Bush

“ Right under the cliff a little spring is hidden; an oak bush greedily spreads out its twigs like great fingers over the water; great silvery bubbles rise trembling from the bottom, covered with fine velvety moss. You fling yourself on the ground, you drink, but you are too lazy to stir. You are in the shade, you drink in the damp fragrance, you take your ease, while the bushes face you, glowing, and, as it were, turning yellow in the sun. ”

“ To go no farther there are parts of the bush in which thousands of trees, being ring-barked, have died and become ghosts of trees. Seen in the light of a half moon, when the sky is broken by wind-riven cloud, these spectral inhabitants of the bush, with their tattered winding sheets of corpse-white bark, are distinctly more eerie than anything the dawn had to show me beside Livorno Bay. ”

“ Every dwarfed, stunted, gnarled bush, had the trunk, limbs, twigs, and gray, withered foliage, all in miniature, of some tree, hapless but sturdy, that has had a weatherbeaten struggle for life on a storm-threshed crag by the shore, or on a granite side of a mountain, with short allowance of soil to eat and water to drink. ”

“ But still the bush kept its sombreness along all the pellucid ether: the eternally unlighted bush.
What was the good of caring? What was the point of caring? As he looked at the silent, morning bush grey-still in the translucency of the day, a voice spoke quite aloud in him. What was the good of caring, of straining, of stressing? Not the slightest good. The vast lapse of time here—and white men thrown in like snow into dusky wine, to melt away and disappear, but to cool the fever of the dry continent. ”

“ The roses on the tall bushes are fragrant as of yore; a white-throat sits on the bush beneath the old pear-tree and sings; a gentle breeze steals through the garden and even the box around the circular beds rustles its dark leaves. ”

“ Often, for miles on a stretch, there is scarcely a tree or bush to relieve the blank monotony of these ugly, uncouth partitions of land, beyond charred stumps and rank weeds, and the uniform belt of forest at the back of the new fields. ”

“ Down yonder are flowers of every shape and hue, shrubs of every variety of foliage, coral bushes—pink, and white, and even black—rocks covered with medusae of the most brilliant colours an artist could imagine, and patches of white sand, strewn with living shells, each one more lovely to look upon than another. And every bush and shrub and flower is all a-quiver with a strange, indescribable motion, which greatly heightens their magical beauty ”

“ You look some sunny morning into the bush, and the abode in which they seemed so cosy the day before is utterly forsaken by the joyous ingrates—now feebly fluttering in the narrow grove, to them a wide world teeming with delight and wonder—to be thought of never more. ”

“ First of all, we are in the perfect solitude of the bush, a silence which “may be felt,” its effect is not lessened by the sound, at intervals, of our own voices. Above us the magnificent forest trees are almost hiding the blue sky, and only allowing flecks of bright light, here and there, to penetrate to the mass of interlaced boughs, and shrubs, and foliage underneath. Before us is a stream, varying from ten to twenty yards in breadth, rushing down the slight slope here in rapids, with rocks rising in all directions above the water ”

“ One is walking along, maybe, when his attention is attracted to a dead brown leaf hanging on a blackthorn bush, suspended by a slender stalk, and swaying to and fro in the air with every passing breeze. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have seen the year after a fire has run in the bush, a new and fresh set of plants spring up, and even some that looked withered recover; the earth is renewed and manured by the ashes, and it is not so great a misfortune as it at first appears. ”

“ The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, beloved of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glories, cast by the sprays and branches of a dead bush. ”

“ Going to the bushes he found the berries ripe and sweet, so he began eating them. More bushes were scattered over the fields, so the boy wandered on, from bush to bush, without paying any heed to where he was wandering. ”

“ Starting back from bush and breeze,
⁠When the new-born spring is speaking
⁠To green leaves in little trills.
Oh, how shake her heart, her knees!
⁠Run! A lizard sets a-creaking
⁠That big bush! I bring no ills ”

“ So as this lonely shepherd is passing slowly in front of his flock, he sees a strange light that asserted itself, even in the brightness of the desert sunshine. 'The bush' does not mean one single shrub. ”

“ But because our land shows this readiness to be changed, all signs of permanence upon it raise a tender attachment instead of awe: some of us, at least, love the scanty relics of our forests, and are thankful if a bush is left of the old hedgerow. A crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy-leafed toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of grey thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit. ”

“ The light bush is just as dense a wood of small trees, twenty to fifty feet in height, shrubs, creepers and undergrowth, as can well be conceived of. Where the thicket is thinner the trees are larger, and the smaller they are the denser the covert. If you wish to journey through this light bush, where there is no semblance of a track, it will take you perhaps two hours to make a single mile, so thick is it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And further, we can only hope that when they have finished their little mocking day, that which they now are may be refashioned by wonderful Nature into some better thing—a dark, prickly bush, let us say, with blossoms that are frankincense and flame. ”

“ They were in every good-sized bush, in the meer-cat burrows that honeycombed the hollows, coiled round the tufts of toa grass—in fact, they swarmed.
We had hoped to reach the big pan by nightfall, as there was a big krantz there where we could shelter; but it became evident that we could not do so, and we turned aside towards a small pan where a few bushes gave promise of a fire at least, for it became evident that we were in for rain again. ”

“ Corroborees seem to fit in with the indescribable mystery of the bush. That the spirit of the bush is mystery makes it so difficult to describe beyond bald realism, otherwise it seems an effort to seize the intangible. ”

“ In landscape paintings a bush in the foreground may occupy more space than a whole range of mountains in the distance: perhaps the bush is there to show the scale of the drawing, and intimate the greatness, rather than littleness, of the mountains. ”

“ Before we came upon the white patch we encountered a valley the most difficult of passage of any thing I ever yet met with in the shape of bush, its vegetation consisted solely of shrubs advanced to a larger standard that usual in this Country the ground I suppose in consequence of perpetual shade and want of circulation was covered with moss, and on this we were obliged to crawl under the thicket, while sliding down and climbing up the numerous steep descents and acclivities in which the place abounded. ”

“ The bush is densely matted with an undergrowth of supple-jack and all kinds of creepers, but here and there one finds a grove of tree-ferns twenty feet in height, and grown so thickly as to prevent the existence of underwood and ground plants. ”

“ Through the rust of bush habits and feelings, which had grown about him during many years spent in the woods, there were still to be discovered traits which clearly distinguished him from ordinary bushmen. ”

“ They hop about in and out of small bushes or on the ground, industriously seeking out the small beetles and other insects on which they prey. Every now and then one of these sprightly birds permits itself a little relaxation in the shape of a sweet melody, which it composes and pours forth from the summit of a convenient bush. ”

“ The scenery of the bush and valley is remarkably fine. The bush is much thicker than in Australia. In places it appeared like a solid wall of green. On all sides as you climb up you see huge tree-ferns, many of which are twenty to thirty feet in height. Above these are tall gum trees, whilst beneath them are beds of common bracken.
All was white with frost, and the fronds of the ferns in many places sheltered small pools and ponds of water which were covered with a thick cake of ice. Tree-ferns helped in carboniferous times to make the coal. ”

“ The clump of bush in which the lions were said to have secreted themselves was an isolated one, with nothing in particular to distinguish it from the thousands of other clumps that dotted the visible country, except that one extremity of it abutted upon the edge of a small shallow ravine, through which trickled a tiny rivulet discharging itself into the larger stream which flows through the long valley that intersected the landscape. ”

“ It is upon these that the fruit is chiefly borne. A bush left to itself is soon a mass of long, slender, almost naked stalks, with a little fruit at the ends. The ideal bush is stocky, open, well branched, admitting light, air, and sun in every part. There is no crowding and smothering of the fruit by the foliage. But few clusters are borne on very young wood, and when this grows old and black, the clusters are small. ”

“ Then one by one, and two by two, and three by three, and finally in whole showers, the little flowers of all the other little bushes fell off, and they looked very much like the little bush of which I am telling you, so that the little bush no longer felt sad.
All summer long all the little bushes grew and grew and grew. The birds came and built their nests among them. Peter Rabbit and his brothers and sisters scampered under them. The butterflies flew over them.
By and by came the fall, and with the fall came Jack Frost. ”

“ At that moment Mother and Nature seemed one and the same thing. As I kept to the more open part of the wood, on its southernmost border, the red flame of the sinking sun was seen at intervals through the deep humid green of the higher foliage. How every object it touched took from it a new wonderful glory! At one spot, high up where the foliage was scanty, and slender bush ropes and moss depended like broken cordage from a dead limb—just there, bathing itself in that glory-giving light, I noticed a fluttering bird, and stood still to watch its antics. ”

“ Let bushes grow in the natural way, removing all old, decaying branches, and all suckers that rise too far from the parent-bush, and keep the clusters of bushes and leaves thin enough to allow the sun free access, and prevent continued moist [Pg 167] ure in wet weather, which will rot the fruit, and you will find it the cheapest and best. We have seen quite as large and as fine fruit grow on such bushes, that we knew to be more than twenty years old, as we ever saw of the same variety when cultivated in the tree form. ”

“ The old male might constantly be seen flying up from the highest twigs of the furze-bush, singing its short song as it hovered over the bush, and returning again to the top branch of that or some neighbouring bush. ”

“ The bush is of stiff, erect habit, two to three feet high, a stocky grower and an abundant bearer. The berries vary from one-half to one and one-quarter inches in diameter, are covered with innumerable thorns, scarcely less savage in the green state than those on an ordinary wild bush of this country. When cooked, the prickles soften down to the same consistence as the skin, which is rather thick. ”

“ The technical meaning of the word `bush.' The bush is the gum-tree forest, with which so great a part of Australia is covered, that folk who follow a country life are invariably said to live in the bush. Squatters who look after their own runs always live in the bush, even though their sheep are pastured on plains. ”

“ A favourite shrub in every garden where the conditions of soil will allow of its being successfully cultivated. In peaty soil, or light, friable loam and leaf soil, it forms a dense, round-headed bush, often 8 feet in height, and nearly as much through, with pleasing green leaves, and dense clusters of beautiful pink, wax-like flowers. ”

“ The hedge of the thickly growing thorn bushes ranged to the height of four feet, making it incumbent upon us to continually assume a stooping position when walking, involving a crick in the back for a good part of the time while there, but the bush was as thick as could be and formed an admirable shelter. ”

“ Still here and there a few blades of grass, or even a green bush or two, are to be met with, though one may travel for several days’ journey in any direction from them before any other growing plants are to be seen. ”

“ Some rain had fallen in the night, and the weather suddenly clearing up towards morning, had hardened the moisture into ice. Every bush, every tree, the fences, were covered with a shining mail, from which and from the crisped surface of the snow, the rays of the sun were reflected, and filled the air with a sparkling light. Transmuted, as by a magician's wand, the bare trees were no longer ordinary trees. They were miracles of vegetable silver and crystal. Mingled among them, the evergreens glittered like masses of emerald hung with diamonds. ”