The
Winter's Hay Is Ribbed Over With Long Lines Of Snow Dust Blown Between
The Boards, And Far Below In The Byre The Oxen Clash Their Horns And
Moan Uneasily.
The next day is blue, breathless, and most utterly still.
The farmers
shovel a way to their beasts, bind with chains their large ploughshares
to their heaviest wood-sled and take of oxen as many as Allah has given
them. These they drive, and the dragging share makes a furrow in which a
horse can walk, and the oxen, by force of repeatedly going in up to
their bellies, presently find foothold. The finished road is a deep
double gutter between three-foot walls of snow, where, by custom, the
heavier vehicle has the right of way. The lighter man when he turns out
must drop waist-deep and haul his unwilling beast into the drift,
leaving Providence to steady the sleigh.
In the towns, where they choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns
to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to
work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain
makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are
faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and down, and create a sort of
mirage, till they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and then
you know how the moon must look to an inhabitant of it. At twilight,
again, the beaten-down ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on
the likeness of wet sand - some huge and melancholy beach at the world's
end - and when day meets night it is all goblin country.
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