Wild Life in a Southern County. Richard Jefferies
immediately. Placing a small pebble across the track on another occasion caused almost the same amount of interference with the traffic. Near the hole into which the ants plunged under the border, and on the edge of the bank, so to say, the path they had worn was not visible—the ground was hard and did not take impression; and there, losing the guidance of the groove, they often made mistakes. Instead of hitting the right hole, many of them missed it and entered other holes left by boring worms, and after a short time reappeared to search again, till, finding the cavern, they hastily plunged into it. This was particularly the case when a solitary insect came along. Therefore it would seem that the ant works its way tentatively, and, observing where it fails, tries another place and succeeds.
Chapter Two.
A Drought—Ancient Garrison of the Entrenchment—Traditions of Forest—Curious Ponds—A Mirage.
Once now and then in the cycle of the years there comes a summer which to the hills is almost like a fever to the blood, wasting and drying up with its heat the green things upon which animal life depends, so that drought and famine go hand in hand. The days go by and grow to weeks, the weeks lengthen to months, and still no rain. The sun pours down his burning rays, which become hotter as the season advances; the sky is blue and beautiful over the hills—beautiful, but pitiless to the bleating flocks beneath. The breeze comes up from the south, bringing with it white clouds sailing at an immense height, with openings between like azure lakes or aerial Mediterraneans landlocked by banks of vapour.
These, if you watch them from the rampart, slowly dissolve; fragments break away from the mass as the edges of the polar glaciers slip off the ice-cliff into the sea, only these are noiseless. The fragment detached grows visibly thinner and more translucent, its margin stretching out in an uneven fringe: the process is almost exactly like the unravelling of a spotless garment, the threads wavering and twisting as they are carried along by the current, diminishing till they fade and are lost in the ocean of blue. This breaking of the clouds is commonly seen in weather that promises to be fine. From the brow here, you may note a solitary cloud just risen above the horizon; it floats slowly towards us; presently it divides into several parts; these, again, fall away in jagged, irregular pieces like flecks of foam. By the time it has reached the zenith these flecks have lengthened out, and shortly afterwards the cloud has entirely melted and is gone. The delicate hue, the contrast of the fleecy white with the deepest azure, the ever-changing form, the light shining through the gauzy texture, the gentle dreamy motion, lend these clouds an exquisite beauty.
After a while the faint breeze increases, but changes in character; it blows steadily, and the ‘sish sish’ of the bennets as it rushes through them becomes incessant. A sense of oppression weighs on the chest—in the midst of the wind, on the verge of the hill, you sigh for a breath of air. This is not air: it is simply heat in motion. It is like the simoom of the desert—producing a feeling of intense weariness. Previously the distant ridges of the downs were shaded by a dim haze hovering over them, toning the rolling curves and softening the bolder bluffs. Now they become distinct; each line is drawn clearly and stands out; the definition is like that which occurs before rain, only without the illusion of nearness.
But the hot wind blows and the rain does not come: the sky is open and free from clouds, less blue perhaps, but harder in tint. The nights are bright and clear and warm; you may sit here on the turf till midnight and find no dew, and still feel the languid, enervating influence of the hot blast. This goes in time, and is succeeded by heavy morning mists hanging like a cloak over the hills and filling up the hollows. They roll away as the day advances, and there is the sun bright as ever in the midst of the cloudless sky. The shepherds say the mists carry away the rain; certainly it does not come.
Every now and then promising signs exhibit themselves. A black bank of vapour receives the setting sun, and in the east huge mountainous clouds with beetling precipices and caverns, in which surely the thunder lurks, swell and roll upwards in the hush of the evening. The farmer unrolls his canvas over the new-made hayrick, which is not yet thatched, thinking that a torrent will descend in the night; but no, the morrow is the same. It is a peculiarity of our usually changeable climate that when once the weather has become thoroughly settled either to dry or wet, no signs of alteration are of any value, true as they may be at other times.
So the heat continues and the drought increases. The ‘land-springs’ breaking out by the sides of the fields have long since disappeared; the true springs run feebly as the stores of water in the interior of the earth gradually grow less. Great cracks open in the clay of the meadows down below in the vale—rifts, wide and deep, into which you may thrust your walking-stick to the handle. Up here on the hills the turf grows hard and inelastic; it loses that ‘springy’ feel under the foot which makes it so pleasant to walk upon. The grass becomes dull in tint and touches like wire—all the sap dried from it, and nothing but fibre left. Beneath the chalk is moistureless, and nothing can grow on it. The byroads and paths made with the chalk or ‘rubble’ glare in the sunlight, and the flints scattered so thickly about the ploughed fields seem to radiate heat. All things that should look green are brown and dusty; even the leaves on the elms seem dusty. The wheat only flourishes, tall and strong—deep tinted yellow here, a ruddy, golden bronze yonder, with ears full and heavy, rich and glorious to gaze upon. Insects multiply and replenish the earth after their fashion exceedingly; the spiders are busy as may be, not only those that watch from their webs lying in wait, but those that chase their prey through the grass as dogs do game.
But under the beautiful sky and the glorious sun there rises up a pitiful cry the livelong day: it is the quavering bleat of the sheep as their strength slowly ebbs out of them for the lack of food. Green crops and roots fail, the aftermath in the meadows beneath will not grow, week after week ‘keep’ becomes scarcer and more expensive, and there is, in fact, a famine. Of all animals a starved sheep is the most wretched to contemplate, not only because of the angularity of outline, and the cavernous depressions where fat and flesh should be, but because the associations of many generations have given the sheep a peculiar claim upon humanity. They hang entirely on human help. They watch for the shepherd as though he were their father; and when he comes he can do no good, so that there is no more painful spectacle than a fold during a drought upon the hills.
Once upon a time, passing on foot for a distance of some twenty-five miles across these hills and grassy uplands, I could not help comparing the scene to what travellers tell us of desert lands and foreign famines. The whole of that long summer’s day, as I hastened southwards, eager for the beach and the scent of the sea, I passed flocks of dying sheep: in the hollows by the way their skeletons were here and there to be seen, the gaunt ribs protruding upwards in the horrible manner that the ribs of dead creatures do. Crowds of flies buzzed in the air. Upon the hurdles perched the crow, bold with over-feasting, and hardly turning to look at me, waiting there till the next lamb should fall and the ‘spirit of the beast go downwards.’ Happy England, that experiences these things so seldom, and even then so locally that barely one in ten hears of or sees them!
The cattle of course suffer too; all day long files of water-carts go down into the hollows where the springs burst forth, and at such times half the work of the farm consists in fetching the precious liquid perhaps a mile or more. Even in ordinary summers there is often a difficulty of this kind; and there are some farmhouses whose water for household uses has to be brought fully half a mile. Of recent years more wells have been sunk, but there are still too few for the purpose. The effect of water in determining the settlements of human beings is clearly shown here. You may walk mile after mile on the ridges and pass nothing but a shed; the houses are in the hollows, the ‘coombes’ or ‘bottoms,’ as they are called, where the springs run. The villages on the downs are generally on a ‘bourne,’ or winter watercourse.
In summer it is a broad winding trench with low green banks, along whose bed you may stroll dry-shod, with the yellow corn on either hand reaching above your head. A few sedges here and there, and that peculiar whitened appearance left when water has passed over vegetation, betoken that once there was a stream. It is like the watercourses