Veld

“ Field, forest, hill and vale, fresh air, and the perfume of clover-fields and new-mown hay, birds singing, and the sound of village bells, and the moving breeze among the branches,--no laborers in the fields, but peasants on their way to church, coming across the green pastures, with roses in their hats,--the beauty and quiet of the holy day of rest,--all, all in earth and air, breathed upon the soul like a benediction. ”

“ The wide reaches of meadow, the leagues of hill and plain, the waters that ran past a thousand hills, virgin forest for their game, live soil for their corn, all the freedom and bounty of the greatest valley in the world had been theirs—a valley to roam over at will, to hunt in with the changing seasons, to fight for in the glory of battle among themselves. ”

“ The irregular border of the forest reaches in some places to within four or five hundred yards of the road, forming a barrier to the searching of a field-glass at 1000 yards from our position. Away to the right the valley opens out like a map, with villages dotted here and there among green plantations in the middle distance, and beyond a great rolling stretch of country looking to the naked eye like some large barren heath, but showing in the field-glass the patch-quilt effect of innumerable tiny strips of variegated cultivation. ”

“ For us too, Macumazahn, as for the land we loved, the mystery and promise of the morning are outworn; the mid-day sun burns overhead, and at times the way is weary. Few of those we knew are left. Some are victims to battle and murder, their bones strew the veldt; death has taken some in a more gentle fashion; others are hidden from us, we know not where. ”

“ Each side of the long valley is a continuous ridge, which offers it a high, wooded horizon, and through the middle of it there flows a charming stream, wandering, winding and doubling, smothered here and there in rushes, and spreading into lily-coated reaches, beneath the clear shadow of tall, straight, light-leaved trees. ”

“ The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire—sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. ”

“ Field upon field dotted with daisies, woodland as dense and wild as untrained nature leaves it, and hill upon hill clambering over one another, all so minute and yet so real, and dashing down from the tiny mountains was a stream of foaming water, winding about and gathering in from all sides other tributary brooks, so small that they would hardly have floated a good-sized leaf. ”

“ The field is a floor. Hedges gradually faded from the landscape in counties several days' journey back, leaving nothing but unbroken billows to the horizon. But the hedges have been resumed in this region. Each time round the enormous field we stop at a break in the line of those untrimmed old thorn-trees. ”

“ The corn-fields, the vineyards clothing the uplands, the woods that varied the landscape, and the meandering river that gave it light and life, were all in their fairest summer dress. Plenty and peace brooded over a happy land. From a traveller in a diligence no more detailed description of city, village, or scenery, can be expected. ”

“ Here was a valley stretching four miles east and west, and about eight miles north and south, left with the richest soil to its own wild growth of grass—which in civilization would have been a most valuable meadow for the rearing of cattle—invested as it was by dense forests, darkening the horizon at all points of the compass, and folded in by tree-clad ridges. ”

“ The valleys are a garden, and the hills roll softly to the horizon till they [33] grow aerial in the distance and hang upon the heavens like fantastic clouds. Little white cities crown them or clamber up their slopes, and rivers wind down the valleys, with sunlight glinting on their waters, between the tall poplars swaying on their banks like girls who gather flowers by a stream. ”

“ Crossing from ridge to ridge, high in the air, on long straddling trestles as if flowing on stilts, or down and up across valleys and hills, imprisoned in iron pipes to strike and wash away hills and miles of the skin of the mountain’s face, riddling, stripping every gold gully and flat. These are the white man’s marks made in a few feverish years, to say nothing of mills, fields, villages, scattered hundreds of miles along the flank of the Range. ”

“ From the opposite side descends a fertile expanse, or tongue of land, filling up the area of the circle. This singular valley is laid out in a compact ornamented farm; the richly verdant meadows are intersected by flourishing hedge-rows; while numerous trees diversify the tract, and imbower the farm-house: a row of elms shadows the margin of the river, which, skirting the base of the hills, nearly surrounds the valley. ”

“ The valley between is rich in every fruit and flower and shrub. Here is a river gliding along, fringed with heavy willows, larger and compacter of leaf than their temperate-zone brother, but of the same bending and hugging nature. ”

“ We drive through a fertile valley, where runs a placid river amid many meadows, gardens, and orchards, until at last it empties into a picturesque basin, where the landscape shows a harmonious blending of mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ancient forest trees. ”

“ VAST, vast,―a limitless extent of flat sand, without a human being in sight; girdled by a stream and dotted with hills; where in the dismal twilight the wind moans at the setting sun. Shrubs gone: grass withered: all chill as the hoar-frost of early morn. The birds of the air fly past: the beasts of the field shun the spot ”

“ One great plain of prairie and woodland, reaching from zone to zone, fairly bursting with the richness of its varied soil and climate—reserved, as it were, by Providence, to receive the less hardy and vigorous generations which time might throw off upon her—tame in scenery, but filled with the resources of wealth and power. ”

“ The major joined them and they extended their walk for a mile or more through the woods, climbing the hill that forms the western boundary of the valley, from which they had a birdseye view of the village and the surrounding country, a beautiful landscape, in all its native wildness, diversified with hill and valley, forest and prairie, traversed by streams of living water. ”

“ They met to the westward another chain of hills, of which the one whereon I sat formed a link, and the whole together nearly encompassed a rich and fruitful valley, filled with cornfields and pastures. Through this vale winded a small river for many miles: much cattle were feeding on its banks. Here and there lesser eminences arose in the valley: some covered with wood, others with corn or grass, and a few with heath or fern. One of these little hills was distinguished by a parish church at the top, presenting a striking feature in the landscape. ”

“ The valley of the Main, which we thridded during our first day’s journey, is quite beautiful. Magnificent forests of oak and beech cover the hills; and the little rural plain at their foot, bordering the river, is rich in pasture and ripe grain. ”

“ So the toad and all his brothers, who had been hiding beneath the stones of the field that they might not be killed, came out, and tended the field. They ate the insects and other creatures that would have destroyed the sprouts, and so the field grew.
It lay in the sunshine, bright with flowers, and green with the sprouts of growing food and trees.
"A fertile field!" said the farmer. "I shall help it to grow."
"The field is alive!" cried the children. "We can go in it and help the farmer."
"The field is rich!" said all the people who lived near by. "It is growing, and will help us to live." ”

“ Sometimes whole tracts of country are met with in these regions, whose surface exhibits a pleasing variety of woodland and prairie; sloping hills appear with coppices upon their crests and along their sides. Among these natural groves may be seen troops of the long-tailed deer, browsing along the declivities of the hills, and, by their elegant attitudes and graceful movements, adding to the beauty of the landscape. ”

“ In looking from the top of a hill over a large extent of country, it is impossible not to feel a glow of delight at the splendor of the scene: the richness of the soil, its careful and skilful cultivation, its green, tidy boundaries chequering the scene, its teeming crops, its fat herds, its numberless and full-fleeced sheep. ”

“ Here and there the farming land is broken by a lofty precipice rising a thousand feet or more directly out of luxuriant vegetation, just as an artist would put some bold figure into a picture to offer a contrast to the peaceful, cultivated slope. And the lofty mountain peaks look bolder and sterner because they rise so near the wheat fields, the gentle valleys dotted with white villages, and the sombre forests that are so thick and so green. ”

“ Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre. ”

“ Every morning for many days I used to go and sit on the brow of a low hill that commanded the field, or else upon a gentle swell in the midst of the meadow itself, and listen to catch the song of the lark. ”

“ The lower slopes of them are adorned with forests of fir and pine, which alternate with smooth, green pasturages, where ramble and feed great numbers of sheep and cows. Below are rich and beautiful valleys, with fields full of flowers, and cottages, and pretty little gardens, and every thing else that can make a country pleasant to see and to play in. There are no noxious or hurtful animals in these valleys, so that there is no danger in rambling about any where in them, either in the fields or in the groves. ”

“ In the central zone, lying parallel to the former, the plain and the forest long contend with each other for the possession of the soil; the trees prevail for some distance, but gradually dwindle into stunted and thorny bushes, only reappearing in belts of forest along the banks of the streams, until finally in the south, the victory remains with the plain, which displays its smooth, velvet-like surface unbounded and unbroken. ”

“ Ridge succeeds ridge. Valley opens into valley. As far as the eye can reach in every direction are ragged peaks and spurs. The country of the plains is left, and we have entered a strange land, as tangled as the maze at Hampton Court, with mountains instead of hedges. ”

“ In this watered valley are immense herds of cattle. The plain is covered with a thick coarse grass, which has now been everywhere cut, either by the troops themselves for their horses, or by the natives for sale to us. Crossing the plain, we have a steep rise up the side of the hill, and then, surmounting the rise, we find ourselves at the head of a valley running nearly due south. ”

“ That was all there was to see, except the herds of cattle and horses and an occasional horseman galloping over the plain, and the sight at long distances of a grove or small plantation of trees, marking the site of an estancia, or sheep and cattle farm, these groves appearing like islands on the sea-like flat country. ”

“ The great massive flanks of the mountains are there broken by an innumerable multitude of small streams into a labyrinth of little valleys,—a world of bosky greenery, of sunny meadows on the uplands, of rich fat pastures in the watered bottoms, of woodlands on the swelling hill-sides. ”

“ We motored through the wet sunshiny country, softly dipped and softly lifted, blue-green forest and wide ripe harvest fields, blue and purple and crimson beet fields, long low brown and rust-red towns with square church towers, Sunday people out in the doorways, and swallows always flying low and crying. ”

“ Beyond the river lay the level valley which, twelve decades before, had been one of the favourite dwelling-places of the red man. The woods abounded with game of every sort, and the river with fish, while in the fertile bottom his corn would grow to ripe luxuriance with little cultivation. ”

“ A broad land this seventy-nine miles—how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges and woods, in that distance?—wide enough to seclude any house, to hide it, like an acorn in the grass. Those who have lived all their lives in remote places do not feel the remoteness. ”

“ A valley extending through twenty-one degrees of latitude, and fifteen degrees of longitude, a valley just beginning to smile under the hand of cultivation, and which already invites to its large bosom those masses of people who are pouring out from the overstocked communities of the Old World, and which promises to requite the hand of cultivation by a provision for yet uncounted millions of the human race. ”

“ The valley grows more and more beautiful as we go up, full fields of wheat, corn, oats, friendly to fruit of all sorts, with abundance of walnut, oak, and chestnut timber—a fertile, agreeable valley, settled with well-to-do farmers. ”

“ They have marched out of the woods yonder—the woods that bound the fields below where the highroad to Laon ran in the old days. And now they are spreading out across the field, to the right and the left. ”

“ The glories of gold and brown have spread downwards like fire into the valleys. The leaves are falling from the trees on the hills where the wind roars, from the trees in the valleys, even from the trees in the town, where there is no wind at all, and the snow is descending in the 286valleys. ”

“ After a variety of windings and turnings through mountains of stupendous height and awful aspect, I began to descend, and entered the most delightful valley I had ever beheld——deep, long, 129and above a mile in breadth——surrounded with enormous piles of mountains, and diversified with the alternate beauties of nature and cultivation, so as to form an union rarely to be met with, and delight at once the eye of the farmer, and the fancy of him that has a true taste for rural wildness. ”