Barren

“ It is well known, I suppose, that the Barren Grounds are devoid absolutely not only of trees but even of brush, except for some scattered, stunted bushes that in summer are to be found in occasional spots at the water’s edge, but may not be depended upon for fuel. ”

“ All travellers who had preceded me into the Barren Grounds had relied on the abundant game, and in consequence suffered dreadful hardships; in some cases even starved to death. ”

“ In the centre there is less of beauty, because there is no contrast, and it is by comparison that we form our estimates.
In the heart of the upland all is equally barren, and the variations of elevation are small. ”

“ He listens and hears no sound. The world appears dead and wrapped in its cold winding-sheet!
Amidst just such scenes did our voyageurs find themselves on the seventh day after parting from the lake. They had heard of the Barren Grounds—had heard many fearful stories of the sufferings of travellers who had attempted to cross them ”

“ It is rocky and mountainous and barren. There are, however, among these barren hills many small fertile spots, situated in the ravines and along the watercourses, which on account of their high state of cultivation form a lovely contrast with the surrounding barrenness. ”

“ The physical character of the Barren Grounds is of the rolling or prairie type. Standing on the first elevation after passing beyond the last timber, you look north across a great expanse of desert, apparently flat country dotted with lakes innumerable, and broken here and there by rock-topped ridges. When you get actually into the country, you find these ridges, though not high, are yet higher than they look to be, and the travelling in general very rough. In summer there is no travel over the Barren Grounds, except by canoe ”

“ Saturday, after dinner, I mounted my horse for a ride of thirteen miles to a small county-seat village where I was to spend the Sabbath. The country was rough and broken, with light, sandy soil, sparsely covered with small, scrubby oak-trees, called "black-jacks," and the region of country was known as the "Barrens." It was barren enough. The houses were mostly poor and comfortless, the barns small log structures, with no stables, sheds, or covering of any kind for the cattle. ”

“ The Barren grounds that skirt the polar regions of North America, and which include the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of the great lakes, constitute a region of low hills with rounded summits, and more or less precipitous sides, separated by narrow valleys. ”

“ Near the wilderness trickles between barren mountains a subterranean rill, which can only by chance be reached, for only occasionally the earth gapes, and he who would descend must do it with precipitation, ere the earth closes again. All that is gathered under the ground there is gem and precious stone. The brook pours into another river, and the inhabitants of the neighborhood obtain thence abundance of precious stones. ”

“ About half a mile from the cabin we passed a small Prairie, and soon entered the woods again, and then some barrens. A barren is land nearly destitute of timber, but much overrun with scrubby underwood. A great deal of the land we had passed from Bonpas was good, and some of the timber very fine: I thought these barrens a poor sample of the country. After passing these barrens for more than a mile, we got sight of the Prairies. ”

“ LATE one winter afternoon, when the sun was gilding the pines on the western mountains and the shadows stretched long and chill through the snow-laden woods, a huge bull moose broke out of the gloom of the spruces and went swinging up the long, sunlit barren at a stride whose length and power would have discouraged even a wolf from following. ”

“ All things have something more than barren use;
There is a scent upon the brier,
A tremulous splendour in the autumn dews,
Cold morns are fringed with fire.
The clodded earth goes up in sweet-breath'd flowers;
In music dies poor human speech,
And into beauty blow those hearts of ours
When Love is born in each.
Daisies are white upon the churchyard sod,
Sweet tears the clouds lean down and give.
The world is very lovely. O my God,
I thank Thee that I live! ”

“ IN THESE days of approaching emotional Nature even the sand and barrenness begins to stir and rub its eyes.
My sand and barrenness is clothed in the awful majesty of countless ages. It stands always through the never-ending march of the living and the dead. ”

“ Barren flower, a flower which has only stamens without a pistil, or which as neither stamens nor pistils. Ð Barren Grounds (Geog.) , a vast tract in British America northward of the forest regions. Ð Barren Ground bear (Zo”l.) , a peculiar bear, inhabiting the Barren Grounds, now believed to be a variety of the brown bear of Europe. Ð Barren Ground caribou (Zo”l.) , a small reindeer (Rangifer Gr?nlandicus) peculiar to the Barren Grounds and Greenland.
Bar¶ren, n. 1. A tract of barren land.
2. pl. Elevated lands or plains on which grow small trees, but not timber ”

“ The barrenness is emphasized by skeleton-like trees of such size as no man has ever seen before. High up aloft there is foliage upon them, but so meagre, so torn and wasted as to suggest a wreck of magnificent life. ”

“ Variegated and rolling in its surface, about two-thirds of it timbered and fertile, the remainder composed of barrens, supporting only black-jacks and post-oaks, and spreading into plains, or rising into knolls or knobs, and watered by beautiful and abundant streams, it was as attractive to the eye of the lover of nature as to the enterprise of the agriculturist and the passion of the hunter. ”

“ Walked ten miles of forest. Met a strange oak with willow-looking leaves. Entered a sandy stretch of black oak called “Barrens,” many of which were sixty or seventy feet in height, and are said to have grown since the fires were kept off, forty years ago. The farmers hereabouts are tall, stout, happy fellows, fond of guns and horses. ”

“ For the more upland grounds, there be different kinds, in some places clay, some gravell, some a red sand; all which are covered with a black mould, in some places above a foote deepe, in other places not so deepe. There be very few that have the experience of the ground, that can condemne it of barrennesse; although many deeme it barren, because the English use to manure their land with fish, which they doe not because the land could not bring corne without it, but because it brings more with it ”

“ Sterility and barrenness form the general features of the country. The trees are few, gnarled and stunted, here and there sticking out from rents and holes in the rocks, and broken, decayed terraces, and still clinging to the cliffs. ”

“ B. — and at night digging into parchment-covered books, a dryer and barrener soil than any near Wut-a-qut-o or on the old mountain itself, and which must nevertheless be digged into for certain dry and musty fruits of knowledge to be fetched out of them. I am too busy to get the blues, but when I go out to take an exercise walk now and then at dusk or dawn, I do wish I could transport myself to the neighbourhood of that same mountain, and handle the axe till I had filled mother's fireplace, or take a turn in the barn at father's wheat or flax. ”

“ From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of imperceptible extent. As far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close-connected trees, and, through which, not even the vestige of a plantation can be discerned. The profound silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabited by savage beasts, and the security of the place, forms an ensemble rarely to be seen in other countries.
About ten miles beyond Green River commence what are called the Barrens, or Kentucky Meadows. ”

“ I am alone out on my sand and barrenness. I should be alone if my sand and barrenness were crowded with a thousand people each filled with melting sympathy for me—though it would be unspeakably sweet. ”

“ But all these ideas were knocked on the head, like a dairyman's surplus calves, when on entering Barney's Gap we descended a rough road to the house, which was built in a narrow gully between two steep stony hills, which, destitute of grass, rose like grim walls of rock, imparting a desolate and prison-like aspect. ”

“ Marjory in especial could scarce refrain from tears, while I own that as I looked down the vale and saw the woods of Barns and the green hills of Manor, I could have found it in me to be despondent.
But once we left the valley and began to ascend the slopes, our spirits returned. It was an afternoon among a thousand, one such as only April weather and the air of the Tweed valley can bring. The sky was cloudless and the wind sharp, and every hill and ridge in the great landscape stood out clear as steel. ”

“ On a grassy knoll before her the rosy columns of a temple shone in the gleaming dust of the atmosphere. Beside her there was a running stream, on the bank of which grew a bay-tree. There was a chirping of grasshoppers in the air, a noise of bees, and a delicious warm smell of burnt grass and thyme and mint.
“Near the stream a man was standing; he was an ordinary man, and yet he seemed to tower above the landscape without being unusually tall; his hair was bright as gold, and his eyes, more lustrous still, reflected the silvery blue sky and shone like opals. ”

“ So we rode away, in the blazing heat, no poetry exuding from the Professor, eight miles to Banner's Elk, crossing a mountain and passing under Hanging Rock, a conspicuous feature in the landscape, and the only outcropping of rock we had seen: the face of a ledge, rounded up into the sky, with a green hood on it. From the summit we had the first extensive prospect during our journey. The road can be described as awful,—steep, stony, the horses unable to make two miles an hour on it. Now and then we encountered a rude log cabin without barns or outhouses, and a little patch of feeble corn. ”

“ Down the bleak hill-sides of the other ridge I could trace more than one silver line which marked the descent of tributary rills. I could have remained long on that bald mountain-peak, but was warned by the descent of the sun to proceed downward. Taking the horses by the bridle, for I committed the care of the pack-mule to poor Barny, I began carefully to follow the pathway, and was ultimately enabled to reach the base in spite of sundry falls of the heavy pack, which, in spite of discipline, wrung hearty curses from poor Barny’s over-burdened heart. ”

“ The greatest elevations are reached on the outskirts, and there, also, is the finest scenery. The interior consists of rolling upland. It has been likened to a sea after a storm suddenly arrested and turned to stone; but a still better resemblance, if not so romantic, is that of a dust-sheet thrown over the dining-room chairs, the backs of which resemble the tors divided from one another by easy sweeps of turf.
Most of the heights are crowned with masses of rock standing up like old castles; these, and these only, are tors. ”

“ The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast. ”

“ Here, with as little noise as might be, they climbed the steep wooded hill, and arriving at something almost like a path, a hundred yards up from the river, they turned to the right, and so marched, no man speaking above a whisper. ”

“ Where the valley was deepest, the mountain slopes were bare and weather-beaten, consisting of swarthy or brown terraces and hollows, having a colour like that of the fell close to the southern extremity of Geitland. [23]
“In some places there were dry watercourses. It was so far to the bottom of the valley that the explorers could not discover exactly whether there was not grass on one of the slopes; but possibly the hue was the peculiar colour of the sandstone. Anyhow, they could not discover green pasturage. ”

“ Between two bournes from which her heart is sealed:
The intimate keep of the far midmost town,
The green quick raptures of far outmost field.
She knows not the heart throbbing nor the tense
Roads shimmering where the hundred thousand feet
Make thunders where they meet. ”

“ When we had groomed and watered our horses, and the stable guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the village street but that monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its movements that it was still quite full. ”

“ There is but one way that thou canst be freed. See—the women come hither to draw water, and the door creaks on its hinges whensoever opened. When thou hearest the door cry out, then hide thee under the stair, or yonder in the depth of the cave. None of the wenches penetrate further than these basins. But after they have left—and they come but in the morning and at eve—then thou hast this place to thyself. Know that there is no escape downwards from the eyelet-holes. ”

“ Looking down the opening gorge, we saw the valley of the Barron River, for almost its whole course, winding to the sea, a pale streak below the dark slopes of the mountains. The train stopped within sound of the thunder of the Barron Falls. The swirling water takes its magnificent plunge in tumultuous clouds of white froth to the gorge below, where rare butterflies hover, and white cockatoos flutter among the tops of the gum trees. ”

“ Slowly you walk along the embankment opposite the falls, now gazing at the amber sheet of water nearest you, now listening for the voices of the other falls, again stooping to note the beauty of the delicate harebells along the rocky ledge or pausing reverently to listen to the songs of the birds coming to you pure, sweet and peaceful above the song of the falls, speaking the soul of the delightful place. ”