THE QUARRY AND THE BRIDGE
Lastrea and athyrium, their foliage gone, cling in silky russet knobs under the granite ledges, warm the iron-grey stone with brown and agate brightness, and promise many a beauty of unfolding frond when spring shall come again. For their jewels will be unfolding presently, to soften the cleft granite with misty green and bring the vernal time to these silent cliffs.
The quarry lies like a gash in the slope of the hills. To the dizzy edges of it creep heather and the bracken; beneath, upon its precipices, a stout rowan or two rises, and everywhere Nature has fought and laboured to hide this wound driven so deep into her mountain-side by man. A cicatrix of moss and fern and many grasses conceal the scars of pick and gunpowder; time has weathered the harsh edges of the riven stone; the depths of the quarry are covered by pools of clear water, for it is nearly a hundred years since the place yielded its stores.
One great silence is the quarry now—an amphitheatre of peace and quiet hemmed by the broken abutments of granite, and opening upon the hillside. The heather extends over wide, dun spaces to a blue distance, where evening lies dim upon the plains beneath; round about a minor music of dripping water tinkles from the sides of the quarry; a current of air brushes the pools and for a moment frets their pale surfaces; the dead rushes murmur and then are silent; here and there, along the steps and steep places flash the white scuts of the rabbits. A pebble is dislodged by one of them, and, falling to the water beneath, sets rings of light widening out upon it and raises a little sound.
In the midst, casting its jagged shadow upon the water, springs a great, ancient crane from which long threads of iron still stretch round about to the cliffs. It stands stoutly yet and marks the meaning of all around it.
At time of twilight it is good to be here, for then one may measure the profundity of such peace and contrast this matrix of vanished granite with the scene of its present disposal; one may drink from this cup all the mystery that fills a deserted theatre of man's work and feel that loneliness which only human ruins tell; and then one may open the eye of the mind upon another vision, and suffer the ear of imagination to throb with its full-toned roar.
For hence came London Bridge; the mighty masses of granite riven from this solitude span Thames.
Away in the heath and winding onward by many a curve may yet be traced the first railroad in the West Country. It started here, upon the frontier hills of Dartmoor, and sank mile upon mile to the valleys beneath. But of granite were wrought the lines, and over them ran ponderous wagons. Many thousand feet of stone were first cut for the railway, before those greater masses destined for London set forth upon it to their destination.