to it, of the green city; and the beautiful scenery, for many miles around, may be considered as its delightful gardens. There are no huge rocks frowning, like tyrants, in the country which they have ruined, and blighting with sickness and poverty, all that is healthful and rich. ”

“ He would have no half-gods, this blunt, absorbed business-man of the land. Thorough as he was in every detail of his work, he carried the same demand for perfection even to his private, human joy. It had always been said of the Lancasters that they would have the best—the best stuff, the best workmen, the best methods, no matter at what cost. And the last Lancaster of all added that, in little things like love and marriage, he would also have the best—or go wanting them.
He had had a very pleasant day in Manchester. ”