"To catch whatever ran from the mill. It must have been liquid, for nothing else could go through these holes."
"It is very strange," said Ned, "that these people should set to work and plant trees along the highways, and not put so much as one tree, rosebush, or even a lilac, around their own houses."
Although not aware of it, they were now among a people to whom those peculiar feelings which in the mind of the Anglo-Saxon are connected with home and the domestic hearth, are unknown. Had they been aware that these splendid roads, ornamented with magnificent trees, and so skilfully laid out as to present the most picturesque and imposing scenery to the eye of the traveller, were all constructed and kept in order by means of the dreaded "corvée,"—compulsory labor, which signified that the poor peasant might be taken from his work to labor on the public roads, and, should he chance to offend a capricious master, even in time of harvest, to leave the bread of his household to waste in the field,—they would have ceased to wonder that the wretched peasant, burdened with a thousand exactions and goaded to despair, should be rather disposed to brood over his wrongs, and nurse the hope of vengeance, than to embellish a dwelling which, in the great majority of instances, was not his own.
Determining to follow the course of the stream, rather than the highway, they had proceeded but a short distance, when they reached a spot, where, divided by a mass of rock, it encircled a level island of about three acres, entirely covered with a growth of rods as smooth and pointed as a bulrush. They were planted in regular rows, with great care, were eight or ten feet in height, perfectly straight, and entirely destitute of leaves or limbs, except that in some instances there was a fork at the top.
"What can these be?" asked Ned.
"I don't know; let's see if we can't find a place where we can wade across."
Following the stream till abreast the middle of the island, they espied a row of stepping-stones, upon which they crossed, and, finding a peasant at work, he informed them that they were "osiers," anglice sallows, and were used to make hampers for wine, cover bottles and demijohns, and tie vines to the stakes, were made into chairs and playthings for children, and that a great many, after being divested of their bark, were exported to New York.
"Why, Walter," said Ned, "these are the very things Mr. Bell made baskets of, that he and Charlie called sallies. I heard him ask the captain to get him some rods, and tell him that if he put them in earth or wet moss in the vessel's hold, they would grow by being stuck down, when the vessel got home."
"Then we will get a lot for him."
They asked the peasant, who told them the rods must be cut into pieces, seven or eight inches long, that in two years they would yield something, and in three a good crop of rods.