. The land of heather . m to soften much the loneli-ness of the spot with the great heather hills gloom-ing all about. The farmer had finished cutting peathere only the day before, and where the dark bankshad been laid bare, I could see that the bog wasfull of large roots and pieces of tree trunks — plainly itmust once have been wooded. Good-sized oaks arefound in some bogs, black with the peat stain to theirhearts. The wood is perfectly sound, but it cracksbadly when exposed to the air, and is not of much useexcept for fence posts, though in small pieces, carvedand polished, it has value in t
. The land of heather . m to soften much the loneli-ness of the spot with the great heather hills gloom-ing all about. The farmer had finished cutting peathere only the day before, and where the dark bankshad been laid bare, I could see that the bog wasfull of large roots and pieces of tree trunks — plainly itmust once have been wooded. Good-sized oaks arefound in some bogs, black with the peat stain to theirhearts. The wood is perfectly sound, but it cracksbadly when exposed to the air, and is not of much useexcept for fence posts, though in small pieces, carvedand polished, it has value in the form of ornaments. The region around Glen Clova is good huntingground, and the Laird let it for the winter shooting ofgrouse to a London gentleman at XS^^ ^ season. Thissum was sufficient to make every brace of grouse theLondoner shot cost him a guinea. Back on the hillswas a deer forest that covered many square winter previous had been very cold and snowy,and the wild creatures had a hard time of it. The. A Highland Glen 145 grouse came In hundreds down to the roadway in theglen, and they would light in flocks on the stacks inthe stackyards. The partridges and the crows werevery famiHar, too. Rabbits and hares would comeclose to the houses, and in the morning, after a snow,the dooryards would be padded all over with their foot-marks. The deer descended from their native upland,and the farm folk would see them stringing along atthe foot of the brae in the pastures. The farmers didnot care to have them get into their turnip fields, andthey would go out with their guns and frighten themback to the high moors. The creatures were neardeid wi starvation, or they would not have venturedinto the valley at all. Mr. Fearn killed a dozen ofthem and salted down their meat. The schoolmastershot one right at the corner of the schoolyard, and forseveral nights he slept with his gun on his bed, readyfor another. The deer spoiled a young planting ofseven hundred acres of spruce,
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1904
