This deceitful verdure
was occasioned by a plentiful crop of "woodwax," which wears the
same dark and glossy green throughout the summer, except at one
short period, when it puts forth a profusion of yellow blossoms. At
that season, to a distant spectator, the hill appears absolutely
overlaid with gold, or covered with a glory of sunshine, even
beneath a clouded sky. But the curious wanderer on the hill will
perceive that all the grass, and everything that should nourish man or
beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed: its
tufted roots make the soil their own, and permit nothing else to
vegetate among them; so that a physical curse may be said to have
blasted the spot, where guilt and frenzy consummated the most
execrable scene that our history blushes to record. For this was the
field where superstition won her darkest triumph; the high place where
our fathers set up their shame, to the mournful gaze of generations
far remote. The dust of martyrs was beneath our feet. We stood on
Gallows Hill.
For my own part, I have often courted the historic influence of the
spot.
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