But there was another kind of beauty about it which I have not yet mentioned—namely, its flocks and herds and poultry.
A feature of the strath, or valley, occupied by this little Scoto-Welsh colony was the sandhills or dunes.
'Do you call those sandhills?' I said to Moncrieff one day, shortly after our arrival. 'Why, they are as green and bonnie as the Broad Hill on the links of Aberdeen.'
Moncrieff smiled, but looked pleased.
'Man!' he replied, 'did you ever hear of the proverb that speaks about making mountains of mole-hills? Well, that's what I've done up yonder. When my partner and I began serious work on these fields of ours, those bits of hills were a constant trouble and menace to us. They 154 were just as big then, maybe, as they are now—about fifty feet high at the highest, perhaps, but they were bare sandy hillocks, constantly changing shape and even position with every big storm, till a happy thought struck my partner, and we chose just the right season for acting on it. We got the Gauchos to gather for us pecks and bushels of all kinds of wild seed, especially that of the long-rooted grasses, and these we sowed all over the mole-hills, as we called them, and we planted bushes here and there, and also in the hollows, and, lo! the mole-hills were changed into fairy little mountains, and the bits o' glens between into bosky dells.'
'Dear Brother Moncrieff,' I said, 'you are a genius, and I'm so glad I met you. What would I have been without you?'
'Twaddle, man! nonsensical havers and twaddle! If you hadn't met me you would have met somebody else; and if you hadn't met him, you would have foregathered wi' experience; and, man, experience is the best teacher in a' the wide worruld.'
In laying out and planning our farm, my brothers and I determined, however, not to wait for experience of our own, but just take advantage of Moncrieff's. That would sustain us, as the oak sustains the ivy. 155