Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880 — John Shaqi
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Up the sandy hill we go, and out on the wide moors, covered with soft
brown heather, which stretch away with hardly a break twenty miles south
and east to Aldershot Camp or Windsor Forest. On the brow of the hill
grows a mighty bush of furze which always goes by the name of "Miss
Bremer's furze-bush." When the dainty Swedish novelist once came to
gladden Eversley Rectory with her presence she told how she longed to
see the plant before which Linnaeus had fallen on his knees; and she
walked up this selfsame hill and with eyes full of tears gazed on the
prickly shrub with its mist of golden-colored, apricot-scented flowers.
The old Hampshire proverb says, "When furze is out of flower kissing is
out of fashion;" and, sure enough, there is not a month in the year in
which you may not find a blossom or two among the green spines.
Now we cross a green road, the Welsh Ride, which in the autumn is
covered with thousands of cattle making their way in great herds from
the Welsh mountains and Devonshire pastures to the winter fairs round
London. The drovers used to boast that they could bring their beasts all
the way from Wales without once going off turf or through a turnpike.
Now, alas! crowded cattle-trucks on the railway are fast superseding the
old-fashioned, wholesome way of travelling, and we seldom have the
autumnal air filled with the lowing of the herds, the barking of the
attendant dogs and the shouts of the drovers on their sturdy Welsh
ponies. But to-day the Welsh Ride looks gay enough, for it is dotted
with little knots of horsemen in black or red coats using it as a short
cut from Aldershot and Sandhurst. We turn off the moor into the shadow
of the fir avenue that leads half a mile up to the park-gates. The
ground, covered with a soft carpet of pine-needles and burrowed
everywhere by the roots of the trees, gives off a hollow echo to the
horses' clattering hoofs. The sombre avenue is alive in unwonted fashion
to-day. Now we pass a group of pedestrians from the village; now a young
farmer comes by on a half-broken colt which is to make its first
acquaintance with the hounds; then a break with a big party from a
country-house in Miss Mitford's village passes us with a gay greeting as
it rattles on. A tiny nutshell of a pony-carriage full of babies comes
trotting along, and its driver, poor Sheldon Williams, will make notes
of the scene and put them into one of his clever hunting-pictures,
little dreaming of the day when his early death will leave those babies
penniless. Now a group of the redcoats we saw on the Welsh Ride
overtakes us, and Sintram plunges and dances as a wild little
thorough-bred comes up to our side. His master, who has already gained
his Victoria Cross twice--first as a little lad in the trenches at
Sevastopol, and again for desperate deeds of valor in the Indian
mutiny--is to win yet further glory in 1879 at the head of the "flying
column" in Zululand--Evelyn Wood, the most gallant and humane of all
that gallant band.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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