Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1905-07-12

these reminders of different order
| of things are fading from the English
| landscape, and the writer speaks re-
gretfully of the disappearance THE
| loss to country landscape by the grad
ual decay and disappearance of these
landmarks is greatly to be deplored.
1t almost looks as if the winds had
ceased to blow when places are revis-
tied after 20 years absence and all the
fine twisting windmills have disap-
peared. There is only one left round
London where formerly there were
dozens, especially on the Hampstead
Heights, while Cornhill in the City
only marks by name where the bish-
ops windmill stood. Formerly the
fens were full of them for pumping
purposes, while Suffolk and Norfolk.
great wheat-growing counties, were
studded with their familiar outlines on
every rounded hill. They were stimu-
latlng features in the landscape, not
only because of their size, and the
pretty jaunty little flier-vanes with
their floats painted blue and scarlet,
that turned the tops of the big. lower
OoAAC OiASh 1I1lllo 10
the sails to the wind as it shifted. but
because, too. of the force and swift
motion and sense of power inspired by
the motion of these gigantic arms.
When high steady wind was blowing
the rush of the great arms, the rattle
of the louvres, the creaking of the
great pin that held on the sails. the
roar and crush and shake of the mill
stones inside, were exciting to the ears
of grown-ups and source of fearful
joy to all children. There were awful
tales of bad boys and girls who. tried
to touch the sails as they swept by on
their downward track, and were
whirled aloft by them; while to climb
the fioury stairs and peep into the
floury mill itself, was more than the
hardest boy dare do, so sacred did the
millers (who were usually sulky fell
lows, owing to their life apart from
the world in the mill chambers) deem
their dirty temple of Ceres
Nm England there are three types of
windmills, and no man dare. say
whence came the first. Whenever they
appeared, they must have caused the
hearts of the women to rejoice, for in
prehistoric England, as is evidenced
by stone querns found near ancient
dwellings, the household meal must
have been ground daily in arduous
fashion and doubtless ground by wom-
en-. In the east to-day we find the
meal made ready for use in the ancient
way, two women grinding at the mill.
But to return to the Introduction of the
windmill to England. Some say the
Crusaders brought over the labor-sav-
Ing and ingenious machinery, but care
full observers refute this by pointing
to the fact that the Crusaders did not
get to Palestine until the commence
ment of the twelfth century. while
there exist English records for the
eleventh century concerning disputed
titles to windmills showing conclusive
ly that the Crusaders did not bring
along with the thousand and one Jim
provements" attributed to them. the
first windmill to England. Did the
Romans give them to the Britons. the
Romans who had watermills on the
Tiber? There is no mention of their
having done so.
In Holland to-day there stand sub
stantial windmills builded hundreds of
years ago. One might almost speak of
ible of time they appear On old wood.
gist, "builded for all time" so invinc-
ible OF time they appear on old wood.
cut dating from the fourteenth century
shows that the oldest mills have NOT
altered in shape for centuries.