'
And that may be said to have concluded our whole active intercourse
for the first day.
I had the more occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate
nature of that country, through which the drove road continued,
hour after hour and even day after day, to wind. A continual
succession of insignificant shaggy hills, divided by the course of
ten thousand brooks, through which we had to wade, or by the side
of which we encamped at night; infinite perspectives of heather,
infinite quantities of moorfowl; here and there, by a stream side,
small and pretty clumps of willows or the silver birch; here and
there, the ruins of ancient and inconsiderable fortresses--made the
unchanging characters of the scene. Occasionally, but only in the
distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small town or of an
isolated farmhouse or cottage on the moors; more often, a flock of
sheep and its attendant shepherd, or a rude field of agriculture
perhaps not yet harvested. With these alleviations, we might
almost be said to pass through an unbroken desert--sure, one of the
most impoverished in Europe; and when I recalled to mind that we
were yet but a few leagues from the chief city (where the law
courts sat every day with a press of business, soldiers garrisoned
the castle, and men of admitted parts were carrying on the practice
of letters and the investigations of science), it gave me a
singular view of that poor, barren, and yet illustrious country
through which I travelled.
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