Zurich Herald, 1926-08-05, Page 2IDYLLS FROM ENGLISHMOORS
Olt! England is instinct with idylls , rich with the literary, inheritance of
of kings awl poets, princes and $•imine English ballad, folk song, play and ro-'
folk, and in no part ars these more !mance. •
germane to their envirotaneut and Slowly winding downward frons this
heir people than in Devon. Of tree valley of the Doones 1 came upon a
Yeling in England ri?iiliam Winters I secluded cottage tucked a,gatn> t one
has said: "There ,should be no inex- ; of the black moors. In front of it,
enable route, for the chief charm of spanned by an old tone bridge, was a
English travel is liberty of caprice; little stream of which Coleridge might
have sung:
and whichever way you turn you are
sure to find, Jona peculiar beauty that
will reward your quest."
A noise like of a hidden brook
Following his advice i had scram- In "the 'leafy month of June,
bled over the rock-bound, jagged coact 'That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
The hostess of the cot came out, greet-
ing me with ruddy face and genial
smile, and bearing a tray on which
Were strawberries, a bowl of Devon-
inolosing this remote and silent spot. shire cream and toast, enough for a
From Childhood I had been familiar platoon of King Charles,' troopers who,
with these rugged scenes through no doubt, bad known the sweetness of
Blackmore, Kingsley and Hardy. With this fare. She.might have been Moth -
them I had wandered in thought over er Ridd or Lorna's aunt—she seemed
these heather -covered moors, the pur• so a part of that story of long ago in
pie interspersed with the sunshine-yel- which I had been romancing through-
low
hroughlow of the gorse; had scrambled over out the day.
the cliffs of the bordering coast with As I looked out over the moors from
its coves and seques•tereds eaves; and my garden seat, watching the light
had made aequaiutance with heady and shadows "on summer hilts that
folk of the district. While the actual lie," Wordsworth's lines came to my
valley lacked some of the precipitous- thought:
ness and wildnesas of Blackmore's set-
ting, it was easy, as I surveyed it, to
ill in any dierepaueies with imaginary
details,.
What a stronghold this spot might
have made for outlawed gentry of the
Plantagenet. and Stuart kings, I
thought, es I made my, way from the
moss -grown sluice -way along the peb-
bly bed of the little stream which
divides the plateau! And- then, as if
to substantiate the impression, on
either side of the stream were revealed
half -buried semblances of what once
were huts. No wonder that Blackmore
and T 1ngsley and Hardy could spin
romances with such backgrounds! In
these surroundings, the past with its
rough and hardy living, its Mother
Mell.drum, Tom Faggus, and Carver
Doone returned and wrapped me about
like a cloak.
Suddenly my reverie was interrupt-
ed by the bark of a sheep dog and
then. by the voice of his mistress, who
informed me that these foundations
were the ruins of the old Doone huts.
And I thought of Lorna as I had often
seen her through John Ridd's eyes:
"By the side of the stream she was
coming to me, even among the prim-
roses as if she loved them all; and
every flower looked the brighter as her
eyes were upon then!. . . . The pale
gleam over the western cliff s threw a
shadow of Iight behind her, as if the they came no more and the world was
left to darkness and to me and ever to
that gallant company of romancers and
poets who have drawn inspiration for
their lyrics and tales from the subtle
atmosphere that lingers over downs,
the deep valleys, the little ribbcns of
streams running among the lush green
meadows, and the hedgerows and
winding lanes.
of north Devon until I had found my
way up the Lynn and Bagworthy val-
leys and had come out et last upon the
lofty table -land lying between two
Vales, with moors rolling away on
either side to the tree -crowned heights
A surface dappled o'er
flung
From brooding clouds;
lay in spots
Determined and unmoved, with steady
beams
Of bright and pleasant sunshine inter-
posed.
with shadows
shadows that
And Keats himself might have written
of the shower of sweet peas climbing
over the trellis of the old +cottages
Here are sweet peas
flight:
With wings of gentle
cote white,
And taper fingers
things,
To bind them all
rings.
on tiptoe for a
flush o'er a dell -
catching at all
about with tiny
The sun had long dipped behind the
clouds and hung Its red cap on the
hills ere I moved from that old- fas-
hioned garden. I dropped slowly down
among the shadows of the moors,
watching the long black wings of night
creep across them; listing now and
again to the soft bleating of sheep or
the farcall cf the shepherd -woman on
her lonely fastness. I watched the
strange lights that come and go over
the mors fleet! and illusive till
a fleeting
sun were lingering."
Yet it was not alone John Ridd and
his `visits to this haunt of the Doones
that were now filling my thought, but
rather was it the moors. For their Old
World atmosphere lingers in the dark
shadows and follows along the rocky
torrents that tumble down from the
wooded hills; their associations are
For the Lonely.
Alone! And in a world of friends!
Have you ever tried to imagine what
It would be like?
"Woe to him that is alone when -he
falieth." Everybody dreads being
alone. Anything lost is lull of dis-
tress. A dog that has lost his master
is frantic with anxiety. A dog is a
social animal—like ourselves—and
loves friendship as truly as he its a
real friend.
Most of those who read this will be
unable to realize fully how louely some
people are, for most of us have been
able to find a way out of our difficul-
ties.
When we have been with our backs
to the wall we have usually been able
to ask a friend for help, and that help
has been forthcoming.
But try to imagine "Sour life without
a single friend; none to stay to hear
the unburdening of your heart and
with no patience with your n.isfor-
tune. Try to think what if. -euid be
like if every star in your social sky
went out and you were enoircled with
au impenetrable gloom.
You want to give your friendship
and no one desires it; you ask for com-
radeship and no one responds, There
are many lives like that.
Have you ever stood in a crowded
city street and tried to realize what it
world mean to be absolutely alone,
without friends, money, or experience?
There are some people like that, en-
tirely friendless and alone.
Charles Kingsley was a very good-
tempered, sympathetic individual. A
woman once asked him how it was he
poss•eased So loving a disposition, and,
with a look of profound thankfulness,
he replied: "I once had a friend."
Yes; and ss, say all of us when we
think of the best in our lives. Had It
not been for a friend who helped us
when we needed help and heard us
when we called we should have been
in the world today hopeless and for-
lorn.
It is up to uss to be as friendly as we
-aka be to the lonely and unfortunate.
11 we could hear the sighs of the lone-
ly and know the enzptinees of niaiy a
It around us, we ehould reepond With-
out hesitation. We ehoula be more
tolerant, More kindly; and moreover;
we should reap where we had sown,
The Anglo-Saxons gave armee mee to
Many l'aealities front their suproseci
ren miylentee to parte of the hrantnn
body, as headland, a neck of :'and, tr
toil'gue of land, the mouth of a rives.:;
the brow of a lint, the foot of a hi`el,
seriarta ofthe sea, and s,00n.
Was it Murder?
He—"After we defeated them in the
boat raoe we -took their,* sculls away
and hung them in our boathouse."
She --"Oh, horrible! Why haven't
you all been arrested for murder?"
Silver Poplars.
God wrote His loveliest, poem cn the
day
He made the first tall silver poplar
tree,
And set it high capon a pale -gold hill,
For all 'the new enchanted earth to
see.
I think its beauty must have made Him
glad,
And that He smiled at it—and loved
it so --
Then turned in sudden sheer delight,
and made
A dozen silver poplars in a row.
ADAMSON'S ADVENTURES
,{tepytteht; ll24, 'Ftu Sell Syndicat
A Strange Object Brought to Light.
FROM DEL HAVEN TO GRAND PRE
My first view of Grand Pre was afar
off from the little village of Del Haven
on the opposite shore of the Basin of
Minas; and owing to the wonderful
fascination of this western shore of
the basin, it was some time before the
drive of a few miles, partly along the
course of the Gaspereau, was made
for the closer inspection of Grand Pre.
One has the sensation of being or the
planet Mars, when in this region of
Nova Scotia, the tone of the bead: and
shores is so unmitigatedly red. Then,
too, the shrinking of the water in the
basin twice a day to a width of some
five miles less than it is at high tide
parallels very well the strange be- I
havior of the canal on Mars, as it is
ds
.
described by� some astronomers.
.
I
.. The banks all along this western
side, limiting the encroachment cf the
tide, look as if they had been carefully I
cut down with a huge knife, so straight
up and down are the lines. . . - The'
banks vary in height, but they are
never very lofty, though the land
above them is undulating, ending in
the ridge, which . . forms the Ina!
posing and peculiarly beautiful Cape
Blomidon, live hundred and seventy
feet in height, with its red sandstone I
walla and battlemented top of gray
trap rock, and its growth of solemn'
firs. Red, red everywhere are those 1
banks, and at their base, as at the
base of Blomidon itself, stretohes the 1
red beach, as smooth and seemingly as l
level as a floor . . . The tale is told I
at Del Haven that if one were at the
outermost edge of the beach when the
tide turned, he could not walk fast
enough to keep from being overwhelm-
ed by it, so rapidly does it rise. .
The magic of low tide when it oc-
curs near sunset in the glowing after-
noon light, la hardly describable in
words.. Patches of dampness-• left on
the beach by the receding tide refract
the light in such a manner that the
whole atmosphere becomes radiant
with melting rainbow tints. .
Blomidon looms somber in the back-
Mist green and white against a tar-
quoise sky,
A -shimmer and a -shine it stood at
noon;
A misty silver level -Mess' at night,
Breathless beneath the first small wait-
ful moon,
And then God took the music of the
winds,
And set eachleaf a -flutter and a -
thrill --
To -day I read His poem word by word
Among the silver popiars on, the hill,
--Grace Noll Crowell,
GhrestiaMty should be so presented
in the light of fuller knowledge that
the bias of educated opinion oriel) seeing
again to the Christiaii position.-
Bishop of l;iar`rnineham.
Starched linen should always be
soaked in cord water so that the old
startle is softened !Incl removed in the
washing; otherwise there is a ten;ct-
(may for it to turn yea:ow,
ground, its crest alone ilt up by the
rays of the departing sun; and perhaps
far out on a dike, still in a flood -tide
of sunlight, may' be seen an old-fas-
hioned ox -team with hay wagon at-
taohed. . .
When one finally makes up one's•
mind to leave this loveliness and drive
from Del Haven to Grand Pre, what
other loveliness is the reward! What
wonderful orchards.! Fields et
wheat and oats and rye which exhale
the richness of the earth. One 'may
drive to the top of Blomidon and look
down upon alI this beautiful garden as
Wiles far below in squares of many
tints. . . . When the Gaspereau is
met on the way to Grand Pre, it has
become a gentle stream flowing
through a peaceful valley. . The
river starts a little lake of the same
name. - :, . For the first few miles,
and as it flows through the ;settlement
of Canaan, there it a wild beauty and
grandeur in the scenery. It rushes
impetuously between two lofty and al-
most perpendicular hills. . . . When
finally the valley broadens out it be-
comes a most peaceable little river,
and vrhen it nears the Basin of Minas
Its waters mingled with the tides from
the salt marshes. Bliss Carman has
pictured all the beauty in this fine
poem, "The Valley of the Gaspereau,"
with the loving touch of one who was
born in this land:
"The `crowds of black spruces in tiers
from the valley below,
Ranged round their sky -roofed
coliseum, mount row after row.
How often there, rank above rank, they
-have watched for the slow
Silver-lantorned processions of twi-
light—the moon's come and go!
How often as if they expected sonde
bugle to blow,
Announcing a bringer of news they
were breathless to know.
They have hushed every leaf—to hear
only the murmurous flow
Of the small mountain rives sent up
from the .valley below!
"Then the orchards that dot; all in or-
der, the green valley floor,
Every tree with its boughs welghed'to
earth, like a tent from whose'
I door
'Not a lodgenlooks forth, yet the signs
are there, gay and galore,
The great ropes of red fruitage and
russet, crisp snow to the core.
Can the dark eyed Romany here have
deserted of yore
Their camp at the coming of , frost?
Will they seek it no more?
Who dwells in St. Eulalie's village?
Who knows the fine lore
Of the tribes of the apple trees there
on the green valley floor? -
"Who indeed? From the blue moun-
tain gorge to the dikes by the
sea,
Goes that stilly wanderer, small Gas-
pereau; who but he
Should give the last hint of perfection,
the touch that sets free
From the taut string of silence the
whisper of beauties to he?
The very sun semis to have tarried,
turned back to a degree,
To lengthen out noon for the apple
folk here by the. sea,"
—Helen Archibald Clarke, in ".'Long -
fellow's, Country."
Royal Horseshoes.
The custom of taking a horeeehoe as
toll from every King, Queen. or Duke
who rides through Oakham, the county
town of Rutland, is a very ancient one.
The right to claim 'elle shoe originated
OIL . DEVELOPMENT it
WESTERN CANADA
By G. G. Olnmanney, 14I:IO.I,0,, ed.,e epee
Tb.e seargb for peoroieum in Weate
ern Canada, first undertaken about
1884, and prossou,ted in ',varioue seta
tione of the conntree"with quiet pen.
sistenee and •spasmodic autburets of
entliusi•es'tic energy since that date has,
to -day reached a phase of greater in-
terest and promise .than ever before.
Since 1884 over 400 wells have been
started at various paints 1rt the Prairie
Provinces and the Mackenzie River
Bastin, many of which have not been
completed but which aecumulatively
have added to and•eonfiem•ed' the con-
viction ---now almost underlying these
vletlon---now almost a certainty--lo'ng
entertained, that somewhere, underly-
ing these vast areas will be discovered)
perolenni pools of .commercial size.
This conviction is not the outcome
of uninformed optimism but Is, based.
on known geologigal faots and on re-
sults of successful oil exploration in
the Iinited& States immediately to the
oath of and almost up to the 'inter-
national boundary line. That the
same strata whichhave contributed
such great production in these adjoin-
ing areas extend under 'a vast territory,
in Canada, from the international
boundary to the Arctic Circle; iso
known, and even without the evidence
of recent discoveries, he would be a
pessimist indeed, who would expect to
findthese rocks, so prolific of oil lin-
mediately to the south, to be barren
and unproductive north of this imagin-
ary boundary line. To -day we haven
sufficient proof that nature hes shown
no such discrimination.
The Turner Valley Field.
In the Turner Valley some 35 milea
south -went of Calgary, favorable
structure, located and drilled some
fifteen to twenty years ago, resulted
in a small flow of oil. Activities in'
this field led, in 1914, to an oil boom'
in that district out of all proportion!
to results obtained. In 1924, Rayalite
No. 4 was deepenedfrom 3,175 feet to,
3,740 feet; and at that...deepth a very,
large flow of gas, under extremely high!
pressure, was encountered carrying
with it prude naphtha of 70 deg.'
Beaume. So important has this dis-
covery proved that a separating plant
was built and a pipe line was con-
structed to the Imperial Company's re
finery at Calgary, 29.4 miles distant,a
and during 1925, 156,766 barrels of
naphtha were sold, the sales averag-
ing 430 barrels a day for 365 days and
during the first part of 1926 as high as
579 barrels for u0 days.
. This remarkable dlscovery bas stimu :
and
inthat field,
t
late development mets
Wed p
work is now in progress' on 15 .new;
and reconditioned wells and many new,
wells are planned.' It is believed that;
the Royalite discovery indicates the 1
eat—seance `of a much larger oil pooh
than previously supposed lying atf
greater depth, and it Is anticipated'
that several of the wells now. being!
-drilled will tap the productive borizon•
about in July of this year.
Mackenzie River and Edmonton Field)
A. few yew ago the Imperial 011
Company extended their explorations,
north to .the Mackenzie River Basin !
where the probable productive stratai
in the time of William. the Conqueror, lie nearer the surface than farllier,
and was supposed to encourage people south. Their drilling operations at!
to patronize the local trade of shoeing. %'ar't Norman had the important effect!
In the great hall of Oakham Castle of proving these strata to errrw elil
there are more than a Hundred horse- where structure is favorable, thus giv-',
shoes, including one from the present ing encouragement for search farther,
Prinoe of Wales, from Edward VII., south in Alberta where the oil rocks
Queen Victoria, George IV., and Queen are at greater depth.
Elizabeth. Some of the shoes are Yet another field has added to the e
glided, but others are ordinary iron growing weight of proof of the value 1:
shoes. of Western C0`iladian 011 fields. At
4 — Wainwright, the British Petroleum 3
* Those who put the least into Life wells have proved oil saturation in the
are usually the most dissatisfied with 1 sande of about 2,200 tent and brought
what they get out of life. in a production of 75 barrels a day.
The oil iso heavy, ranging from 18 deg. dr.
to 20 deg B. '.Cho Edmonton,. Wain-''
weight oil well et 2,288• feet has.
brought In a producer of 150 barrels
a day. On the interprovincial bo dud'
ary east of Wainwright; G. S. Huure,l :
of the Geological Survey, worked dun,
lug 1925, and his report jest published
indicates structural conditions hero in
certain areas very favorable to the
presence of nil, Tbronghout the
Prairie Provinces some 44 wells have
been drilled or deepened since the be•
ginning of 1925.
This brief review shows that the
search for oil is to• day being con -
ti nued
rettinned along conservative lines based
nrr sound information and the experi;'
euce of past years.
It is , no longer a 'problem as to •
whether oll exists' or not In these
areas, it hes ber.obnc a ;question only a
of tapping the Morden reservoirs tier
tlt•e right points,
Alberta l;rodnrtion for 11125 readied•.;,
the lmpni:l.int figure ` of 1.60;432 bar.-.,
role, and for. the first, : time exceeded e,
That of the Ontario fields and alone ;
exceeded the total production of Can.
acral. frtr 1924. These figures speak Cor
themselves of program; made.
44 tnglieh as She le Ispeke-
i l f • ,oven r -iterodrance, Tts i,'e I "'Thio le a pretty backward sprint
New liritfslt air liner, l"krga:st In Commercial air service, laude icd rec-nrtly at C t";'S"" Mee , as-lrfrrl weatll�
may be Judged by the motor car below. It is called the ,Argossy and 10 pro,peliod by triple engine, so that the `Yes', ii. In' the suet b
� j g
failure of one will be negligible, The plane will curry 20 passengers. I've ever known at this tine of leg'