Just upon the border of Wales, but within one of the English counties,
there is a cluster of hills, rising one above the other in gradual
slopes, until the summits form a long, broad tableland, many miles
across. This tableland is not so flat that all of it can be seen at once,
but here and there are little dells, shaped like deep basins, which the
country folk call hollows; and every now and then there is a rock or
hillock covered with yellow gorse bushes, from the top of which can be
seen the wide, outspread plains, where hundreds of sheep and ponies are
feeding, which belong to the farmers and cottagers dwelling in the valley
below. Besides the chief valley, which divides the mountains into two
groups, and which is broad enough for a village to be built in, there are
long, narrow glens, stretching up into the very heart of the tableland,
and draining away the waters which gather there by the melting of snow in
the winter and the rain of thunderstorms in summer. Down every glen flows
a noisy mountain stream, dashing along its rocky course with so many tiny
waterfalls and impatient splashes, that the gurgling and bubbling of
brooks come up even into the quietness of the tableland and mingle with
the singing of the birds and the humming of the bees among the heather.
There are not many paths across the hills, except the narrow sheep-walks
worn by the tiny feet of the sheep as they follow one another in long,
single lines, winding in and out through the clumps of gorse; and few
people care to explore the solitary plains, except the shepherds who have
the charge of the flocks, and tribes of village children who go up every
summer to gather the fruit of the wild and hardy bilberry wires.

The whole of this broad tableland, as well as the hills, are common
pasture for the inhabitants of the valleys, who have an equal right to
keep sheep and ponies on the uplands with the lord of the manor. But the