ling vessel of his own,
if he was not so fortunate as to be the child of a ship-owner. At
the time of which I write, there was but little division of labour
in the Monkshaven whale fishery. The same man might be the owner of
six or seven ships, any one of which he himself was fitted by
education and experience to command; the master of a score of
apprentices, each of whom paid a pretty sufficient premium; and the
proprietor of the melting-sheds into which his cargoes of blubber
and whalebone were conveyed to be fitted for sale. It was no wonder
that large fortunes were acquired by these ship-owners, nor that
their houses on the south side of the river Dee were stately
mansions, full of handsome and substantial furniture. It was also
not surprising that the whole town had an amphibious appearance, to
a degree unusual even in a seaport. Every one depended on the whale
fishery, and almost every male inhabitant had been, or hoped to be,
a sailor. Down by the river the smell was almost intolerable to any
but Monkshaven people during certain seasons of the year; but on
these unsavoury 'staithes' the old men and children lounged for
hours, almost as if they revelled in the odours of train-oil.

This is, perhaps, enough of a description of the town itself. I have
said that the country for miles all around was moorland; high above
the level of the sea towered the purple crags, whose summits were
crowned with greensward that stole down the sides of the scaur a
little way in grassy veins. Here and there a brook forced its way
from the heights down to the sea, making its channel into a valley
more or less broad in long process of time. And in the moorland
hollows, as in these valleys, trees and underwood grew and
flourished; so that, while on the bare swells of the high land you
shivered at the waste desolation of the scenery, when you dropped
into these wooded 'bottoms' you were charmed with the nestling
shelter which they gave. But above and around these rare and fertile
vales there were moors for many a mile, here and there bleak enough,
with the red freestone cropping out above the scanty herbage; then,
perhaps, there was a brown tract of peat and bog, uncertain footing
for the pedestrian who tried to make a short cut to his destination;
then on the higher sandy soil there was the purple ling, or
commonest species of heather growing in beautiful wild luxuriance.
Tufts of fine elastic grass were occasionally to be found, on whi