wealth of spruce and Scotch fir in the plantations, and by the fact that hollies everywhere abounded.
We used to pull up about half way, at the house of a friendly farmer, to give the team meal and water, and then came ten miles of difficulties. There was a choice of three or four lanes, all equally bad, and we never discovered which was the best road to take. Short cuts we tried, too, and once we were landed in a farmyard, with no egress except by the road we had come, whilst on a second occasion we drove into boggy ground, and lost something like half an hour before we could resume the journey.
We were on high land again for the last few miles in a wild country, where the shrill note of the curlew was constantly heard, where the black-game clubbed on the walls at daybreak, and, caring nothing for a carriage in the lane, let us get well within shot as we passed. At length the scene of operations was reached. 'High Law' Farm I may call it here, and High Law Farm consisted of some thirteen large rough grass enclosures, which averaged over ninety acres apiece, the farm being something like 1,100 acres in extent. As well as I recollect there was not a single tree on the whole estate, nor was there any covert except isolated pieces of gorse or heather and the natural roughness of the grass. The ground sloped
