Here And There Women Were Busy Piling The Square
Pieces Of Peat In Stacks, That They Might Dry In The Wind.
"We carry home
these pits in a basket on our showlders, when they are dry," said one of
them to me; but those who can afford to keep a pony, make him do this work
for them.
In the hollows of this part of the island we saw several
fresh-water ponds, which were enlarged with dykes and made to turn grist
mills. We peeped into one or two of these mills, little stone buildings,
in which we could hardly stand upright, inclosing two small stones turned
by a perpendicular shaft, in which are half a dozen cogs; the paddles are
fixed below, and there struck by the water, turn the upper stone.
A steep descent brought us to the little strait, bordered with rocks,
which divides Brassey from the island called the Noss. A strong south wind
was driving in the billows from the sea with noise and foam, but they were
broken and checked by a bar of rocks in the middle of the strait, and we
crossed to the north of it in smooth water. The ferryman told us that when
the wind was northerly he crossed to the south of the bar. As we climbed
the hill of the Noss the mist began to drift thinly around us from the
sea, and flocks of sea-birds rose screaming from the ground at our
approach. At length we stood upon the brink of a precipice of fearful
height, from which we had a full view of the still higher precipices of
the neighboring summit, A wall of rock was before us six hundred feet in
height, descending almost perpendicularly to the sea, which roared and
foamed at its base among huge masses of rock, and plunged into great
caverns, hollowed out by the beating of the surges for centuries. Midway
on the rock, and above the reach of the spray, were thousands of
sea-birds, sitting in ranks on the numerous shelves, or alighting, or
taking wing, and screaming as they flew. A cloud of them were constantly
in the air in front of the rock and over our heads. Here they make their
nests and rear their young, but not entirely safe from the pursuit of the
Zetlander, who causes himself to be let down by a rope from the summit and
plunders their nests. The face of the rock, above the portion which is the
haunt of the birds, was fairly tapestried with herbage and flowers which
the perpetual moisture of the atmosphere keeps always fresh - daisies
nodding in the wind, and the crimson phlox, seeming to set the cliffs on
flame; yellow buttercups, and a variety of other plants in bloom, of which
I do not know the name.
Magnificent as this spectacle was, we were not satisfied without climbing
to the summit. As we passed upward, we saw where the rabbits had made
their burrows in the elastic peat-like soil close to the very edge of the
precipice.
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