Our English home had brightly-lit passages, and was consequently
practically free from bears and robbers. Still, we all preferred
the Ulster home in spite of its obvious perils. Here were a chain
of lakes, wide, silvery expanses of gleaming water reflecting the
woods and hills. Here were great tracts of woodlands where
countless little burns chattered and tinkled in their rocky beds
as they hurried down to the lakes, laughing as they tumbled in
miniature cascades over rocky ledges into swirling pools, in their
mad haste to reach the placid waters below. Here were purple
heather-clad hills, with their bigger brethren rising mistily blue
in the distance, and great wine-coloured tracts of bog (we called
them "flows") interspersed with glistening bands of water, where
the turf had been cut which hung over the village in a thin haze
of fragrant blue smoke.

The woods in the English place were beautifully kept, but they
were uninteresting, for there were no rocks or great stones in
them. An English brook was a dull, prosaic, lifeless stream,
rolling its clay-stained waters stolidly along, with never a
dimple of laughter on its surface, or a joyous little gurgle of
surprise at finding that it was suddenly called upon to take a
headlong leap of ten feet. The English brooks were so silent, too,
compared to our noisy Ulster burns, whose short lives were one
clamorous turmoil of protest against the many obstacles with which
nature had barred their progress to the sea; here swirling over a
miniature crag, there babbling noisily among a labyrinth of
stones. They ultimately became merged in a foaming, roaring salmon
river, expanding into amber-coloured pools, or breaking into white
rapids; a river which retained to the last its lordly independence
and reached the sea still free, refusing to be harnessed or