Heiau

“ A violent east wind causes the tall heather, now of the color of dead leaves, to undulate like a peaceful sheet of water. Above, the sky is of a bright blue on this sultry and windy day. An August sun inundates with its blinding light the desert expanse of heather, whose silence is disturbed only by the sharp chirp of the grasshopper, or the low moan of the gale. ”

“ Whenever we, who contentedly remain at home, bless our stars to think that we have such a happy land to live and enjoy ourselves in, and which, surely, God has not in his goodness rendered quite a desert, there sits master Hermann, turning up his nose in contempt, as if our high hills in front of the windmill-gate were, in his opinion, not worth looking at. Well, dear heaven, they are certainly not glaciers; but pray do potatoes grow upon his favourite ice-tipped hill, as they do here round the windmill? Why the man will at last become a glacier himself, he is so cold and frosty in his manner! ”

“ But perhaps it is better to cite a proof from the remote past. The beginning of the cycle of the year is placed at different times by different peoples. Some place it at the spring equinox, others at the height of summer, and many in the late autumn; but they each and all sing the praises of the most visible gifts of Helios. One nation celebrates the season best adapted for work in the fields, when the earth bursts into bloom and exults, when all the crops are just beginning to sprout, and the sea begins to be safe for sailing, and the disagreeable, gloomy winter puts on a more cheerful aspect ”

“ But though summer time in the country is bright and beautiful with its broad meadows waving before the western wind like seas of green, and the yellow corn, gleaming in the field where the sun-burnt reapers are singing; though the flowers shed their fragrance, and the breeze sighs softly through the branches overhead in monotones, but slightly varied, yet sweet and soothing; though the wood is made vocal with the song of birds, and all nature is jocund and bright—notwithstanding, all this, the winter, strange as it may seem, was the time of our greatest enjoyment. ”

“ There are many worse things in the world than setting out to climb Heleval on a beautiful morning on the first of October, when the grass in unsunned corners is still pearly with the frost of the night, and the whole earth is touched with the wonderful caress of the cool autumn sunshine. Fiona's way lay along the shore road, past the bank of heather and fern which in August had been gay with flowers, napperd and potentilla, blue milkwort and starry eye-bright, and alive with butterflies, blues and small heaths and pearl-bordered fritillaries ”

“ In Desolation Valley, as well as around most of the Sierran lakes of the Tahoe Region, beds of heather are found that have won enthusiastic Scotchmen to declare that Tahoe heather beats that of Scotland. The red heather is the more abundant, and its rich deep green leaves and crown of glowing red makes it to be desired, but the white heather is a flower fit for the delicate corsage bouquet of a queen, or the lapel of the noblest of men. Dainty and exquisite, perfect in shape and color its tiny white bell is par-excellence the emblem of passionate purity. ”

“ There is a sense of spring in the wind to-day,—something that makes one think of the bourgeoning of Northern woods, when naked trees first cover themselves with a mist of tender green,—something that recalls the first bird-songs, the first climbings of sap to sun, and gives a sense of vital plenitude.
... Evening fills the west with aureate woolly clouds,—the wool of the Fleece of Gold. Then Hesperus beams like another moon, and the stars burn very brightly. Still the ship bends under the even pressure of the warm wind in her sails; and her wake becomes a trail of fire. ”

“ The high, partridge-coloured heathland rolls southward, with small ridges as of a sea broken by cross winds, or as if the heather and the hard gorse cushions had grown over ruins which time had not yet smoothed into the right curves of perfect death. A gentle wind changes the grass from silver to green, from green to silver, by depressing or lifting up the blades. In the dry heather and pallid herbage the wind sounds all the stops of despair. ”

“ For really there are no enchanted fruits which leave the eater forever satisfied,—nor any magical grass which revives the dead,—nor any fountain of fairy water,—nor any bowls which never lack rice,—nor any cups which never lack wine. It is not true that sorrow and death never enter Hōrai; neither is it true that there is not any winter. The winter in Hōrai is cold;—and winds then bite to the bone ”

“ And it was such a beautiful spot that I could but regret its ultimate blotting out; for, notwithstanding the wall of ice that was so close to it, it was covered with thick brush-wood, consisting of birch, dwarf-willow, and juniper; among which were matted tufts of heather, crake-berry, and whortle-berry; and many bright flowers were here and there scattered over a rich turf of grass and moss. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than between this spot of green which we had left and the glacier upon which we stood. ”

“ In winter, torrents of water uproot the heather, leaving on the slopes a leprous, whitened scar, badly tinted by the too feeble sun. The summits are truncated, and want boldness. Patches of miserable verdure seam their sides and mark the oozing of springs; the remainder is covered with brownish heather. Below, at the very bottom, a torrent obstructed by stones, struggles along its channel, or lingers in stagnant pools. One sometimes discerns a hovel, with a stunted cow. The gray, low-lying sky, completes the impression of lugubrious monotony. ”

“ A wind, fresh and cool, blew from the west, sweeping over the plain, hissing into the crests of the yellow broom and purple loosestrife, and bending them into lines of colour that chased each other like waves over the grey-green moorland. As we left the plain and came to the undulating lands of northern Poitou, where the country twisted down to the Bienne, the hedgerows, all glimmering in gold and green, and gay with blossoming thorn, were awake with the song of the thrush and the black-cap. ”

“ The birds soon afterward came back from the south,—the eider-ducks and the little auks, which we had caught in the summer time when upon the island; and then, as soon as the snow was all gone, the moss and stunted grass grew green, and plants sprouted up here and there, and the butterflies with bright yellow wings went gathering the honey from flower to flower, and you cannot imagine how glad we were once more to come out of the dreary winter into this bright sunshine and this pleasant summer. ”

“ Far off they first looked a very pale gray; now, as the light increases, they change hue a little,—showing misty greens and smoky blues. They rise very sharply from the sea to great heights,—the highest point always with a cloud upon it;—they thrust out singular long spurs, push up mountain shapes that have an odd scooped-out look. Some, extremely far away, seem, as they catch the sun, to be made of gold vapor; others have a madderish tone: these are colors of cloud. The closer we approach them, the more do tints of green make themselves visible. ”

“ Mountains divide us and a waste of seas,
Yet still the blood is warm, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.”
Round the foot of the mountains winds a track, which, if it were not for the rabbit-holes, might be thought a fairly good one in these parts. As it is, it is extremely perilous; and the fresh green of the flat is also full of bog-holes, and beyond the grass is the stony river-bed with its bright blue streams hurrying along, breaking into foam at the rapids and shallows. ”

“ The pale blue waters of Loch Shin, the beech-woods, the russet slopes of heather, the snow-touched azure hills along the horizon—all these looked pretty and were peacefully shining on this fair morning; and even after they had got away from the last trace of human habitation, and were monotonously driving through mile after mile of the wide, boggy, hopeless peatland, the winter colours were really brighter than those of summer, and the desolation far from overpowering. If they met with no human beings, there were other living objects to attract the eye. ”

“ The clay in the deep Cut is melting and streaming down, glistening in the sun. It is I that melts, while the harp sounds on high. The snow-drifts on the west side look like clouds.—We turned down the brook at Heywood's meadow. It was worth while to see how the water even in the marsh, where the brook is almost stagnant, sparkled in this atmosphere, for, though warm, it is remarkably clear. Water, which in summer would look dark, and perhaps turbid, now sparkles like the lakes in November. The water is the more attractive, since all around is deep snow. ”

“ In May the heather is dark and dry; there are sparse patches of gorse scattered about the slopes, and looking across at a group of pines edging the horizon you sometimes get a setting of black, yellow, and blue, which belongs peculiarly to this corner of Surrey. Chobham Common and its heather have often been compared to Scotland, and I can never catch the likeness. The heather is there, and the scattered pines like some of the Lowlands; but the wind is a southern wind, and never blows like Stevenson's wind on the moors "as it blows in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure." ”

“ Their ancestors wore plaids of many different colours, and numbers still retain this custom, but the majority, now, in their dress, prefer a dark brown, imitating nearly the leaves of the heather, that when lying upon the heath in the day, they may not be discovered by the appearance of their clothes; in these, wrapped rather than covered, they brave the severest storms in the open air, and sometimes lay themselves down to sleep even in the midst of snow. In their houses, also, they lie upon the ground; strewing fern, or heath, on the floor, with the roots downward and the leaves turned up. ”

“ The storm and the winter darkness, the virgin earth, the blasting winds of March, would have slain them utterly; but all these served to make the heather light and strong, to flush its bells with a ruddier purple, to fill its cells with honey more pungently sweet. The cold wind and wild earth make the heather ”

“ Now, too, the first of October, or later, the Elms are at the height of their autumnal beauty, great brownish-yellow masses, warm from their September oven, hanging over the highway. Their leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is any answering ripeness in the lives of the men who live beneath them. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, they remind me both by their form and color of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the harvest had indeed come to the village itself, and we might expect to find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last. ”

“ The alder catkins just burst open are prettily marked spirally by streaks of yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish-brown scales, which make one revolution in the length of the catkin. I hear in Heywood's north meadow the most unmusical low croak from one or two frogs, though it is half ice there yet. A remarkable note with which to greet the new year, as if one's teeth slid off with a grating sound in cracking a nut, but not a frog nor a dimple to be seen.
Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. ”

“ Why should we not be as well acquainted with the plants and grasses of our pastures, as the girls of your country with those which grow in your fields? No sooner is the snow gone than they all shoot up here vigorously.—But come along a little higher. You have not there the blue-bell of the Alps, Soldanella Alpina, which flowers even upon the snow, and the Crocus vernus beneath it. These are fond of a cool situation; for when the snow melts, they fade and go off too. Both always appear to me like infants who die at the mother’s breast. The air of the earth is too heavy for them ”

“ But the Welsh gwyl may itself be derived from the same root as yule, which, to our ears, now only signifies, as Brand says, "Christmas," or the festive season. Heulo, in modern Welsh, means to "shine as [58] the sun." In India the term Huli festival is applied to the ceremonies attendant upon the sun's entering into the spring quarter at the vernal equinox.
In ordinary life we meet with very few persons who are aware of the fact that the practice of regarding the first of January as the commencement of a new year is of very modern origin, in England, at least. ”

“ And the botanical geography of the Heath tribe is very remarkable; it is found over the whole of Europe, in Northern Asia, and in Northern Africa. Then the tribe takes a curious leap, being found in immense abundance, both of species and individuals, in Southern Africa, while it is entirely absent from North and South America. Not a single species has been found in the New World. A few plants of Calluna vulgaris have been found in Newfoundland and Massachusetts, but that is not a true Heath.
As a garden plant the Heath has been strangely neglected. ”

“ Spring, with explosive barks, raced first on this and then on that side of the sleigh as it flew swiftly over the smooth frozen road.
The stars blinked white and clear out of a deep blue sky, and the path wound up-hill among cedars and junipers and clumps of mountain laurel, on whose broad green leaves the tufts of snow lay like clusters of white roses. The keen clear air was full of stimulus and vigor; and so Hiel's proposition to take the longest way met with enthusiastic welcome from all the party. ”