These Lombardy Poplars,
Planted In Long Rows, Were The Largest I Had Seen:
They were very
tall; many of them appeared to be dying of old age, and all had
enormous rough-barked buttressed trunks.
The other shade-trees were
also old and gnarled, some of them dying. The house itself did not
look ancient, and was built of unburnt bricks and thatched, and had a
broad corridor supported by wooden posts or pillars.
The Casa Antigua was situated about six miles from our house, but
looked no more than three on account of the great height of the trees,
which made it appear large and conspicuous on that wide level plain.
The land for miles round it was covered with a dense growth of cardoon
thistles. Now the cardoon is the European artichoke run wild and its
character somewhat altered in a different soil and climate. The large
deep-cut leaves are of a palish grey-green colour, the stalks covered
with a whitish-grey down, and the leaves and stems thickly set with
long yellow spines. It grows in thick bushes, and the bushes grow
close together to the exclusion of grasses and most other plant-life,
and produces purple blossoms big as a small boy's head, on stems four
or five feet high. The stalks, which are about as thick as a man's
wrist, were used when dead and dry as firewood; and this indeed was
the only fuel obtainable at that time in the country, except "cow
chips," from the grazing lands and "peat" from the sheepfold. At the
end of summer, in February, the firewood-gatherers would set to work
gathering the cardoon-stalks, their hands and arms protected with
sheep-skin gloves, and at that season our carters would bring in huge
loads, to be stacked up in piles high as a house for the year's use.
The land where the cardoon grows so abundantly is not good for sheep,
and at Casa Antigua all the land was of this character. The tenant was
an Englishman, a Mr. George Royd, and it was thought by his neighbours
that he had made a serious mistake which would perhaps lead to
disastrous consequences, when investing his capital in the expensive
fine-wool breeds to put them on such land. All this I heard years
afterwards. At that time I only knew that he was our nearest English
neighbour, and more to us on that account than any other. We certainly
had other English neighbours - those who lived half a day's journey on
horseback from us were our neighbours there - English, Welsh, Irish,
Scotch, but they were not like Mr. Royd. These others, however
prosperous (and some were the owners of large estates), came mostly
from the working or lower middle class in their own country and were
interested solely in their own affairs. Mr. Royd was of a different
order. He was about forty-five when my years were seven, a handsome
clean-shaved man with bright blue humorous eyes and brown hair.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 186
Words from 44507 to 45013
of 98444
