Since Then, However, On Reflection, It Seems To Me Perfectly
Natural.
He was illiterate; he had never read of astronomy; to him it was
really like a sudden peep into another world, for the instrument was
exceptionally powerful, and the view of the sunlight on the peaks and the
shadows in the valleys must have been extraordinary to him.
There was
nothing to laugh at; the incident shows what a great and wonderful thing
it is that rocks and mountains should be whirled along over our heads.
The idea has become familiarised to us by reading, but the fact is none
the less marvellous. This man saw the fact first, before he had the idea,
and he had sufficient imagination to realise it. At the village post
office they ask for 'Letterhead, please, sir,' instead of a stamp, for it
is characteristic of the cottager that whatever words he uses must be
different from those employed by other people. Stamp is as familiar to
him as to you, yet he prefers to say 'letterhead' - because he does. There
are many curious old houses, some of them timbered, still standing in
these parts. The immense hearths which were once necessary for burning
wood are now occupied with 'duck's-nest' grates, so called from the bars
forming a sort of nest. In one of the hamlets the women touched their
hats to us.
Not far from the hop-kiln I found a place where charcoal-burning was
carried on. The brown charcoal-burner, upright as a bolt, walked slowly
round the smouldering heap, and wherever flame seemed inclined to break
out cast damp ashes upon the spot. Six or seven water-butts stood in a
row for his use. To windward he had built a fence of flakes, or wattles
as they are called here, well worked in with brushwood, to break the
force of the draught along the hill-side, which would have caused too
fierce a fire. At one side stood his hut of poles meeting in a cone,
wrapped round with rough canvas. Besides his rake and shovel and a short
ladder, he showed me a tool like an immense gridiron, bent half double,
and fitted to a handle in the same way as a spade. This was for sifting
charcoal when burned, and separating the small from the larger pieces.
Every now and then a puff of smoke rose from the heap and drifted along;
it has a peculiar odour, a dense, thick smell of smothered wood coal, to
me not disagreeable, but to some people so annoying that they have been
known to leave their houses and abandon a locality where charcoal-burning
was practised. Dim memories of old days come crowding round me, invisible
to him, to me visible and alive, of the kings, great hunters, who met
with the charcoal-burners in the vast forests of mediaeval days, of the
noble knights and dames whom the rude charcoal-burners guided to their
castles through trackless wastes, and all the romance of old.
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