a mightier race of vegetables. The quantity of mere underwood, and the number of huge black stumps rising in every direction a foot or two from the soil, bear witness to the existence of fine forest timber. The few cottages and farm-houses which we passed reminded me of similar dwellings in France and Ireland; yet the peasantry here have not the same excuse for disorder and dilapidation as either the Irish or French. The farms had the same desolate, untidy, untended look: the gates broken, the fences carelessly put up, or ill repaired; the farming-utensils sluttishly scattered about a littered yard, where the pigs seemed to preside by undisputed right; house-windows broken, and stuffed with paper or clothes; dishevelled women, and barefooted anomalous-looking human young things; none of the stirring life and activity which such places present in England and Scotland; above all, none of the enchanting mixture of neatness, order, and rustic elegance and comfort, which render so picturesque the surroundings of a farm, and the various belongings of agricultural labour in my own dear country.[30] The fences struck me as peculiar; I never saw any such in England. They are made of rails of wood placed horizontally, and meeting at obtuse angles, so forming a zig-zag wall of wood, which runs over the country like the herring-bone seams of a flannel petticoat. At each of the angles two slanting stakes, considerably higher than the rest of the fence, were driven into the ground, crossing each other at the top, so as to secure the horizontal rails in their position.[31]