I Thought It One Of The Loveliest Stories I Had Ever Heard;
There Is No Hardness Comparable To That Of The Sportsman, Yet
Here Was One, A Very Monarch Among Them, Who Turned Sick At
His Own Barbarity And Repented.
Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a
breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the
seven wonders of Britain.
And thanks to this great bank, a
screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles
eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain
inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday
resorts or towns of lodging-houses.
Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous
swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard
so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for
me. The only thing about it which specially attracted my
attention was seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my
head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. I
watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot
above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight.
Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which
appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other
places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some
do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in
waters far from home, to return no more.
The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is
very attractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out
of sight of the ocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its
"accents disconsolate." The cottages are seen ranged in a
double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession
of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body.
One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages are
old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with
its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the
memorials of antiquity - the chantry on the hill, standing
conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey
barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned
with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once
parts of a great religious house.
Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is
impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road
that winds over its green slope. One sometimes sees on a
hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance
might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium.
Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth
are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of
the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very
nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and
looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth,
and the sight was strangely pleasing. These two complementary
colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus - a
little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the
red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see
this in flowers - in the red geranium, for example - where there
is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I
sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our
most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the
meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall
translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in
early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in
our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch
of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms
scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight,
and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among
the flowers to feast on the sight.
Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing
amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be
the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given
that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most
others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and
dull-coloured clays in this connection!
The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a
good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to
burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless
irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The
wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen
against a green background, are those which bear the reddest
fur - fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few
miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch
cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying
down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving
about and cropping the long flowery grasses. All were of that
fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon
cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals
in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of
a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red
chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look
in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my
eyes on the sight.
No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of
that road winding over the hill above the village. On going
to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because
it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron,
its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple
or violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres of
this earth all round the place - earth so rich in iron that
many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that
every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury
to allow this rich mine to be worked.
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