Let us imagine ourselves on the top of this tower, and we shall have a
look-out worthy of the feast we are about to summon to our feet. Herefrom
we might discover the Great Northern road stretching far away into the
length and breadth of the land. Lo! as we look, a mighty herd of oxen,
with loud bellowing, are beheld approaching from the north. For miles and
miles the mass of horns is conspicuous winding along the road, ten
abreast, and even thus the last animal of the herd would be 72 miles away,
and the drover goading his shrinking flank considerably beyond
Peterborough. On the other side of the park, as the clouds of dust clear
away, we see the great Western road, as far as the eye can reach, thronged
with a bleating mass of wool, and the shepherd at the end of the flock
(ten abreast) and the dog that is worrying the last sheep are just leaving
the environs of Bristol, 121 miles from our beer-built pillar. Along
Piccadily, Regent-street, the Strand, Fleet-street, Cheapside, and the
eastward Mile-end road line, for 7-1/2 miles, street and causeway are
thronged with calves, still ten abreast; and in the great parallel
thoroughfares of Bayswater-road, Oxford-street, and Holborn, we see
nothing for nine long miles but a slowly-pacing, deeply-grunting herd of
swine. As we watch this moving mass approaching from all points of the
horizon, the air suddenly becomes dark--a black pall seems drawn over the
sky--it is the great flock of birds--game, poultry, and wild-fowl, that,
like Mrs. Bond's ducks, are come up to be killed: as they fly wing to wing
and tail to beak they form a square whose superficies is not much less
than the whole enclosed portion of St. James's Park, or 51 acres. No
sooner does this huge flight clear away than we behold the park at our
feet inundated with hares and rabbits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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