much more than he had ever expected to possess again,—a family property.
“Look at father,” whispered Ellen to her brother. “I have not seen him and her arm-in-arm since I was no bigger than Susan.”
“He is like a prisoner that has been quite shut up coming for the first time into the gaol court,” said Frank. “The feel of the air makes him push his hat up from over his eyes. Only set him quite free, and he will uncover his brows, and lift up his head like a man.”
“And so he ought,” replied Ellen, “since it is for no fault of his own that he has been bound down to poverty.”
“Ah! poverty is a cold and dreary prison, Ellen. That puts me in mind,—have you seen, I wonder, any thing that has surprised you very much lately,—any thing that you would like to tell me if you were sure of not being overheard, or of not being thought fanciful?”
“The word ‘prison’ put me in mind of something that I have been wanting to talk to you about almost this month past.—I don’t know how to believe my own eyes about it, but I am sure I have seen Jerry in our farm-yard at night, and lurking about among the sheds before most of our folks are stirring in the morning.”
“Aye; but was he all alone, Ellen?”
“Bob was never with him, that I could see; but he seemed to me to be waiting for somebody off our premises, and I thought it must naturally be me. So twice I ran out to catch him; but once I was crossed by two of our people that I don’t choose to come in the way of; and the other time he was whispering with the same two, so that I dared not go near. How could he get liberty? and what could he be about?”
“Something very deep, I am afraid,” replied her brother. “As to the liberty,—it is no difficult matter for convicts who behave pretty regularly to get hours of liberty at the beginning and end of the day; and the lads being employed on roadmaking so near, accounts for our getting a glimpse of them sometimes. But what I am uneasy about is Jerry’s having so much to say to the convicts at your place and mine;—for I have seen him at Stapleton’s oftener than you have among your people. I am afraid of some plot——” “That is more than I can say. Sometimes they plot, I hear, for nothing worse than to escape; but some have had to do with the natives, (who are little better than wild beasts), and have brought them down upon the farms, setting them to steal and even to murder; for which they pay the poor savage creatures by helping themselves with their wives.”
Ellen trembled while she asked whether any of the natives could be in the neighbourhood.—Her brother hoped not, as the government had declared that they were driven back among the mountains, where they must soon die out as their wild cattle had done: but as long as any convicts were disposed to bush-ranging,—and some did actually escape every year,—he could not, for his part, feel quite secure. He thought he should speak to Stapleton about it. Meanwhile, he desired Ellen to drop not a syllable that should alarm her father, or anybody else.
“I hope, sister,” he continued with some hesitation, “I hope Harry Moore has no acquaintance, more or less, with Jerry, or any other such people.”
Ellen’s eyes flashed as they used to do when she was a passionate little girl at school.
“Harry!” she cried. “Harry Moore have any sneaking doings! Harry Moore keep bad company! You don’t know Harry a bit better than the very first day,—the day when you thought he might be a convict himself.”
“No need to be angry, Ellen. He might just know him enough, you see, to say ‘How d’ye do?’ when they meet, and to judge how often Jerry might fairly be here.”
“After all,” said Ellen, sighing, “it is my father’s own son that I flew off about his being acquainted with; so there is no need for me to be so proud. No; Harry does not know either of the lads, even by sight; but I shall tell him what you have been saying, though nobody else, Frank.”
“Certainly. Conceal nothing that weighs upon your mind from Harry, any more than if he was your husband already. I look to him to help me to keep an eye upon Bob, who may be made something of, they say, little hope as there is for Jerry. Bob works within bounds at spare hours, instead of roving into the bush, or prowling about the settlers’ farms, where he has no business. Bob must be saving money fast, unless he has unseen ways of spending it. He works hard, and is well paid for his extra labour. He may have the advantage of me, after all; and settle on a place of his own before me.”
“Because he got a free passage as a punishment. That is really very hard, Frank.”
“Harry Moore will be the first at liberty, however, Ellen; and that I am glad of on your account. I am soon to begin building you a house, at over hours; and you may depend on my doing my best to have it all complete by the time the six months are gone.”
“Six months!” cried Ellen.
“Why, I do not mean that you need wait till then. You may fairly marry as soon as you like;—and many in our own country would be glad to have that said to them. I only mentioned six months as the time when Harry would be all his own master. Then I shall hope to see you milking a cow of your own.—Meantime, till I have found out more about Jerry, be cautious how you get out of reach of those that will take care of you.”
Ellen sighed, and smiled, and wondered which was the strangest world,—the one she had left behind, or the new one which seemed, after several months, nearly as foreign as when she had entered it. She had no doubt which was the pleasantest. How could she, when a vague fear and thorough dislike of some of the people in the neighbourhood were the only set-off against the prosperity of all whom she loved, and her own bright prospects with such a husband as Harry Moore had promised to be?
-------------- CHAPTER VI.
LAW AND JUSTICE.
Though convicts were unhappily supplied at an increasing rate from the mother-country, the demand for free labourers throughout Van Diemen’s Land became more urgent continually. The young men who settled either as wool-growers, farmers, or labourers, wanted wives. All above the lowest rank needed servants. The sheep were too many for the shepherds. There was too little produce in proportion to the land; and too few dwellings in proportion to the produce; too much or too little of almost everything, for want of a due proportion of labour. The same thing is the case at home; only here the proportions are exactly reversed. It will be very strange if in a short time we do not rectify the condition of each country by the exchange which would be equally beneficial to both.
Ireland and Van Diemen’s Land are islands of about the same size. They are each favoured by nature in an unusual degree, having all the requisites of fertility, variety and beauty which can fit them to be the abodes of a thriving and happy population. The arable lands and pastures of both are excellent. The one has fisheries of salmon, herring and cod; the other of whales, and seals for export, and of a large variety of fish for home consumption. Both have fine natural harbours, ridges of protecting mountains, stores of mineral treasure, inland lakes, and fresh springs wherever man may incline to fix his abode. Both have, with all these advantages, their natural hardships and social troubles.
The natural hardships of each might be almost entirely removed by a well-conducted reciprocity of assistance. Ireland has a population of eight million; Van Diemen’s Land of only twenty-five thousand. In Ireland, multitudes of half-starved wretches pine in idleness, and many die by the way-side, of that wasting of limb and heart and life which is the form in which poverty perpetrates murder. In Van Diemen’s Land, the labourer is liable to be worn out by toil, and fretted by seeing half his produce rotting on the ground, or wastefully bestowed on swine; while articles which he has always considered almost as necessary as food cannot by any means be procured. With him, abundance is not wealth, and plenty brings not the happiness for which he looked. If the wide sea did not lie between, he would beckon to a dozen Irishmen to come and nourish themselves with his superfluity, while he gathers about him the comforts which spring out of their industry, and solaces himself with a due portion of that repose, without a certain share of which the best ends of life cannot be attained. Why should not a bridge be built across this wide sea with the capital which is now unproductively expended on the maintenance of these paupers? Why should not the charity which _cannot_ in Ireland give subsistence to one without taking it from another, be employed in a way which gives support to many, to the benefit of many more? Whatever funds are judiciously employed on emigration are used as if to bring to a junction with the over-peopled country a rich region, into which a hungry multitude may be poured, to the relief of the old, and the great advantage of the new land. If the wealthy among the inhabitants of the old country would gladly if they could, call up such a new region, drest in fertility, from the surrounding sea, why do they delay effecting what is to their purpose the same thing? Since they cannot move the land to their poor, why do they not agree to devote what they now give in baneful charity to removing their poor to the new land? Till such a general agreement is arrived at, why do not individuals thus apply their charity, knowing that thus they not only relieve for a time, but establish for life;—that they not only assist the immediate objects of their bounty, but provide for their descendants of many generations? The rich should choose for their almoners the agents of emigration. Those who have little to give should unite their resources to send abroad a few of the young labourers of both sexes who are eager to go. Those who have no money to give, should bestow their services in spreading the knowledge of the facts how poor-laws aggravate, and emigration alleviates, if it does not remove, pauperism.
If this had been done long ago, the places whither we now transport our criminals might at present have been as remarkable for the good moral condition of their inhabitants as they actually are for the reverse. If it were now to be done effectually, it is yet possible that Botany Bay may in time outgrow the odium attached to its name, and become the chosen resort of the upright and industrious. Indigence causes crime; and by the prevention of indigence and its consequent crime, we may become better able than we now fancy ourselves to dispense with the institution of penal settlements;—whose results are as disgraceful to British wisdom as that of a legal pauper provision.
When Jerry and Bob were landed at Launceston, they were as unable as those who sent them were disinclined, to reflect on the difference between their being sent there, innocent, to provide an honest livelihood for themselves, and being deposited as a curse upon this new region,—both guilty and one hardened, proscribed by the old country and dreaded by the new, and prepared to baffle all the professed objects of their punishment. The guilt of these lads was distinctly referrible to indigence. Their parents could give them little wherewith to provide for their bodies, and nothing of that care and instruction which were peculiarly needful to them in their circumstances of temptation. Being thus made outcasts, they acted as outcasts; from which time it became a struggle between themselves and society which could inflict the most misery upon the other. They put society in fear, violated its rights, mocked its institutions, and helped to corrupt its yet innocent members.
Society inflicted on them disgrace, bondage, and banishment; and from all this misery no good resulted, however much was proposed.
The judge who pronounced sentence on Jerry and Bob told them that it was necessary to the security of society that they should be prevented from inflicting any further injury by their evil deeds.—There are two ways by which such prevention may be accomplished; one by the death, the other by the reformation, of the offender. Death was too severe a punishment for the offence of these lads; the judge must therefore have contemplated their reformation, or have thought only of England when he spoke of society. Did the law gain its object?
“I say, Bob,” said Jerry one evening, when they had got the leave it is so easy to obtain to go out of bounds, and work for themselves over-hours,—“I say, do you remember what that fellow in Newgate read us about that cursed gaol where the people are mewed up as close as if they were in a school, and closer?”
“What that where they are shut in by themselves all night, and hard worked all day, and nobody may speak but the parson, and he praying and preaching night and morning, till a fellow’s spirit is downright broken?
Remember it! aye; and glad enough I have been many a time that we are not there. I’d rather be hanged twice over.”
“Hanged! Yes: there’s not much in hanging. I have seen it several times, and thought to myself, ‘if that’s all, I should not mind it.’ But we are the best off, after all. I was horribly afraid, when old wiggy began to whimper, that it was to be the hulks, or a long prison, instead of going abroad; for one never knows what they mean when they say ‘transportation.’ You would not have looked so downcast as you did if you had known what was before you.“ “Not I. I never thought to be made of so much consequence. ’Tis good fun to see them quarrel which shall have us, and to get them to bid rum and brandy against each other to seduce us away. We that could not get dry bread at home,—how easy it is for us to fill our stomachs with the choice of the land, and get drunk with our masters at the end of the day,—our masters being luckily of our own sort!”
“Yours, that is, Bob; not mine. But I don’t know but I like mine as well. He gives me plenty of spare hours, on condition of my bringing back what I earn. You should have seen what a fright he looked in when somebody said the folks were growing moral at home, and no more convicts were to be sent out.”
“He was as sorry as some honester folks would be glad, Jerry. But as for dividing your earnings with your master,—they are a queer sort of “Easily got enough. ’Tis only just prowling on the downs in a dark night to meet a stray sheep; or making a venture into the fold. Then, if one gets so far as into the bush, there are other ways that you know nothing of yet, Bob.”
“I never can make out how you get seal oil from the woods; being as we are thirty miles from the sea.”
Jerry laughed, and offered to introduce his brother one day to somebody in the bush he little dreamed of.
“Do you mean, Frank, poor fellow, or Ellen? They would not go so far to meet you.”
“Do you think I would ask them? It will be time enough for me to notice Frank when I have a house of my own to ask him into. I shall be the master of such as he before his time is out.”
“You need not carry yourself so high, Jerry. You are in a worse bondage than he just now.”
“Curse them that put me into it, and let them see if I bear it long!
However, hold your tongue about it now. There is the moon through the trees, and the free turf under our feet. What a pity there is nobody with a heavy purse likely to pass while we are resting in the shadow under this clump! ’Tis such dull work when there is nothing better to be had than sheep and poultry, and so many of them that they are scarcely worth the taking!”
“I like roving for the sake of roving,” said Bob. “I have plenty of mutton without stealing it.”
“I like robbing for the sake of robbing,” replied his brother; “and the mutton is only the price of my frolic. But there is something I like better. Let us be off, and I will show you, (if you’ll swear not to blab,) how you may get such sport as you little think for. Learn to handle a gun, and to cross a farm-yard like a cat, and to tap at a back-door like a mouse within a wainscot, and you may laugh at the judge and the law, and all the dogs they have set to worry us.”
“Why no, thank’ee,” replied Bob. “I am trying after a character, you know, so I shall stay where I am. I’ll light my pipe; and I’ve got rum enough to last till morning both for myself and somebody I rather expect to meet me.”
“Take care she be not too deep for you, Bob. If ever you want a wife with no more sense than a monkey, and not half as many tricks, ask me, and I will show you how to get one.”
So much for the reformation of the offender. The other kind of security on which the judge expatiated was that afforded by the criminal being made a warning.
A waggon load of new convict-labourers arrived at the Dairy Plains one day, when the accustomed gang was at work on the road which was not yet completed. The masters who happened to be present were too much taken up with observing the new-comers to pay any attention to the looks of their labourers. They did not see the winks, and the side-long smiles, they did not hear the snapping of fingers behind their backs; they had no suspicion that some in the waggon were old acquaintances of those on the road. On the first opportunity after the fresh men were left with the others, and only one or two over-lookers near, there was a prodigious hand-shaking and congratulation, and questioning. “How did you get over?” “How did you manage to get sent _here_?” “How do you like transportation?” “You’ll soon learn to know your own luck.” “This is a fine country, is it not?” &c. &c.
“I was so cursedly dull after you all went away,” observed one of the new-comers, “there was nothing to stay for: but I very near got sent to Sidney.”
“Well; you could soon have got away, either home or here. But how do you find yourself off?”
“With a bed to myself and a blanket, and rare good living to what I had when I was an honest man. The thing I don’t like is the work; but they say we are to have plenty of spirits.”
“To be sure; and as to the work,—what do the poor wretches at home do but work as hard as you, and for less than you can get in spare hours.
But where’s Sam? Why did not he come too?”
“He got baulked, as he deserved for being a fool. What did he do but send his sister to the justice to know how much he must steal to be transported, and no more? The justice set the parson at him; and between the two, they have cowed him, poor fellow, and he will never better his condition.”
“Perhaps he is afraid. Perhaps he believes what the judge said about our being a warning. And yet he tipped me the wink when that was said, and when some of the pretty ones in the gallery began to cry.”
“He knows better than you think. If you were as moped as a linnet in a cage, he would know nothing of it; because you are too far off for him to see what became of you, in that case; but, being as you are, a merry, rollicking set, he would like to be among you; and that sort of news travels fast.”
Another of the party did not like his lot so well. He said nothing of the disgrace, though he felt it; but he complained of the toil, of the tyranny of the masters, of the spite and bickerings of his companions.
“If you don’t like your company, change it,” replied one to whom he had opened his mind. “Such a good hand as you are at a burglary, I don’t wonder that you had rather steal enough in one night to live upon for a month, than work as commoner hands do. You had better go back. Jerry will tell you how. Nothing is easier.”
“Well; but there is my little woman yonder, that they were so kind as to send over at the same time; how is she to get back? She can’t turn sailor, and get her passage home in that way.”
“Trust her for making terms with some gull of a sailor,” replied the other, laughing. “It is only following an old trade for a particular reason; and you’ll give her leave till you touch land again. But let me hear before you go; there are some acquaintance of mine in London that will be glad to know you; and you may chance to help one another; though, to be sure, you take a higher line.”
“Are you thinking of sending over the fee they raised for your defence?”
“I did intend it, as a point of honour; but they assure me they made a good bargain of it as it was. They could have paid the fee three times over out of the plate-chest they stole for it. So I don’t know that I need trouble myself.”
“So while Counsellor H—— was preaching about your being tried that people might be safe, there was another robbery going on to pay him his fees. That’s rare! You should go back, (since the way is so easy,) and pick Counsellor H—’s pocket. That will mend the joke.”
So much for the security to society from the exhibition of this kind of warning.
-------------- CHAPTER VII.
CHRISTMAS AMUSEMENTS.
Ellen’s wedding day drew near. Frank and Harry Moore had toiled together at spare hours to erect and fit up a convenient dwelling; and there was no fear whatever but that she and her husband would be amply supplied with all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life. Her father began to smile upon her, though he muttered complaints of there being so many changes always going on that none of them ever knew when they were settled. Her step-mother, though still hinting that the girl knew what she was about when she was in such a hurry to come away from a poor parish, seemed very well satisfied to have matters so arranged, and rather proud than otherwise of belonging to Ellen. The farmer and his wife whom Ellen served sighed when they found she was going to leave them, and observed that it was always the way, as soon as they got suited with a dairy maid; but as she agreed to go on taking care of their cows till they could obtain another damsel in her place from Hobart Town, they treated her very graciously. The only serious drawback to her comfort was that Harry’s fellow-labourers would go on courting her, though they knew she was engaged, and that this caused Harry to be more jealous than she felt there was any occasion for, or than she could easily excuse. She had no other fault to find with Harry; but she was more than once on the point of breaking off the match on this account, and if it had not been for Frank’s interposition, and his assurances that such feelings were very natural in Harry, she would have thrown away her own happiness for want of being sufficiently aware of the danger of such a position as hers to a girl of less principle than herself.—A circumstance happened, a few days before her marriage, which everybody else thought very disastrous; but which she could not think so, since it established a perfect understanding between Harry and herself.
On the morning of the 21st of December,—the height of summer in Van Diemen’s Land,—Frank appeared, breathless, in the farm-yard whither Ellen was just going to milk her cows; Castle at the same moment was seen at some distance, hastening from the downs where he ought to have been tending his sheep at this hour; Harry Moore next leaped the gate and wiped his brows, seeming too much agitated to speak; the farmer pulled his hat over his eyes, in anticipation of the news that was coming, and the women crowded together in terror.—Ellen was the first to ask what was the matter.
“Have your men decamped, farmer?” inquired Frank.
“Yes, almost to a man. Have Stapleton’s?”
“Two out of four; and every settler in the neighbourhood misses more or less this morning.”
“Now the devil and his imps will be on us in the shape of a gang of bush-rangers,” muttered the farmer.
“Not on us, farmer. They will more likely go to some distant part where their faces are strange.”
“If they do, they will send strange faces here, which comes to the same thing; for one bush-ranger’s face is as devilish as another. One of us must be off in search of a guard, and our shepherds, and indeed all of us, must carry arms.”
Ellen turned pale at the mention of arms. Harry drew to her side, and told her in a tone of forced calmness that three of her lovers were gone.
“Gone!” cried Ellen joyfully. “Gone for good?”
“Gone for ever as lovers of yours.”
“Thank God!” said she. “Better watch night and day with arms in our hands than have your head full of fancies, Harry. You will never believe again that I can like such people: and you shall teach me to fire a gun, so as to defend the house while you are away; and I shall not be afraid of anything when you are at home.”
Harry was so alert and happy from this moment that one would have thought there had been a certainty that no bush-rangers would ever come again, instead of a threatening that those who had till now been servants would soon reappear as enemies.
Whatever arms could be found up were put into the hands of the shepherds, as they were most in danger from violence for the sake of their flocks. They were desired to keep in sight of one another so far as that each should be able to make a certain signal agreed on, in case of his having reason to suppose that there were enemies at hand. Frank departed immediately for Launceston, for powder and ball, and a further supply of labourers to fill the places of those who had eloped. Another messenger was sent to the seat of government to give information of what had happened. During the absence of her brother, Ellen heard enough of the evils inflicted by runaway convicts to alarm a stouter heart than any young girl devotedly attached to her lover ever had; and to add to her uneasiness, her father once more became gloomy, and poor little Susan clung to her side wherever she went. Harry left his work twenty times a day to tell her that all was quiet, and bid her not be alarmed.
During the day, she followed his advice pretty well; but in the evenings, so many tales of horror went round that, though she did not believe the half of them, her confidence was shaken; and she went to bed shuddering to think of what might have happened before morning.
The bush-rangers seemed to be less dreaded by the settlers than the natives. The bush-rangers came down in a troop, carried off what they wanted, occasionally shooting a man or two during the process, and then went completely away. The warfare of the natives was much more horrible,—their movements being stealthy, their revenge insatiable, their cruelty revolting. They would hover about for days or weeks before committing an outrage, planning the most wicked way of proceeding, and seizing the most defenceless moment for pouncing on their victims.
Castle asked aloud, what Ellen inquired in her heart, why all this was not told them before they came, and what there was in wealth which could compensate for such alarms as they were now suffering under? Frank satisfied her, in some degree, when he returned on the 24th,—the day before her wedding. He told her that though the first settlers had suffered dreadfully from the murders and plunder of the hostile natives and runaway convicts, this was not a sufficient reason to deter other settlers from following, since, owing to the vigorous measures of the Australian government, such outrages had been repressed and nearly put an end to. He pointed out to her that the horrible tales she had been told related to former times, and assured her that, except in some districts near the wilder parts of the island, the face of a savage had not been seen for years.—Ellen pointed to the mountain wastes on which their settlement bordered, and Frank acknowledged that the Dairy Plains lay as open to an attack as most newly-settled districts; but he had been assured at Launceston that there was no need to terrify themselves with apprehensions as long as they were armed and properly careful in their movements; since the sound of a musket would disperse a whole troop of savages, and they attacked no place that was not left absolutely defenceless. He had distinctly ascertained what he had before conjectured,—that it was not the practice of runaway convicts to plunder settlements where their faces were known, and that the only danger therefore arose from the probability that they might injure the savages, who might come down to wreak their revenge upon the innocent settlers.
“If this is all,” sighed Ellen, “there is nothing——” “To prevent your being married to-morrow, Ellen. So I have been telling Harry.”
“There was no occasion, thank you. I never meant to put it off. The more danger, the more reason for our being together. Besides, it will help to take father’s mind off from his discontent. He has been wishing himself back in Kent every hour since you went.”
“Indeed! Well now, I think that such an occasional fright as this is little to the hardship of living as we did at A——, to say nothing of the certainty of there soon being an end to it. The only two evils our settlers suffer from will grow less every year; the scarcity of labour, and danger of theft. To make up for these, we have the finest climate in the world, abundance of all that we at present want, and the prospect of seeing our children, and their children again, well provided for.—But you must be in a hurry now, dear, considering what has to be done to-morrow. So go, and cheer up, and trouble your head no more about black or white thieves.”
Ellen had, however, little more than usual to do this day, as hers was not the kind of wedding to require preparation. The travelling chaplain who was to come and perform the Christmas service, was to marry the young people, and thus only was the day to be marked as different from any other. The settlers, no doubt, thought much of their friends in England, and of the festivities which are there enjoyed by all but those whose poverty deprives them of the means: but the seasons are so entirely reversed in Van Diemen’s Land,—it is so impossible amidst the brilliant verdure, the heat and long days of the Christmas season there, to adopt the festivities carried on at home beside the hearth and over the punch-bowl, that Christmas-day was allowed to pass quietly, and the grand holidays of the year were wisely made on the anniversaries of their settlement in their present abodes,—of their entrance on a life of prosperity.
No fairer morning ever dawned than that on which Ellen arose very early, and stole out to find that refreshment in the open air which she was not disposed to seek in more sleep. She had rested well for a few hours, but the first rays of the sun finding their way into her chamber, (which was more like a clean loft than an English bedroom), roused her to thoughts that prevented her sleeping again. It was too soon to be looking after her cows; so she took her knitting, and sat on the bench outside the house, whence she could look over a vast tract of country, and where she was pretty sure of an hour’s quiet. She had some thoughts to spare for her old Kentish neighbours; and began to fancy how her grandmother would be getting up three hours after, when it would be scarcely dawning, to make the room tidy, and light the fire to boil the kettle; and how the old couple would put on their best, and draw over the hearth with their Christmas breakfast. Then she thought of the many boys and girls she knew who would be going to church, with red noses, and shivering in their scanty clothing. Then she sighed when she remembered that she might never more hear psalms sung in a church; and again she smiled while fancying Mr. Fellowes’s great dinner to half the parish,—a dinner of roast beef and ale and plum puddings, and Mr. Jackson there to say grace, and the clerk to sing a Christmas carol, and every old man giving a toast by turns, and some one perhaps to propose the healths of their friends far away. She blushed, all alone as she was, when she wondered what they would say if they knew she was to be married so soon, especially if they could see Harry. It was strange, while her mind was thus full of pictures of a frosty day, of a smoking table, of a roaring fire, lamps, and a steaming punch-bowl, to look up and observe what was before her eyes. The scene was not even like a midsummer morning in Kent. It was not dotted with villages: there were no hop-grounds, and all the apples grown within five miles would hardly have made an orchard. There were no spires among the trees; nor did the morning mists rise from the dells or hover over the meadows. All was clear and dry and verdant under the deep blue sky. No haze hung over the running streams that found their way among the grassy hillocks. Neither oak nor beech grew on the hill side, nor pines on the ridges of the mountains behind; but trees to whose strange foliage her eye was yet unaccustomed reared their lofty stems where it did not appear that the hand of man was likely to have planted them; and myrtles and geraniums grew up roof-high, like the finest monthly roses in England. Instead of the little white butterflies flitting over the daisied turf, there were splendid ones alighting here and there in the neighbouring garden, larger and gayer than the finest of the flowers they fed upon. Instead of the lark rising from her dewy nest into the pink morning cloud, there were green and crimson parrots glancing among the lofty evergreens.
Instead of flickering swarms of midges, flies shone like emeralds in the sun. Instead of a field-mouse venturing out of its hole, or frogs leaping across the path, speckled and gilded snakes (of which Ellen had learned not to be afraid) wriggled out into the sunshine, and finding that the world was not all asleep, made haste to hide themselves again.
“If I could fancy any part of this to be England,” thought Ellen, “it would be yonder spot behind the range of woodland, where the smoke is rising. If that were but grandfather’s cottage, how I would run and bring them here before any body else was up. They will be so sorry not to have seen me married, and not to know Harry! But I cannot make out that smoke. I did not know that anybody lived there, and it looks more than enough to come from a single chimney. Perhaps the man that found the brick clay, and talked of having a kiln, may have settled there. I will ask Harry. I wonder what o’clock it is now! He said he should finish his morning’s work first, that he might stay when he did come.
How odd it seems that there are so few people to do things here, that a man can scarcely be spared from his work on his wedding day! They must be all over-sleeping themselves, I think. I’ll just get the milk-pails, and that may wake them; and if the cows are milked a little earlier than usual, it will not signify. I only get fidgetty, sitting here, and fancying noises; from missing the singing-birds, I dare say, that are busy among the boughs on such a morning as this in England. It was an odd squeak and whistle that I heard just now; perhaps a quail or a parroquet, or some other bird that I don’t know the note of yet. Or it might be one of those noisy black swans on the lake yonder. I will not stay any longer to be startled. That was only a butterfly that flew dazzling before my eyes; and these flies do not sting, so I need not