Brushland

“ Their long, easy, flowing lines, their broad, smooth backs, their deep, wide, gently sloping valleys, all help to give them a look of repose and serenity, as if the fret and fever of life were long since passed with them. Compared with the newer mountains of uplift in the West, they are like cattle lying down and ruminating in the field beside alert wild steers with rigid limbs and tossing horns. They sleep and dream with bowed heads upon the landscape. Their great flanks and backs are covered with a deep soil that nourishes a very even growth of beech, birch, and maple forests. ”

“ Never a sound broke the silence that brooded forever—in spite of the wind—over the lake-like, flattened expanse of the estuary save the deep "how-how!" of the buzzard's superb pinions as she climbed slowly into the sublime vault of the heavens; never a sound from bird or from beast. The beast hung on, dumbly dogged, with fangs that met in the flesh beneath the stained feathers; and the blood of the bird mingled with the blood of the beast as it trickled slowly down over his mangled head, upon which one fearful claw of the buzzard was clutched in an awful grip. ”

“ Every creek starts in a bog or marsh, and good water can be had only by excavating.
What a charm lurks about those springs that are found near the tops of mountains, so small that they get lost amid the rocks and debris and never reach the valley, and so cold that they make the throat ache! Every hunter and mountain-climber can tell you of such, usually on the last rise before the summit is cleared. It is eminently the hunter's spring. ”

“ Peter Rabbit was thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch- [pg 25] trees and the poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, and he had done his work well. Very, very lovely were the reds and yellows and browns against the dark green of the pines and the spruces and the hemlocks. The Purple Hills were more softly purple than at any other season of the year. ”

“ Our course at first lies along the highway under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward some high uplying land behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all this section. Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many swarms of wild bees. ”

“ From the top of the ridge an immense landscape in immaculate white stretches before us. Miles upon miles of farms, smoothed and padded by the stainless element, hang upon the sides of the mountains, or repose across the long sloping hills. The fences or stone walls show like half-obliterated black lines. I turn my back to the sun, or shade my eyes with my hand. Every object or movement in the landscape is sharply revealed; one could see a fox half a league. The farmer foddering his cattle, or drawing manure afield, or leading his horse to water ”

“ The landscape closes around us. We can almost [4] hear the cattle ripping off the lush grass in the fields. One feels as if he could eat grass himself. It is pastoral paradise. We can see the daisies and buttercups; and from above a meadow on the right a part of the song of a skylark reaches my ear. Indeed, not a little of the charm and novelty of this part of the voyage was the impression it made as of going afield in an ocean steamer. ”

“ Then through more enclosures for cattle and sheep, and finally over some virgin land, across what might have been an English park if it had not looked so untidy from many of the trees having been 'rung'—an ugly but economical method of felling timber, by cutting a deep furrow round the bark so as to stop the circulation, and thus cause the tree to die. Then we crossed a now dried-up river, and climbed the opposite bank of a creek, to a point from which we had a lovely view of the distant Stirling Range. ”

“ In the small streams the cattle scare the fish, and soil their element and break down their retreats under the banks. Woodland alternates the best with meadow: the creek loves to burrow under the roots of a great tree, to scoop out a pool after leaping over the prostrate trunk of one, and to pause at the foot of a ledge of moss-covered rocks, with ice-cold water dripping down. How straight the current goes for the rock! ”

“ We passed through this vast plain into a second, where the winds had furrowed the sand, which was of a reddish colour, at little distances. A few sweet smelling plants grew on the top of the furrows, which were immediately devoured by our camels: they were no less famished than ourselves. We had the happiness, on quitting this sandy plain, to enter into a valley surrounded with mountains, where the soil was white and slimy. At the foot of some tall shrubs, of which the branches were artfully formed into an arbour, we found some water, of which we stood in great need. ”

“ It is rather a fascinating place, reminding one a little of a French town, with its houses perched about on reddish-coloured hills from which the bush has been cleared. There is no attempt at regularity, it straggles about, up and down the hills, and a very little way outside, the bush closes in again and rolls away, range beyond range, hill beyond hill, clothed as with dark green fur. To seawards a yellow flat stretches to the sand-dunes. Gaunt, dead trees stand on the flat, and a ragged forest of white-pine borders it; there are pools and bogs surrounded ”

“ The air is full of aromatic scent from many kinds of shrubs, all growing luxuriantly. Wherever there is an opening you can see as far as the coast, and for nearly a hundred miles to the north and to the south, over the bush you have come through. And seen at a distance, the poorest bush has a peculiar and beautiful colour, quite different from anything we see in Europe, a reddish ground, shaded with the very deepest blue, often without a trace of green. ”

“ The plain is high and dry, covered with a thick growth of buffalo-grass, and perfectly destitute of all else. Not even a bush can be seen except along the streams or little lakes, which are often forty and fifty miles apart. The cattle and all wild animals range along the water, feeding five and six miles out upon the plain. The waters on the plains stand in pools, in long, deep arrowas; and in the spring, when the snow melts in the mountains, the water courses its way through these gulches toward the rivers. ”

“ Sleeping sickness is prevalent in some parts of Rhodesia, Central Africa and in other interior sections of the Dark Continent.
The means employed to eradicate the fly is by cutting the brush from the shore of the lake. A fly will not remain in the sun long, so when the brush has been cut and a fly's resting place, the shade, is removed, he leaves the brush-barren district 257 and seeks shady fields. A grass—lemon grass, it is called—with a leaf a quarter of an inch wide, which grows to two feet high, is often planted on the land from which the brush has been cleared. ”

“ Nature is not stingy of them, but fills her lap with each in its turn. Rare and delicate plants, like our arbutus, certain of our orchids and violets, that hide in the woods, and are [197] very fastidious and restricted in their range, probably have no parallel in England. The island is small, is well assorted and compacted, and is thoroughly homogeneous in its soil and climate; the conditions of field and forest and stream that exist have long existed; a settled permanence and equipoise prevail; every creature has found its place, every plant its home. ”

“ Their sides are never clothed with the welcome green of woodland, at most the highest peaks bear a scant covering of bushes, to which the precipitation of vapour at this height allows a bare subsistence and a stunted growth. One misses the whispering of the beeches, and the rustling of the firs and pines; there is none of the familiar murmuring, or joyous chatter, or echoing roar of running water, which lays silver ribbons on our mountains at home, fringing them here with verdure, while in another place the sun shining upon rushing waterfall and whirlpool enhaloes them with rainbow colours ”

“ At a higher level the soil is watered by the frequent showers brought up from the ocean by the South-east Trades, and is covered with a rich carpet of grass. In every sheltered dell the growth of timber is abundant and varied, combining the trees of the tropics with those of our cold English latitudes. The water-courses are innumerable. The bed of every stream is filled, and every bank is covered with lovely masses of arum-lilies. The scenery of the island is most beautiful. The Acting Governor occupies a fine country house surrounded by a noble park. ”

“ Every country road is walled in by them; every brookside is glorified by their rich masses of color; and no rocky wall is so bare but here and there a tiny shoot finds root, and open its rosy bloom. All these bushes, from the low-growing sort that holds its mottled and shaded petals three inches above the ground, to that whose top one cannot reach, are simply loaded with blossoms of all shades, from nearly white to deepest rose-color, filling the air with perfume. ”

“ An owl hooted, and the rustling of brushwood told me of the near proximity of some fur-coated burrower in the ground. High above this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me. ”

“ All around us was bush—a dense jungle of shrubs and trees. The conical hill on which we stood was thickly clothed, and all round, over the steep, rough ranges, the [Pg 238] abrupt ravines and gullies, with their brawling streams, was spread the one variegated mantle of gorgeous foliage.
Since then I have seen certain of the far-famed forests of the tropics, but I must candidly say that the scenery they offer is, on the whole, far less striking and beautiful than that of the bush of Northern New Zealand. The colouring is not so good; in the mass, it is not so lustrous, nor so varied. ”

“ But the greater portion of Bushmanland may be ranked among the most complete solitudes of the earth. The lion, the rhinoceros, and, in fact, most of the larger indigenous fauna have disappeared from it—with the autochthonous pygmy human inhabitants; nevertheless it is a region full of varied and distinctive interest. The landscape consists either of vast plains, mirage-haunted and as level as the sea,—arid mountain ranges—usually mere piles of naked rock, or immense sand-dunes, massed and convoluted. ”

“ This brushwood is, however, not too thick to prevent cattle from breaking their way through it, and feeding among it. The third description of plains are those of a better kind of soil, which produce good nourishing grass, but upon these no trees grow; small shrubs and briars alone are to be seen, and oftentimes not even these. They are, in parts, stony, and have rising ground upon them, which is not sufficiently high to deserve the name of a ridge of hills; but is enough to break the ocean-like flatness and immensity which these plains sometimes present to the traveller ”

“ A breeze would come slowly down the mountain, then strike the lake, and I could see its footsteps approaching by the changed appearance of the water. How slowly the winds move at times, sauntering like one on a Sunday walk! A breeze always enlivens the fish; a dead calm and all pennants sink, your activity with your fly is ill-timed, and you soon take the hint and stop. Becalmed upon my raft, I observed, as I have often done before, that the life of Nature ebbs and flows, comes and departs, in these wilderness scenes ”

“ The vale of Brusa is almost as much renowned for its beauty as that of Tempe: its fertility is past conception. One may ride for miles in a continued shade of walnut, chestnut, fig, cherry, and mulberry trees. These are the trees by the road-side; but, within the hedges, as being less handy to be gathered, grow peach, apricot, pear, and apple trees. [15] In every hedge flowering shrubs grew spontaneously; at every step springs gushed from the side of the mountain. ”

“ The specimens from which my figures were taken are from the brushes of the River Clarence, situated between the Hunter and Moreton Bay; in the last-mentioned district it is tolerably abundant, the dense and luxuriant brushes affording it a congenial habitat and breeding-place. I have received both the young and the adults from this locality, but as I have never myself seen them in a state of nature, I am unable to give any account of their habits or economy. The sexes are so nearly alike in colouring that dissection alone can distinguish them with certainty. ”

“ The soil, being of volcanic origin, is readily fertilised by moisture, and at once produces some kind of vegetation. This adds of course greatly to the effect of colour, which in the rocks themselves is extremely beautiful, especially at sunrise and sunset. The sea, too, is delightfully blue on one side of the peninsula, and pale green on the other, according to the wind, and the white surf curls and breaks on the sandy shore beyond the crisp waves. ”