The "Ould Dhragoon" Seemed, Moreover, To Have Some Taste For The
Picturesque, And By Way Of Ornament, Had Left Standing
Sundry tall
pines and hemlocks neatly girdled to destroy their foliage, the
shade of which would have been detrimental to
The "blessed praties"
which he designed to grow in his clearing, but which, in the
meantime, like martyrs at the stake, stretched their naked branches
imploringly towards the smiling heavens. As he was a kind of hermit,
from choice, and far removed from other settlers, whose assistance
is so necessary in new settlements, old Simpson was compelled to
resort to the most extraordinary contrivances while clearing his
land. Thus, after felling the trees, instead of chopping them into
lengths, for the purpose of facilitating the operation of piling
them preparatory to burning, which would have cost him too much
labour, he resorted to the practice of "niggering," as it is called;
which is simply laying light pieces of round timber across the
trunks of the trees, and setting fire to them at the point of
contact, by which means the trees are slowly burned through.
It was while busily engaged in this interesting operation that I
first became acquainted with the subject of this sketch.
Some twenty or thirty little fires were burning briskly in different
parts of the blackened field, and the old fellow was watching the
slow progress of his silent "niggers," and replacing them from time
to time as they smouldered away. After threading my way among the
uncouth logs, blazing and smoking in all directions, I encountered
the old man, attired in an old hood, or bonnet, of his wife Judy,
with his patched canvas trousers rolled up to his knees; one foot
bare, and the other furnished with an old boot, which from its
appearance had once belonged to some more aristocratic foot. His
person was long, straight, and sinewy, and there was a light
springiness and elasticity in his step which would have suited a
younger man, as he skipped along with a long handspike over his
shoulder. He was singing a stave from the "Enniskillen Dragoon"
when I came up with him.
"With his silver-mounted pistols, and his long carbine,
Long life to the brave Inniskillen dragoon."
His face would have been one of the most lugubrious imaginable, with
his long, tangled hair hanging confusedly over it, in a manner which
has been happily compared to a "bewitched haystack," had it not been
for a certain humorous twitch or convulsive movement, which affected
one side of his countenance, whenever any droll idea passed
through his mind. It was with a twitch of this kind, and a certain
indescribable twinkle of his somewhat melancholy eye, as he seemed
intuitively to form a hasty conception of the oddity of his
appearance to a stranger unused to the bush, that he welcomed me
to his clearing. He instantly threw down his handspike, and leaving
his "niggers" to finish their work at their leisure, insisted on our
going to his house to get something to drink.
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Words from 111517 to 112026
of 181664
