river in a rich country. England is a fertile country, and cultivated
almost from end to end. There are crops of grain--wheat, barley, and
oats, which, as you know, in the northern countries take the place of
rice--and there are also broad fields of green grass where the cattle
and sheep feed. Here is a view taken from the edge of the Cotswold
Hills, near the source of the Thames. It gives a good idea of an open
countryside in England. The land, as you see, is cut into fields by
hedgerows, which are long belts of green, growing bush planted for
the purpose of preventing the cattle and sheep in one field from
straying into the next, where they might damage the standing crops.
If you looked down upon such a country from a balloon, you would see
it divided into little oblongs and squares, all beautifully kept.
Many of them would be green with grass, but others would change in
colour with the season, showing ploughed soil in the winter, green
growing corn in the spring, and golden harvest in the autumn. But at
all times the bushy hedgerows would strike you most, for in other
countries men use fences of dead wood or of iron wire, but the green
hedges of England, often bright with flowers, are a sight never to
be forgotten. The roads traverse the country between two lines of
hedge almost all the way. Here is another scene in the same part of
England, and yet another, with the fields and hedges spreading away
to the horizon.
[Sidenote: 11. Landscape--Brook and Poplars.]
Next we come to a landscape such as you find beside the brooks which
wander sluggishly through the rich plain. Note the tall poplar trees
set against the shining western sky, for it is evening, and the man
and boy are going home after their work in the fields.
[Sidenote: 12. Scene in the Fens.]
There are parts of England which were once marsh, but have long been
drained and brought under tillage. In these the hedges are usually
wanting, for the ditches serve to divide the fields. The chief
district of this kind is known as the Fens. It is situated near the
East coast. Here we have a Fen scene, with a horizon like that of the
sea, so level is this old marsh land. Note the windmill for pumping
the water out of the lower ditches into the higher. The wind sweeps
freely over the great flat expanse.
[Sidenote: 13. Surrey Pine Wood.]
[Sidenote: 14. Knole Park.]
[Sidenote: 15. “The Monarch,” Cassiobury Park.]
You must remember that, although it very rarely rains as heavily
in England as in India, and there are no Monsoons, yet there is
rarely a season of so much as a few weeks in which it does not rain
a little. England is, therefore, a moist land on the whole. It must
once have been clothed with forest and marsh almost from end to
end; now, however, there are left only small patches of woodland,
and no marshes at all. Here is a typical scene in a pine wood in
a sandy district not far from London. Most of the woods are round
the parks or pleasure grounds of rich men. These parks are among
the most beautiful spots in England. You will remember that in the
last lecture we saw how that the public parks of London were perhaps
the most beautiful and characteristic things in the metropolis. If
you were to look down from almost any high hill upon a cultivated
English landscape with fields and hedges, you would probably notice
two or three large green spaces--larger than a good many fields put
together. These would arrest your attention because of their lack of
hedges and because of the trees scattered about them. Round their
borders you would see several plantations or patches of woodland. In
the centre of each would be the mansion of a rich man. The people of
the neighbourhood are generally allowed to go freely through these
parks, and to use them as playgrounds except, of course, close to
the house. Here we have a scene in Knole Park. One of the most
remarkable points about the parks of England is the fact that since
there is no undergrowth, and since the trees are felled and thinned
out, each tree grows to perfection, spreading out to its proper shape
in a way that we rarely see when trees are crowded together in a
forest. Some of these park trees grow to a magnificent size, and to a
great age. Here is one in Cassiobury Park, known as “The Monarch.”
[Sidenote: 16. A Garden.]
Immediately round the park-house of the great man you will find a
garden--a garden that is kept, every yard of it, with the greatest
care. The grass is beautifully green, and is cut short, so that it
becomes a natural carpet. The hedges are pruned, and grow so thick
that they become living walls through which you cannot see. To these
gardens are brought trees and plants from all parts of the world.
There are even tropical plants, but these must of course be grown
under cover of glass, which lets in the sun’s light and heat but
keeps out the cold. You remember the giant glass house of London,
which was spoken of in the last lecture as the Crystal Palace. In
the garden before us we see a tree known as the Araucaria, which is
brought from the cooler parts of South America, and will grow in the
gardens of England without glass shelter. Palms, however, will not
grow in England in the open air, though they are often exposed in the
gardens as special treasures during the summer.
Let us now look at some of the more exceptional scenes in the British
Isles, for the things which to you are least familiar--the great
green carpet of grass, the long lines of green hedgerow, the white
roads between twin hedges--all these things, which to you appear
strange, occur for so many miles in the country of England, that they
are common and hardly noticed by the people who live among them.
There are scenes in the British Isles, however, which even English
people go to look at, and in some parts these are so beautiful that
people of other countries travel far in order to see them. We will
begin with the coast districts along the East and South of England,
and then we will go to the two strips of mountainous country which I
pointed out to you just now on the map.
[Sidenote: 17. The Downs--The Devil’s Dyke.]
[Sidenote: 18. Dover Cliff.]
This is a scene on the Downs--long lines of hill made of the same
white chalk which is exposed in the cliffs of Dover. The chalk forms
treeless, hedgeless, breezy uplands with winding and branching
valleys. The hills between the valleys are rounded like great
shoulders, and are all overgrown with a thin grass, short like
velvet, upon which feed many small sheep. Here and there the white
chalk shows through, as it were a scar on the hillside, and the roads
are white lines running up and down hill. Here is a view on the edge
of the Down country, overlooking lower wooded ground. The valley
entering the hills to the right is very deeply cut and is known as
the Devil’s Dyke. At Dover, and at several other places on the coast,
the Downs come to a sudden end at the cliff brink, and you can see
layer upon layer of white chalk cut short by the waves rolling in
from the sea. To-day, in places like Dover, men have built walls
which stop the waves from breaking away more of the land.
[Sidenote: 19. Sea breaking at Lyme Regis.]
[Sidenote: 20. Cliff at Sidmouth.]
[Sidenote: 21. Beach at Exmouth.]
The people of England are very fond of the sea-coast and many of them
live there for a time each year for reasons of pleasure and health.
There is exhilaration in such scenes as this, where the waves break
against the stone piers which have been built out into the sea. Or
again, what could be more pleasant than to wander along such a coast
as this, and to note the evidence of the sea’s might in the broken
and caverned rocks? But children love sandy shores, where they may
dig with small spades and build castles of sand, which for a few
moments resist the waves of the incoming tide. The tides are large
along the British coasts, and in many parts broad shores of sand are
alternately covered by the water and uncovered.
[Sidenote: 22. Clovelly.]
[Sidenote: 23. Lynton--Road through Wood.]
[Sidenote: 24. Lynmouth Waterfall.]
[Sidenote: 25. Dartmoor.]
[Sidenote: 26. Land’s End--Longships Lighthouse.]
Now we come to the first of the two strips of mountainous country
which I have described to you on the map as occupying the West and
North of Britain. There is much rain in these districts, brought
by the west wind from the neighbouring ocean. Here is a little
village by the sea in the West Country. It is called Clovelly.
You see the houses of the fishermen running up the hillside, and
you see how the whole hill is covered with trees, because of the
moisture of the air. Let us drive into these woods by the roads
which have been constructed through them. This is a view at Lynton
in the same West Country as Clovelly. Here is yet another scene in
the district showing a waterfall in the wood. If we drive further
inland, up some valley, we emerge presently on to the high ground
above, where the violent winds and the torrents, fed by the rains,
prevent the growth of much wood, and give us naked landscapes such
as this upon Dartmoor. You notice here a characteristic of the hilly
parts of England; the green hedgerows are wanting, and the fields
are divided by stone walls--rough stone walls, without cement. But
even here there grows a low bush, called gorse, which bears many
small yellow flowers, and at times this bush covers entire hillsides
with a cloak of brilliant gold. Now we come to the rocky coast of
Cornwall, known expressively as the Land’s End. It is very different
from the tamer edge of the chalk country. See how the hard dark rocks
have been shattered by the mighty Atlantic waves, and see how the
dangers which they present to navigation are guarded against by the
Longships Lighthouse. Notice the ship going round the point beyond
the lighthouse. It is steering northward to go up the channel of sea
which divides the island of Great Britain from that of Ireland.
[Sidenote: 27. Snowdon.]
[Sidenote: 28. Welsh Bicknor--Cattle in River.]
[Sidenote: 29. The Wye.]
We will travel gradually northward through the inner strip of
mountainous country. We come first to the peninsular land of Wales,
where live the Welsh people, some of whom still speak the Welsh
language, though most of them can now talk English. Here is a view
from the island of Anglesea, across the Menai Strait to the barren
heights of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. In the foreground
are bridges over the narrow strait, the one for the railway, the
other for the road. The name Snowdon is derived from the fact that
the white snow which falls in the winter lies upon the summit longer
than upon the lesser heights around. But remember that in Wales
you are still in the middle strip of Britain, and deep down in the
valleys between the mountains there are rich, woodland scenes. Here
is a spot on the River Wye. It is a stream of pure water coming down
from the mountains, with a wood covering the hillside and cattle
cooling their feet in the water. Here is yet another scene on the
same river, where a gorge traverses the rocks, but the steep slope is
overgrown with trees because of the moisture.
Next we go northward from Wales into that part of the North of
England which is called the Lake District. In the northern, and also
in the more southern regions of the world--in parts of North America,
in parts of South America, and in New Zealand--there are countries
sown all over with the most beautiful lakes--lakes that are narrow
and long and deep, with rivers flowing into one end and out again
from the other end. These lakes are often in mountain valleys, and
if the slopes on either hand be wooded, they present some of the
most beautiful scenes in the world. Outside Britain such valley
lakes occur in Norway, in the west of North America, in the west of
South America, and in New Zealand. The Lake District of England
is a little knot of mountains, with deep valleys radiating from
the central peaks like the spokes of a wheel. Each of the valleys
contains a lake.
[Sidenote: 30. Ullswater.]
[Sidenote: 31. Lodore Falls.]
[Sidenote: 32. Bridge at Lodore.]
Here is a view of Ullswater, one of these lakes. Do you see the
combination of hill, and water, and green tree growth which together
make the picture? Here is another scene in the same Lake Country,
where the clear, fresh water from the hilltops comes leaping over the
little rocks through a tunnel of green leaves, with here and there
a gleam of the sunshine piercing through. And all the time there is
laughter, as the poets say, to be heard in the tumbling water. Yet
one more scene of the same kind from the same Lake Country.
[Sidenote: 33. Loch Lomond.]
Let us now go on to Scotland. In part it is a lake country like
the North of England, but on a rather larger scale. Here is Loch
Lomond, one of the most famous of the Scottish lakes. The word loch
is Scottish for lake. The Scottish people used in many parts to talk
a language of their own, but, like the Welsh, most of them now talk
English, and form, with the English, a single people, loyal to one
king.
[Sidenote: 34. Ben Venue.]
Here are a few more views in the same country. This is Ben Venue--the
word Ben in Scottish means “mount.” We note in this slide the same
combination of beautiful mountain forms, water, green foliage, little
islands with green trees upon them, and houses hidden away in the
nooks. It is a wild and yet a soft and inhabited country. It is loved
by the Scottish people, whose great writers have written tales and
poems about it. You know that it is the poetry and the songs and the
legends of a race which make a nation proud. Scotchmen working in
many a distant land, remember the time of their childhood when they
lived among these scenes, and far away they still read the books
which tell of them.
[Sidenote: 35. Killiecrankie.]
[Sidenote: 36. Loch Katrine.]
Here is the Pass of Killiecrankie, famous in history for a battle of
a hundred and sixty years ago--one of the last battles fought within
the British Isles. And here, lastly, is Loch Katrine, with a steamer
conveying tourists to enjoy the scenery. Loch Katrine is close to
the manufacturing district of Scotland, where is Glasgow, a city of
a million inhabitants. Now great cities have great wants, and one of
the wants--most costly to supply but essential to health--is pure
water. The water of Loch Katrine, deep and clear, gathered from the
mountains, is carried underground through a tunnel pierced by man
to supply the great city of Glasgow. Wherever you go in the British
Islands you will find within a few miles of one another the silent
beauties of Nature, and teeming, noisy homes of millions of people,
for the land is but a small one, and is crowded with inhabitants.
[Sidenote: 37. Giants’ Causeway.]
[Sidenote: 38. Basalt--near view.]
Let us now pass to the second strip of mountainous country--to the
bleak coast-land along the Atlantic edge of Ireland and Scotland;
and here let us first visit a district containing some of the chief
natural wonders of Britain. You know that in certain parts of the
world there are mountains called volcanoes, which have heat within
them, and throw up great clouds of steam, to be seen glowing in the
brilliant light for a great distance round. At times streams of hot
liquid rock flow from them, which may cover a whole countryside,
destroying vegetation, houses, and people. In Asia there are such
volcanoes, in Japan, in the Philippines, in Sumatra, and in Java,
but fortunately there are none in India. In the British Islands also
there are to-day no volcanoes, but before history began this region
had volcanoes on a magnificent scale. In the West Country beside the
ocean--in the north of Ireland and in the West of Scotland--there
once welled up from underneath immense quantities of flowing hot
stone, which hardened into thick beds of rock. While the stone was
cooling it usually cracked, as you may see the silt beside river
banks crack in hot sunshine along many lines crossing one another.
In the same manner, this liquid rock cracked as it cooled, and
because it was of very even consistence the cracks were regular in
their distribution. The result was that the rock was split into
columns standing side by side. Here, in the North of Ireland, is
such columnar rock. The place is known as the Giants’ Causeway, for
the people in the North of Ireland who lived centuries ago, and were
ignorant, wondered at this beautiful regular rock structure. The
tops of the columns are like a pavement, and the Irish said that the
pavement must have been made by giants. Therefore it was called the
Giants’ Causeway. But each slab, as we see in the next slide, is
the top of a column and is separated from its neighbouring columns
by the cracks which formed in the cooling rock as it solidified.
So we realise how much more wonderful is Nature than man in his
ignorance is apt to think. But we realise also how the poetry of
a race begins, and we understand the love with which Irishmen and
Scotchmen, scattered over the world, look back on the country of
their childhood, which is not only beautiful, but wrapped in the
legends told them by their nurses.
[Sidenote: 39. Staffa.]
[Sidenote: 40. Fingal’s Cave.]
This is the island of Staffa, where we see the same rough pavement
of column tops, and a wall of column sides. In places, where the
waves of the ocean beat fiercely upon the exposed parts, some of the
columns have been removed, so that the rock above has been undermined
and caves have been formed, which resemble, with their vaults above
and their chiselled walls on either hand, some great temple made by
man.
[Sidenote: 41. Killarney.]
[Sidenote: 42. Killarney, Old Weir Bridge.]
Now let us away to the far South-West of Ireland. There, hidden
in the midst of high mountains, are the Lakes of Killarney. This
is one of the most beautiful spots in all Britain, for the lakes
are sheltered, and though close to the ocean are wooded along
their shores. Here is a view at Killarney, across the lakes to the
mountains which neighbour them. Hanging round the heights are the
mists and clouds of the Atlantic. All this district is bathed in
moisture, and green the year round, but hardly ever free from cloud.
It is the combination of mountain, lake, wood, cloud, and sunshine
which gives an ever changing, always flickering, beauty to this part
of the ocean edge. Here is another scene at Killarney. The boat and
the men are waiting to take visitors down the stream.
[Sidenote: 43. In Connemara.]
[Sidenote: 44. Connemara--Lough Scene.]
Northward of Killarney, upon the edge of Ireland, is Connemara, a
region of wild, naked rock scenery, so wet and poor that over large
districts bog moss clings to the surface instead of grass. We see
here the torrents of rain water descending from the mist-bathed
mountains. This is another scene in the same country of Connemara
with a rare clump of trees, making still more evident the general
nakedness of the landscape. The beauty of it depends on the shapes of
the hills, and on the alternation of land and water.
[Sidenote: 45. Highland Scene--A Stag.]
[Sidenote: 46. Highland Scene--A Golden Eagle.]
And now we come to the grandest, most lonely scenery in the Western
Highlands of Scotland. Here on the heathery and grassy moors, which
spread for miles and miles over the mountain heights, are still to be
found some of the wild animals of Britain, which elsewhere have been
driven from the land by civilisation. This is a stag of the large
species known as the Red Deer. You see here the colouring of the
moors and the atmospheric effects which you must put for yourselves
into the black and white photographs that follow. But first we have
another colour photograph, a golden eagle beside her nest on the
crags.
[Sidenote: 47. Sligachan, Skye.]
[Sidenote: 48. Glen Sligachan, Skye.]
[Sidenote: 49. Loch Coruisk, Skye.]
Now we have two or three views in the Island of Skye. They are in
black and white, but your minds must clothe them in the rich tints
we saw just now. Note the treeless character of the scene. And see
here a mountain rising nakedly to the sky, without even the covering
of grass or heather. And again, in this same Island of Skye is Loch
Coruisk, one of the wildest and remotest spots in the United Kingdom.
From the head of the loch there is a walk of several miles over
a mountain pass before you reach the first habitation of man. So
curious is the contrast between the ocean edge of the British Islands
and the thickly populated plain of England. London is the largest
city in the world, but the Highlands of Scotland are among the least
populated regions of all Europe. Here, therefore, is the playground
of many of the British people, who go in the summer time to walk over
these mountains, to steam through these lochs, to catch the fish,
and to shoot the deer and the birds. So they gain the health which
enables them to work in London at the business of the Empire during
the dark winter.
[Sidenote: 50. Clett Rock, Thurso.]
[Sidenote: 51. Duncansby Head.]
Finally we come out to the ocean itself, and here we see the great
history of Nature. Layer upon layer, hundreds of layers thick, we
have the beds of rock which were once laid down at the bottom of the
sea. They are now dry and hard, and have been cut into by the waves,
so that this stack of rock, which was once a piece of Scotland, is
now detached as a little island. Here is yet another scene where the
rocks are of a different kind, and the shape of the islets therefore
different.
[Sidenote: 52. Atlantic Rollers.]
[Sidenote: 53. Sunset on the Atlantic.]
These are the rollers of the rough northern sea, which work upon the
hard stone. But occasionally even the Atlantic Ocean calms. As we
look out to the west on this lovely summer evening, let us remember
a fact never to be forgotten. The islands of Britain, which centre
in London, with all their natural beauty and their 43 millions of
people, are what they are, the focus of a great Empire, partly
because they are set as islands in the ocean, and partly because they
were peopled long ago by proud and masterful sea races of men.
LECTURE IV.
HISTORIC CENTRES AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON NATIONAL LIFE.
[Sidenote: 1. Stonehenge.]
The English did not always live in the British Islands. They came,
long centuries ago, across the sea from the mainland of Europe.
Before them there lived in the islands peoples of whom we know
but little. Some of these early peoples have, however, left to us
monuments, which have been preserved in the more lonely parts of
the country. They were apparently temples, built with great stones,
such as we see here at Stonehenge. Of the language of the people who
built them we know nothing--of their arts of life we know little. We
believe that they were barbarous tribes who offered human sacrifices;
but at least they must have had some command over machinery, or they
never could have raised such stones as these, which are more than
twice as high as a man.
[Sidenote: 2. The Roman Wall.]
After these people there came others, and yet others, and at last a
very powerful and highly civilised people, the Romans, who conquered
nearly all the Western world. They conquered England, but never
Ireland or Northern Scotland. The Romans have left monuments in
various parts of the country, of which the most remarkable is this
wall across the island. They did not care to invade those rugged
regions of the North, filled with mountains and great moorlands,
which we saw in the pictures of the last Lecture. In Scotland there
continued, therefore, to dwell the wild peoples who inhabited all the
island before the coming of the Romans. The mountaineers were kept
out of the South by a stone wall, built right across the island, the
remains of which are still for the most part standing to-day. The
Roman wall shows you something of the strength of the Roman people,
to whom the islands of Britain owed their first civilisation.
[Sidenote: 3. Roman Bath at Bath.]
Here is another evidence of the Roman epoch in Britain. It is the
ruin of a Roman bath in the town which is now called Bath. The houses
around are, of course, modern. Hot water rises at Bath from great
depths, and is used for medicinal purposes. The springs were known
to the Romans, and for that reason they built a Roman city here.
All the upper portion of the building is, as you see, gone, but
there remains the bath itself, with the steps leading down to it,
and the bases of the columns which formerly supported a covered way
around. The Romans came from the South--from the Mediterranean--and
experienced a climatic difficulty in Britain, just as white men
to-day experience one in the tropics. But white men have difficulty
in tropical climates because of the heat; the Romans had difficulty
in the northern countries because of the cold; and therefore it was
that they valued the warm water of the baths at Bath.