d all been cut (one of the sad
exigencies, I fear, of war), and they were burning the ground as I came
past; the smell of burning wood followed me, and the thin wreaths of
blue smoke, curling up the hillside, looked faint but ominous in the
morning sunshine like a warning beacon, indeed, of the approach of some
raider.

As I paused for breath, and stood looking down at the exquisite blue
glimmer of the sea through the grey stems of the ash and the delicate
thin tassels of the larches, a drama of hunting passed before me.
There was a thin squeak of terror and a scurry of wings, and some
swallows fled past with a hawk in pursuit. He was almost upon the
hindermost, when he crossed the path of a rook, who rose at him, cawing
angrily, and was immediately joined by two or three others, who rose
from the trees. The hawk turned with incredible swiftness; I saw the
great white bars of his underwings as he "banked" steeply, and went
off. The swallows had escaped and the rooks sank back into the green
tree-tops. All this happened within a yard or two of me; I saw it in
detail, terror in the movements of the swallows, and the eager stretch
of the hawk's head and the gleam of his eyes.

This is to me one of the charms of walking along these lonely high
cliffs: you must go quietly, and if not alone, then with a companion
who will stop often and stand quietly, and you will see birds from
beautiful and unfamiliar angles; below you, showing the broad stretch
of their wings and the markings of their backs, or on the level of your
eye, so that you can see the distinctive shape of their head and beak,
their flight and their movements. To see two buzzard hawks above a
blue sea, circling below you, and then rising higher and higher in a
great sweeping spiral, their wings taut till they have the upward curve
of a bow, and motionless as they ascend, save for an occasional broad
beat as they come, perhaps, to what airmen call a "pocket" in the air,
and so up until they are two specks against the dazzling brightness of
the sky, and you can no longer look at them--this is to me pleasure and
occupation enough for a long summer's morning. Or to watch the gulls,
hanging motionless head on to a brisk wind, or swooping and diving for
fish, black and white and grey changing swiftly across them as they
turn different angles of back and breast and wing to the sun; or to sit
on a high moorland as the evening falls, and hear the melancholy call
of