Madam How and Lady Why; Or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children (2024)

Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

DEDICATION

To my son Grenville Arthur, and to his school-fellows at Winton House
This little book is dedicated.

PREFACE

My dear boys,—When I was your age, there were no such children’sbooks as there are now. Those which we had were few and dull,and the pictures in them ugly and mean: while you have your choice ofbooks without number, clear, amusing, and pretty, as well as reallyinstructive, on subjects which were only talked of fifty years ago bya few learned men, and very little understood even by them. Soif mere reading of books would make wise men, you ought to grow up muchwiser than us old fellows. But mere reading of wise books willnot make you wise men: you must use for yourselves the tools with whichbooks are made wise; and that is—your eyes, and ears, and commonsense.

Now, among those very stupid old-fashioned boys’ books wasone which taught me that; and therefore I am more grateful to it thanif it had been as full of wonderful pictures as all the natural historybooks you ever saw. Its name was Evenings at Home; andin it was a story called “Eyes and no Eyes;” a regular old-fashioned,prim, sententious story; and it began thus:—

“Well, Robert, where have you been walking this afternoon?”said Mr. Andrews to one of his pupils at the close of a holiday.

Oh—Robert had been to Broom Heath, and round by Camp Mount,and home through the meadows. But it was very dull. He hardlysaw a single person. He had much rather have gone by the turnpike-road.

Presently in comes Master William, the other pupil, dressed, I suppose,as wretched boys used to be dressed forty years ago, in a frill collar,and skeleton monkey-jacket, and tight trousers buttoned over it, andhardly coming down to his ancles; and low shoes, which always came offin sticky ground; and terribly dirty and wet he is: but he never (hesays) had such a pleasant walk in his life; and he has brought homehis handkerchief (for boys had no pockets in those days much biggerthan key-holes) full of curiosities.

He has got a piece of mistletoe, wants to know what it is; and hehas seen a woodpecker, and a wheat-ear, and gathered strange flowerson the heath; and hunted a peewit because he thought its wing was broken,till of course it led him into a bog, and very wet he got. Buthe did not mind it, because he fell in with an old man cutting turf,who told him all about turf-cutting, and gave him a dead adder.And then he went up a hill, and saw a grand prospect; and wanted togo again, and make out the geography of the country from Cary’sold county maps, which were the only maps in those days. And then,because the hill was called Camp Mount, he looked for a Roman camp,and found one; and then he went down to the river, saw twenty thingsmore; and so on, and so on, till he had brought home curiosities enough,and thoughts enough, to last him a week.

Whereon Mr. Andrews, who seems to have been a very sensible old gentleman,tells him all about his curiosities: and then it comes out—ifyou will believe it—that Master William has been over the verysame ground as Master Robert, who saw nothing at all.

Whereon Mr. Andrews says, wisely enough, in his solemn old-fashionedway,—

“So it is. One man walks through the world with his eyesopen, another with his eyes shut; and upon this difference depends allthe superiority of knowledge which one man acquires over another.I have known sailors who had been in all the quarters of the world,and could tell you nothing but the signs of the tippling-houses, andthe price and quality of the liquor. On the other hand, Franklincould not cross the Channel without making observations useful to mankind.While many a vacant thoughtless youth is whirled through Europe withoutgaining a single idea worth crossing the street for, the observing eyeand inquiring mind find matter of improvement and delight in every ramble.You, then, William, continue to use your eyes. And you, Robert,learn that eyes were given to you to use.”

So said Mr. Andrews: and so I say, dear boys—and so says hewho has the charge of you—to you. Therefore I beg all goodboys among you to think over this story, and settle in their own mindswhether they will be eyes or no eyes; whether they will, as they growup, look and see for themselves what happens: or whether they will letother people look for them, or pretend to look; and dupe them, and leadthem about—the blind leading the blind, till both fall into theditch.

I say “good boys;” not merely clever boys, or prudentboys: because using your eyes, or not using them, is a question of doingRight or doing Wrong. God has given you eyes; it is your dutyto God to use them. If your parents tried to teach you your lessonsin the most agreeable way, by beautiful picture-books, would it notbe ungracious, ungrateful, and altogether naughty and wrong, to shutyour eyes to those pictures, and refuse to learn? And is it notaltogether naughty and wrong to refuse to learn from your Father inHeaven, the Great God who made all things, when he offers to teach youall day long by the most beautiful and most wonderful of all picture-books,which is simply all things which you can see, hear, and touch, fromthe sun and stars above your head to the mosses and insects at yourfeet? It is your duty to learn His lessons: and it is your interest.God’s Book, which is the Universe, and the reading of God’sBook, which is Science, can do you nothing but good, and teach you nothingbut truth and wisdom. God did not put this wondrous world aboutyour young souls to tempt or to mislead them. If you ask Him fora fish, he will not give you a serpent. If you ask Him for bread,He will not give you a stone.

So use your eyes and your intellect, your senses and your brains,and learn what God is trying to teach you continually by them.I do not mean that you must stop there, and learn nothing more.Anything but that. There are things which neither your sensesnor your brains can tell you; and they are not only more glorious, butactually more true and more real than any things which you can see ortouch. But you must begin at the beginning in order to end atthe end, and sow the seed if you wish to gather the fruit. Godhas ordained that you, and every child which comes into the world, shouldbegin by learning something of the world about him by his senses andhis brain; and the better you learn what they can teach you, the morefit you will be to learn what they cannot teach you. The moreyou try now to understand things, the more you will be able hereafterto understand men, and That which is above men. You began to findout that truly Divine mystery, that you had a mother on earth, simplyby lying soft and warm upon her bosom; and so (as Our Lord told theJews of old) it is by watching the common natural things around you,and considering the lilies of the field, how they grow, that you willbegin at least to learn that far Diviner mystery, that you have a Fatherin Heaven. And so you will be delivered (if you will) out of thetyranny of darkness, and distrust, and fear, into God’s free kingdomof light, and faith, and love; and will be safe from the venom of thattree which is more deadly than the fabled upas of the East. Whoplanted that tree I know not, it was planted so long ago: but surelyit is none of God’s planting, neither of the Son of God: yet itgrows in all lands and in all climes, and sends its hidden suckers farand wide, even (unless we be watchful) into your hearts and mine.And its name is the Tree of Unreason, whose roots are conceit and ignorance,and its juices folly and death. It drops its venom into the finestbrains; and makes them call sense, nonsense; and nonsense, sense; fact,fiction; and fiction, fact. It drops its venom into the tenderesthearts, alas! and makes them call wrong, right; and right, wrong; love,cruelty; and cruelty, love. Some say that the axe is laid to theroot of it just now, and that it is already tottering to its fall: whileothers say that it is growing stronger than ever, and ready to spreadits upas-shade over the whole earth. For my part, I know not,save that all shall be as God wills. The tree has been cut downalready again and again; and yet has always thrown out fresh shootsand dropped fresh poison from its boughs. But this at least Iknow: that any little child, who will use the faculties God has givenhim, may find an antidote to all its poison in the meanest herb beneathhis feet.

There, you do not understand me, my boys; and the best prayer I canoffer for you is, perhaps, that you should never need to understandme: but if that sore need should come, and that poison should beginto spread its mist over your brains and hearts, then you will be proofa*gainst it; just in proportion as you have used the eyes and the commonsense which God has given you, and have considered the lilies of thefield, how they grow.

C. KINGSLEY.

CHAPTER I—THE GLEN

You find it dull walking up here upon Hartford Bridge Flat this sadNovember day? Well, I do not deny that the moor looks somewhatdreary, though dull it need never be. Though the fog is clingingto the fir-trees, and creeping among the heather, till you cannot seeas far as Minley Corner, hardly as far as Bramshill woods—andall the Berkshire hills are as invisible as if it was a dark midnight—yetthere is plenty to be seen here at our very feet. Though thereis nothing left for you to pick, and all the flowers are dead and brown,except here and there a poor half-withered scrap of bottle-heath, andnothing left for you to catch either, for the butterflies and insectsare all dead too, except one poor old Daddy-long-legs, who sits uponthat piece of turf, boring a hole with her tail to lay her eggs in,before the frost catches her and ends her like the rest: though allthings, I say, seem dead, yet there is plenty of life around you, atyour feet, I may almost say in the very stones on which you tread.And though the place itself be dreary enough, a sheet of flat heatherand a little glen in it, with banks of dead fern, and a brown bog betweenthem, and a few fir-trees struggling up—yet, if you only haveeyes to see it, that little bit of glen is beautiful and wonderful,—sobeautiful and so wonderful and so cunningly devised, that it took thousandsof years to make it; and it is not, I believe, half finished yet.

How do I know all that? Because a fairy told it me; a fairywho lives up here upon the moor, and indeed in most places else, ifpeople have but eyes to see her. What is her name? I cannottell. The best name that I can give her (and I think it must besomething like her real name, because she will always answer if youcall her by it patiently and reverently) is Madam How. She willcome in good time, if she is called, even by a little child. Andshe will let us see her at her work, and, what is more, teach us tocopy her. But there is another fairy here likewise, whom we canhardly hope to see. Very thankful should we be if she lifted eventhe smallest corner of her veil, and showed us but for a moment if itwere but her finger tip—so beautiful is she, and yet so awfultoo. But that sight, I believe, would not make us proud, as ifwe had had some great privilege. No, my dear child: it would makeus feel smaller, and meaner, and more stupid and more ignorant thanwe had ever felt in our lives before; at the same time it would makeus wiser than ever we were in our lives before—that one glimpseof the great glory of her whom we call Lady Why.

But I will say more of her presently. We must talk first withMadam How, and perhaps she may help us hereafter to see Lady Why.For she is the servant, and Lady Why is the mistress; though she hasa Master over her again—whose name I leave for you to guess.You have heard it often already, and you will hear it again, for everand ever.

But of one thing I must warn you, that you must not confound MadamHow and Lady Why. Many people do it, and fall into great mistakesthereby,—mistakes that even a little child, if it would think,need not commit. But really great philosophers sometimes makethis mistake about Why and How; and therefore it is no wonder if otherpeople make it too, when they write children’s books about thewonders of nature, and call them “Why and Because,” or “TheReason Why.” The books are very good books, and you shouldread and study them: but they do not tell you really “Why andBecause,” but only “How and So.” They do nottell you the “Reason Why” things happen, but only “TheWay in which they happen.” However, I must not blame thesegood folks, for I have made the same mistake myself often, and may doit again: but all the more shame to me. For see—you knowperfectly the difference between How and Why, when you are talking aboutyourself. If I ask you, “Why did we go out to-day?”You would not answer, “Because we opened the door.”That is the answer to “How did we go out?” The answerto Why did we go out is, “Because we chose to take a walk.”Now when we talk about other things beside ourselves, we must rememberthis same difference between How and Why. If I ask you, “Whydoes fire burn you?” you would answer, I suppose, being a littleboy, “Because it is hot;” which is all you know about it.But if you were a great chemist, instead of a little boy, you wouldbe apt to answer me, I am afraid, “Fire burns because the vibratorymotion of the molecules of the heated substance communicates itselfto the molecules of my skin, and so destroys their tissue;” whichis, I dare say, quite true: but it only tells us how fire burns, theway or means by which it burns; it does not tell us the reason why itburns.

But you will ask, “If that is not the reason why fire burns,what is?” My dear child, I do not know. That is LadyWhy’s business, who is mistress of Mrs. How, and of you and ofme; and, as I think, of all things that you ever saw, or can see, oreven dream. And what her reason for making fire burn may be Icannot tell. But I believe on excellent grounds that her reasonis a very good one. If I dare to guess, I should say that onereason, at least, why fire burns, is that you may take care not to playwith it, and so not only scorch your finger, but set your whole bedon fire, and perhaps the house into the bargain, as you might be temptedto do if putting your finger in the fire were as pleasant as puttingsugar in your mouth.

My dear child, if I could once get clearly into your head this differencebetween Why and How, so that you should remember them steadily in afterlife, I should have done you more good than if I had given you a thousandpounds.

But now that we know that How and Why are two very different matters,and must not be confounded with each other, let us look for Madam How,and see her at work making this little glen; for, as I told you, itis not half made yet. One thing we shall see at once, and seeit more and more clearly the older we grow; I mean her wonderful patienceand diligence. Madam How is never idle for an instant. Nothingis too great or too small for her; and she keeps her work before hereye in the same moment, and makes every separate bit of it help everyother bit. She will keep the sun and stars in order, while shelooks after poor old Mrs. Daddy-long-legs there and her eggs.She will spend thousands of years in building up a mountain, and thousandsof years in grinding it down again; and then carefully polish everygrain of sand which falls from that mountain, and put it in its rightplace, where it will be wanted thousands of years hence; and she willtake just as much trouble about that one grain of sand as she did aboutthe whole mountain. She will settle the exact place where Mrs.Daddy-long-legs shall lay her eggs, at the very same time that she issettling what shall happen hundreds of years hence in a stair millionsof miles away. And I really believe that Madam How knows her workso thoroughly, that the grain of sand which sticks now to your shoe,and the weight of Mrs. Daddy-long-legs’ eggs at the bottom ofher hole, will have an effect upon suns and stars ages after you andI are dead and gone. Most patient indeed is Madam How. Shedoes not mind the least seeing her own work destroyed; she knows thatit must be destroyed. There is a spell upon her, and a fate, thateverything she makes she must unmake again: and yet, good and wise womanas she is, she never frets, nor tires, nor fudges her work, as we sayat school. She takes just as much pains to make an acorn as tomake a peach. She takes just as much pains about the acorn whichthe pig eats, as about the acorn which will grow into a tall oak, andhelp to build a great ship. She took just as much pains, again,about the acorn which you crushed under your foot just now, and whichyou fancy will never come to anything. Madam How is wiser thanthat. She knows that it will come to something. She willfind some use for it, as she finds a use for everything. Thatacorn which you crushed will turn into mould, and that mould will goto feed the roots of some plant, perhaps next year, if it lies whereit is; or perhaps it will be washed into the brook, and then into theriver, and go down to the sea, and will feed the roots of some plantin some new continent ages and ages hence: and so Madam How will haveher own again. You dropped your stick into the river yesterday,and it floated away. You were sorry, because it had cost you agreat deal of trouble to cut it, and peel it, and carve a head and yourname on it. Madam How was not sorry, though she had taken a greatdeal more trouble with that stick than ever you had taken. Shehad been three years making that stick, out of many things, sunbeamsamong the rest. But when it fell into the river, Madam How knewthat she should not lose her sunbeams nor anything else: the stick wouldfloat down the river, and on into the sea; and there, when it got heavywith the salt water, it would sink, and lodge, and be buried, and perhapsages hence turn into coal; and ages after that some one would dig itup and burn it, and then out would come, as bright warm flame, all thesunbeams that were stored away in that stick: and so Madam How wouldhave her own again. And if that should not be the fate of yourstick, still something else will happen to it just as useful in thelong run; for Madam How never loses anything, but uses up all her scrapsand odds and ends somehow, somewhere, somewhen, as is fit and properfor the Housekeeper of the whole Universe. Indeed, Madam How isso patient that some people fancy her stupid, and think that, becauseshe does not fall into a passion every time you steal her sweets, orbreak her crockery, or disarrange her furniture, therefore she doesnot care. But I advise you as a little boy, and still more whenyou grow up to be a man, not to get that fancy into your head; for youwill find that, however good-natured and patient Madam How is in mostmatters, her keeping silence and not seeming to see you is no sign thatshe has forgotten. On the contrary, she bears a grudge (if onemay so say, with all respect to her) longer than any one else does;because she will always have her own again. Indeed, I sometimesthink that if it were not for Lady Why, her mistress, she might bearsome of her grudges for ever and ever. I have seen men ere nowdamage some of Madam How’s property when they were little boys,and be punished by her all their lives long, even though she had mendedthe broken pieces, or turned them to some other use. ThereforeI say to you, beware of Madam How. She will teach you more kindly,patiently, and tenderly than any mother, if you want to learn her trade.But if, instead of learning her trade, you damage her materials andplay with her tools, beware lest she has her own again out of you.

Some people think, again, that Madam How is not only stupid, butill-tempered and cruel; that she makes earthquakes and storms, and famineand pestilences, in a sort of blind passion, not caring where they goor whom they hurt; quite heedless of who is in the way, if she wantsto do anything or go anywhere. Now, that Madam How can be veryterrible there can be no doubt: but there is no doubt also that, ifpeople choose to learn, she will teach them to get out of her way whenevershe has business to do which is dangerous to them. But as forher being cruel and unjust, those may believe it who like. You,my dear boys and girls, need not believe it, if you will only trustto Lady Why; and be sure that Why is the mistress and How the servant,now and for ever. That Lady Why is utterly good and kind I knowfull well; and I believe that, in her case too, the old proverb holds,“Like mistress, like servant;” and that the more we knowof Madam How, the more we shall be content with her, and ready to submitto whatever she does: but not with that stupid resignation which somefolks preach who do not believe in lady Why—that is no resignationat all. That is merely saying—

“What can’t be cured
Must be endured,”

like a donkey when he turns his tail to a hail-storm,—but thetrue resignation, the resignation which is fit for grown people andchildren alike, the resignation which is the beginning and the end ofall wisdom and all religion, is to believe that Lady Why knows best,because she herself is perfectly good; and that as she is mistress overMadam How, so she has a Master over her, whose name—I say again—Ileave you to guess.

So now that I have taught you not to be afraid of Madam How, we willgo and watch her at her work; and if we do not understand anything wesee, we will ask her questions. She will always show us one ofher lesson books if we give her time. And if we have to wait sometime for her answer, you need not fear catching cold, though it is November;for she keeps her lesson books scattered about in strange places, andwe may have to walk up and down that hill more than once before we canmake out how she makes the glen.

Well—how was the glen made? You shall guess it if youlike, and I will guess too. You think, perhaps, that an earthquakeopened it?

My dear child, we must look before we guess. Then, after wehave looked a little, and got some grounds for guessing, then we mayguess. And you have no ground for supposing there ever was anearthquake here strong enough to open that glen. There may havebeen one: but we must guess from what we do know, and not from whatwe do not.

Guess again. Perhaps it was there always, from the beginningof the world? My dear child, you have no proof of that either.Everything round you is changing in shape daily and hourly, as you willfind out the longer you live; and therefore it is most reasonable tosuppose that this glen has changed its shape, as everything else onearth has done. Besides, I told you not that Madam How had madethe glen, but that she was making it, and as yet has only half finished.That is my first guess; and my next guess is that water is making theglen—water, and nothing else.

You open your young eyes. And I do not blame you. I lookedat this very glen for fifteen years before I made that guess; and Ihave looked at it some ten years since, to make sure that my guess heldgood. For man after all is very blind, my dear boy, and very stupid,and cannot see what lies under his own feet all day long; and if LadyWhy, and He whom Lady Why obeys, were not very patient and gentle withmankind, they would have perished off the face of the earth long ago,simply from their own stupidity. I, at least, was very stupidin this case, for I had my head full of earthquakes, and convulsionsof nature, and all sorts of prodigies which never happened to this glen;and so, while I was trying to find what was not there, I of course foundnothing. But when I put them all out of my head, and began tolook for what was there, I found it at once; and lo and behold! I hadseen it a thousand times before, and yet never learnt anything fromit, like a stupid man as I was; though what I learnt you may learn aseasily as I did.

And what did I find?

The pond at the bottom of the glen.

You know that pond, of course? You don’t need to go there?Very well. Then if you do, do not you know also that the pondis always filling up with sand and mud; and that though we clean itout every three or four years, it always fills again? Now wheredoes that sand and mud come from?

Down that stream, of course, which runs out of this bog. Yousee it coming down every time there is a flood, and the stream fouls.

Very well. Then, said Madam How to me, as soon as I recollectedthat, “Don’t you see, you stupid man, that the stream hasmade the glen, and the earth which runs down the stream was all oncepart of the hill on which you stand.” I confess I was verymuch ashamed of myself when she said that. For that is the historyof the whole mystery. Madam How is digging away with her softspade, water. She has a harder spade, or rather plough, the strongestand most terrible of all ploughs; but that, I am glad to say, she haslaid by in England here.

Water? But water is too simple a thing to have dug out allthis great glen.

My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How’s workis, that she does such great things and so many different things, withone and the same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it reallyis not so. Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but mostcomplicated; and we might spend hours in talking about water, withouthaving come to the end of its wonders. Still Madam How is a greateconomist, and never wastes her materials. She is like the sailorwho boasted (only she never boasts) that, if he had but a long lifeand a strong knife, he would build St. Paul’s Cathedral beforehe was done. And Madam How has a very long life, and plenty oftime; and one of the strongest of all her tools is water. Nowif you will stoop down and look into the heather, I will show you howshe is digging out the glen with this very mist which is hanging aboutour feet. At least, so I guess.

For see how the mist clings to the points of the heather leaves,and makes drops. If the hot sun came out the drops would dry,and they would vanish into the air in light warm steam. But nowthat it is dark and cold they drip, or run down the heather-stems, tothe ground. And whither do they go then? Whither will thewater go,—hundreds of gallons of it perhaps,—which has drippedand run through the heather in this single day? It will sink intothe ground, you know. And then what will become of it? MadamHow will use it as an underground spade, just as she uses the rain (atleast, when it rains too hard, and therefore the rain runs off the moorinstead of sinking into it) as a spade above ground.

Now come to the edge of the glen, and I will show you the mist thatfell yesterday, perhaps, coming out of the ground again, and hard atwork.

You know of what an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all theseglens are. How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep roundedbank, almost like the crest of a wave—ready like a wave-crestto fall over, and as you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, wherethe soil is bare.

Oh, yes; you are very fond of those banks. It is “awfullyjolly,” as you say, scrambling up and down them, in the deep heathand fern; besides, there are plenty of rabbit-holes there, because theyare all sand; while there are no rabbit-holes on the flat above, becauseit is all gravel.

Yes; you know all about it: but you know, too, that you must notgo too far down these banks, much less roll down them, because thereis almost certain to be a bog at the bottom, lying upon a gentle slope;and there you get wet through.

All round these hills, from here to Aldershot in one direction, andfrom here to Windsor in another, you see the same shaped glens; thewave-crest along their top, and at the foot of the crest a line of springswhich run out over the slopes, or well up through them in deep sand-galls,as you call them—shaking quagmires which are sometimes deep enoughto swallow up a horse, and which you love to dance upon in summer time.Now the water of all these springs is nothing but the rain, and mist,and dew, which has sunk down first through the peaty soil, and thenthrough the gravel and sand, and there has stopped. And why?Because under the gravel (about which I will tell you a strange storyone day) and under the sand, which is what the geologists call the UpperBagshot sand, there is an entirely different set of beds, which geologistscall the Bracklesham beds, from a place near the New Forest; and inthose beds there is a vein of clay, and through that clay the watercannot get, as you have seen yourself when we dug it out in the fieldbelow to puddle the pond-head; and very good fun you thought it, anda very pretty mess you made of yourself. Well: because the watercannot get though this clay, and must go somewhere, it runs out continuallyalong the top of the clay, and as it runs undermines the bank, and bringsdown sand and gravel continually for the next shower to wash into thestream below.

Now think for one moment how wonderful it is that the shape of theseglens, of which you are so fond, was settled by the particular orderin which Madam How laid down the gravel and sand and mud at the bottomof the sea, ages and ages ago. This is what I told you, that theleast thing that Madam How does to-day may take effect hundreds andthousands of years hence.

But I must tell you I think there was a time when this glen was ofa very different shape from what it is now; and I dare say, accordingto your notions, of a much prettier shape. It was once just likeone of those Chines which we used to see at Bournemouth. You recollectthem? How there was a narrow gap in the cliff of striped sandsand gravels; and out of the mouth of that gap, only a few feet across,there poured down a great slope of mud and sand the shape of half abun, some wet and some dry, up which we used to scramble and get intothe Chine, and call the Chine what it was in the truest sense, Fairyland.You recollect how it was all eaten out into mountain ranges, pinnacles,steep cliffs of white, and yellow, and pink, standing up against theclear blue sky; till we agreed that, putting aside the difference ofsize, they were as beautiful and grand as any Alps we had ever seenin pictures. And how we saw (for there could be no mistake aboutit there) that the Chine was being hollowed out by the springs whichbroke out high up the cliff, and by the rain which wore the sand intofurrowed pinnacles and peaks. You recollect the beautiful place,and how, when we looked back down it we saw between the miniature mountainwalls the bright blue sea, and heard it murmur on the sands outside.So I verily believe we might have done, if we had stood somewhere atthe bottom of this glen thousands of years ago. We should haveseen the sea in front of us; or rather, an arm of the sea; for Finchampsteadridges opposite, instead of being covered with farms, and woodlands,and purple heath above, would have been steep cliffs of sand and clay,just like those you see at Bournemouth now; and—what would havespoilt somewhat the beauty of the sight—along the shores therewould have floated, at least in winter, great blocks and floes of ice,such as you might have seen in the tideway at King’s Lynn thewinter before last, growling and crashing, grubbing and ploughing thesand, and the gravel, and the mud, and sweeping them away into seastowards the North, which are now all fruitful land. That may seemto you like a dream: yet it is true; and some day, when we have anothertalk with Madam How, I will show even a child like you that it was true.

But what could change a beautiful Chine like that at Bournemouthinto a wide sloping glen like this of Bracknell’s Bottom, witha wood like Coombs’, many acres large, in the middle of it?Well now, think. It is a capital plan for finding out Madam How’ssecrets, to see what she might do in one place, and explain by it whatshe has done in another. Suppose now, Madam How had orders tolift up the whole coast of Bournemouth only twenty or even ten feethigher out of the sea than it is now. She could do that easilyenough, for she has been doing so on the coast of South America forages; she has been doing so this very summer in what hasty people wouldcall a hasty, and violent, and ruthless way; though I shall not sayso, for I believe that Lady Why knows best. She is doing so nowsteadily on the west coast of Norway, which is rising quietly—allthat vast range of mountain wall and iron-bound cliff—at the rateof some four feet in a hundred years, without making the least noiseor confusion, or even causing an extra ripple on the sea; so light andgentle, when she will, can Madam How’s strong finger be.

Now, if the mouth of that Chine at Bournemouth was lifted twentyfeet out of the sea, one thing would happen,—that the high tidewould not come up any longer, and wash away the cake of dirt at theentrance, as we saw it do so often. But if the mud stopped there,the mud behind it would come down more slowly, and lodge inside moreand more, till the Chine was half filled-up, and only the upper partof the cliffs continue to be eaten away, above the level where the springsran out. So gradually the Chine, instead of being deep and narrow,would become broad and shallow; and instead of hollowing itself rapidlyafter every shower of rain, as you saw the Chine at Bournemouth doing,would hollow itself out slowly, as this glen is doing now. Andone thing more would happen,—when the sea ceased to gnaw at thefoot of the cliffs outside, and to carry away every stone and grainof sand which fell from them, the cliffs would very soon cease to becliffs; the rain and the frost would still crumble them down, but thedirt that fell would lie at their feet, and gradually make a slope ofdry land, far out where the shallow sea had been; and their tops, insteadof being steep as now, would become smooth and rounded; and so at last,instead of two sharp walls of cliff at the Chine’s mouth, youmight have—just what you have here at the mouth of this glen,—ourMount and the Warren Hill,—long slopes with sheets of driftedgravel and sand at their feet, stretching down into what was once anicy sea, and is now the Vale of Blackwater. And this I reallybelieve Madam How has done simply by lifting Hartford Bridge Flat afew more feet out of the sea, and leaving the rest to her trusty tool,the water in the sky.

That is my guess: and I think it is a good guess, because I haveasked Madam How a hundred different questions about it in the last tenyears, and she always answered them in the same way, saying, “Water,water, you stupid man.” But I do not want you merely todepend on what I say. If you want to understand Madam How, youmust ask her questions yourself, and make up your mind yourself likea man, instead of taking things at hearsay or second-hand, like thevulgar. Mind, by “the vulgar” I do not mean poor people:I mean ignorant and uneducated people, who do not use their brains rightly,though they may be fine ladies, kings, or popes. The Bible says,“Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.”So do you prove my guess, and if it proves good, hold it fast.

And how can I do that?

First, by direct experiment, as it is called. In plain English—gohome and make a little Hartford Bridge Flat in the stable-yard; andthen ask Mrs. How if she will not make a glen in it like this glen here.We will go home and try that. We will make a great flat cake ofclay, and put upon it a cap of sand; and then we will rain upon it outof a watering-pot; and see if Mrs. How does not begin soon to make aglen in the side of the heap, just like those on Hartford Bridge Flat.I believe she will; and certainly, if she does, it will be a fresh proofthat my guess is right. And then we will see whether water willnot make glens of a different shape than these, if it run over soilsof a different kind. We will make a Hartford Bridge Flat turnedupside down—a cake of sand with a cap of clay on the top; andwe will rain on that out of our watering-pot, and see what sort of glenswe make then. I can guess what they will be like, because I haveseen them—steep overhanging cliffs, with very narrow gullies downthem: but you shall try for yourself, and make up your mind whetheryou think me right or wrong. Meanwhile, remember that those gulliestoo will have been made by water.

And there is another way of “verifying my theory,” asit is called; in plain English, seeing if my guess holds good; thatis, to look at other valleys—not merely the valleys round here,but valleys in clay, in chalk, in limestone, in the hard slate rocksuch as you saw in Devonshire—and see whether my guess does nothold good about them too; whether all of them, deep or shallow, broador narrow, rock or earth, may not have been all hollowed out by runningwater. I am sure if you would do this you would find somethingto amuse you, and something to instruct you, whenever you wish.I know that I do. To me the longest railroad journey, insteadof being stupid, is like continually turning over the leaves of a wonderfulbook, or looking at wonderful pictures of old worlds which were madeand unmade thousands of years ago. For I keep looking, not onlyat the railway cuttings, where the bones of the old worlds are laidbare, but at the surface of the ground; at the plains and downs, banksand knolls, hills and mountains; and continually asking Mrs. How whatgave them each its shape: and I will soon teach you to do the same.When you do, I tell you fairly her answer will be in almost every case,“Running water.” Either water running when soft, asit usually is; or water running when it is hard—in plain words,moving ice.

About that moving ice, which is Mrs. How’s stronger spade,I will tell you some other time; and show you, too, the marks of itin every gravel pit about here. But now, I see, you want to aska question; and what is it?

Do I mean to say that water has made great valleys, such as you haveseen paintings and photographs of,—valleys thousands of feet deep,among mountains thousands of feet high?

Yes, I do. But, as I said before, I do not like you to takemy word upon trust. When you are older you shall go to the mountains,and you shall judge for yourself. Still, I must say that I neversaw a valley, however deep, or a cliff, however high, which had notbeen scooped out by water; and that even the mountain-tops which standup miles aloft in jagged peaks and pinnacles against the sky were cutout at first, and are being cut and sharpened still, by little elsesave water, soft and hard; that is, by rain, frost, and ice.

Water, and nothing else, has sawn out such a chasm as that throughwhich the ships run up to Bristol, between Leigh Wood and St. Vincent’sRocks. Water, and nothing else, has shaped those peaks of theMatterhorn, or the Weisshorn, or the Pic du Midi of the Pyrenees, ofwhich you have seen sketches and photographs. Just so water mightsaw out Hartford Bridge Flat, if it had time enough, into a labyrinthof valleys, and hills, and peaks standing alone; as it has done alreadyby Ambarrow, and Edgbarrow, and the Folly Hill on the other side ofthe vale.

I see you are astonished at the notion that water can make Alps.But it was just because I knew you would be astonished at Madam How’sdoing so great a thing with so simple a tool, that I began by showingyou how she was doing the same thing in a small way here upon theseflats. For the safest way to learn Madam How’s methods isto watch her at work in little corners at commonplace business, whichwill not astonish or frighten us, nor put huge hasty guesses and dreamsinto our heads. Sir Isaac Newton, some will tell you, found outthe great law of gravitation, which holds true of all the suns and starsin heaven, by watching an apple fall: and even if he did not find itout so, he found it out, we know, by careful thinking over the plainand commonplace fact, that things have weight. So do you be humbleand patient, and watch Madam How at work on little things. Forthat is the way to see her at work upon all space and time.

What? you have a question more to ask?

Oh! I talked about Madam How lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat.How could she do that? My dear child, that is a long story, andI must tell it you some other time. Meanwhile, did you ever seethe lid of a kettle rise up and shake when the water inside boiled?Of course; and of course, too, remember that Madam How must have doneit. Then think over between this and our next talk, what thatcan possibly have to do with her lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat.But you have been longing, perhaps, all this time to hear more aboutLady Why, and why she set Madam How to make Bracknell’s Bottom.

My dear child, the only answer I dare give to that is: Whatever otherpurposes she may have made it for, she made it at least for this—thatyou and I should come to it this day, and look at, and talk over it,and become thereby wiser and more earnest, and we will hope more humbleand better people. Whatever else Lady Why may wish or not wish,this she wishes always, to make all men wise and all men good.For what is written of her whom, as in a parable, I have called LadyWhy?

“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, beforeHis works of old.

“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or everthe earth was.

“When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when therewere no fountains abounding with water.

“Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was Ibrought forth:

“While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, northe highest part of the dust of the world.

“When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compassupon the face of the depth:

“When He established the clouds above: when He strengthenedthe fountains of the deep:

“When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters shouldnot pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth:

“Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was dailyHis delight, rejoicing always before Him:

“Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and my delightswere with the sons of men.

“Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessedare they that keep my ways.”

That we can say, for it has been said for us already. But beyondthat we can say, and need say, very little. We were not there,as we read in the Book of Job, when God laid the foundations of theearth. “We see,” says St. Paul, “as in a glassdarkly, and only know in part.” “For who,” heasks again, “has known the mind of the Lord, or who hath beenHis counsellor? . . . For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are allthings: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”Therefore we must not rashly say, this or that is Why a thing has happened;nor invent what are called “final causes,” which are notLady Why herself, but only our little notions of what Lady Why has done,or rather what we should have done if we had been in her place.It is not, indeed, by thinking that we shall find out anything aboutLady Why. She speaks not to our eyes or to our brains, like MadamHow, but to that inner part of us which we call our hearts and spirits,and which will endure when eyes and brain are turned again to dust.If your heart be pure and sober, gentle and truthful, then Lady Whyspeaks to you without words, and tells you things which Madam How andall her pupils, the men of science, can never tell. When you lie,it may be, on a painful sick-bed, but with your mother’s handin yours; when you sit by her, looking up into her loving eyes; whenyou gaze out towards the setting sun, and fancy golden capes and islandsin the clouds, and seas and lakes in the blue sky, and the infiniterest and peace of the far west sends rest and peace into your youngheart, till you sit silent and happy, you know not why; when sweet musicfills your heart with noble and tender instincts which need no thoughtsor words; ay, even when you watch the raging thunderstorm, and feelit to be, in spite of its great awfulness, so beautiful that you cannotturn your eyes away: at such times as these Lady Why is speaking toyour soul of souls, and saying, “My child, this world is a newplace, and strange, and often terrible: but be not afraid. Allwill come right at last. Rest will conquer Restlessness; Faithwill conquer Fear; Order will conquer Disorder; Health will conquerSickness; Joy will conquer Sorrow; Pleasure will conquer Pain; Lifewill conquer Death; Right will conquer Wrong. All will be wellat last. Keep your soul and body pure, humble, busy, pious—inone word, be good: and ere you die, or after you die, you may have someglimpse of Me, the Everlasting Why: and hear with the ears, not of yourbody but of your spirit, men and all rational beings, plants and animals,ay, the very stones beneath your feet, the clouds above your head, theplanets and the suns away in farthest space, singing eternally,

“‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honourand power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure theyare and were created.”’

CHAPTER II—EARTHQUAKES

So? You have been looking at that beautiful drawing of theruin of Arica in the Illustrated London News: and it has puzzledyou and made you sad. You want to know why God killed all thosepeople—mothers among them, too, and little children?

Alas, my dear child! who am I that I should answer you that?

Have you done wrong in asking me? No, my dear child; no.You have asked me because you are a human being and a child of God,and not merely a cleverer sort of animal, an ape who can read and writeand cast accounts. Therefore it is that you cannot be content,and ought not to be content, with asking how things happen, but mustgo on to ask why. You cannot be content with knowing the causesof things; and if you knew all the natural science that ever was orever will be known to men, that would not satisfy you; for it wouldonly tell you the causes of things, while your souls want toknow the reasons of things besides; and though I may not be ableto tell you the reasons of things, or show you aught but a tiny glimpsehere and there of that which I called the other day the glory of LadyWhy, yet I believe that somehow, somewhen, somewhere, you will learnsomething of the reason of things. For that thirst to know whywas put into the hearts of little children by God Himself; and I believethat God would never have given them that thirst if He had not meantto satisfy it.

There—you do not understand me. I trust that you willunderstand me some day. Meanwhile, I think—I only say Ithink—you know I told you how humble we must be wheneverwe speak of Lady Why—that we may guess at something like a goodreason for the terrible earthquakes in South America. I do notwish to be hard upon poor people in great affliction: but I cannot helpthinking that they have been doing for hundreds of years past somethingvery like what the Bible calls “tempting God”—stakingtheir property and their lives upon the chances of no earthquakes coming,while they ought to have known that an earthquake might come any day.They have fulfilled (and little thought I that it would be fulfilledso soon) the parable that I told you once, of the nation of the Do-as-you-likes,who lived careless and happy at the foot of the burning mountain, andwould not be warned by the smoke that came out of the top, or by theslag and cinders which lay all about them; till the mountain blew up,and destroyed them miserably.

Then I think that they ought to have expected an earthquake.

Well—it is not for us to judge any one, especially if theylive in a part of the world in which we have not been ourselves.But I think that we know, and that they ought to have known, enoughabout earthquakes to have been more prudent than they have been formany a year. At least we will hope that, though they would notlearn their lesson till this year, they will learn it now, and willlisten to the message which I think Madam How has brought them, spokenin a voice of thunder, and written in letters of flame.

And what is that?

My dear child, if the landlord of our house was in the habit of pullingthe roof down upon our heads, and putting gunpowder under the foundationsto blow us up, do you not think we should know what he meant, even thoughhe never spoke a word? He would be very wrong in behaving so,of course: but one thing would be certain,—that he did not intendus to live in his house any longer if he could help it; and was givingus, in a very rough fashion, notice to quit. And so it seems tome that these poor Spanish Americans have received from the Landlordof all landlords, who can do no wrong, such a notice to quit as perhapsno people ever had before; which says to them in unmistakable words,“You must leave this country: or perish.” And I believethat that message, like all Lady Why’s messages, is at heart amerciful and loving one; that if these Spaniards would leave the westerncoast of Peru, and cross the Andes into the green forests of the easternside of their own land, they might not only live free from earthquakes,but (if they would only be good and industrious) become a great, rich,and happy nation, instead of the idle, and useless, and I am afraidnot over good, people which they have been. For in that easternpart of their own land God’s gifts are waiting for them, in aparadise such as I can neither describe nor you conceive;—preciouswoods, fruits, drugs, and what not—boundless wealth, in one word—waitingfor them to send it all down the waters of the mighty river Amazon,enriching us here in the Old World, and enriching themselves there inthe New. If they would only go and use these gifts of God, insteadof neglecting them as they have been doing for now three hundred years,they would be a blessing to the earth, instead of being—that whichthey have been.

God grant, my dear child, that these poor people may take the warningthat has been sent to them; “The voice of God revealed in facts,”as the great Lord Bacon would have called it, and see not only thatGod has bidden them leave the place where they are now, but has preparedfor them, in their own land, a home a thousand times better than thatin which they now live.

But you ask, How ought they to have known that an earthquake wouldcome?

Well, to make you understand that, we must talk a little about earthquakes,and what makes them; and in order to find out that, let us try the verysimplest cause of which we can think. That is the wise and scientificplan.

Now, whatever makes these earthquakes must be enormously strong;that is certain. And what is the strongest thing you know of inthe world? Think . . .

Gunpowder?

Well, gunpowder is strong sometimes: but not always. You maycarry it in a flask, or in your hand, and then it is weak enough.It only becomes strong by being turned into gas and steam. Butsteam is always strong. And if you look at a railway engine, stillmore if you had ever seen—which God forbid you should—aboiler explosion, you would agree with me, that the strongest thingwe know of in the world is steam.

Now I think that we can explain almost, if not quite, all that weknow about earthquakes, if we believe that on the whole they are causedby steam and other gases expanding, that is, spreading out, with wonderfulquickness and strength. Of course there must be something to makethem expand, and that is heat. But we will not talk ofthat yet.

Now do you remember that riddle which I put to you the other day?—“Whathad the rattling of the lid of the kettle to do with Hartford BridgeFlat being lifted out of the ancient sea?”

The answer to the riddle, I believe, is—Steam has done both.The lid of the kettle rattles, because the expanding steam escapes inlittle jets, and so causes a lid-quake. Now suppose thatthere was steam under the earth trying to escape, and the earth in oneplace was loose and yet hard, as the lid of the kettle is loose andyet hard, with cracks in it, it may be, like the crack between the edgeof the lid and the edge of the kettle itself: might not the steam tryto escape through the cracks, and rattle the surface of the earth, andso cause an earthquake?

So the steam would escape generally easily, and would only make apassing rattle, like the earthquake of which the famous jester CharlesSelwyn said that it was quite a young one, so tame that you might havestroked it; like that which I myself once felt in the Pyrenees, whichgave me very solemn thoughts after a while, though at first I did nothingbut laugh at it; and I will tell you why.

I was travelling in the Pyrenees; and I came one evening to the loveliestspot—a glen, or rather a vast crack in the mountains, so narrowthat there was no room for anything at the bottom of it, save a torrentroaring between walls of polished rock. High above the torrentthe road was cut out among the cliffs, and above the road rose morecliffs, with great black cavern mouths, hundreds of feet above our heads,out of each of which poured in foaming waterfalls streams large enoughto turn a mill, and above them mountains piled on mountains, all coveredwith woods of box, which smelt rich and hot and musky in the warm springair. Among the box-trees and fallen boulders grew hepaticas, blueand white and red, such as you see in the garden; and little stars ofgentian, more azure than the azure sky. But out of the box-woodsabove rose giant silver firs, clothing the cliffs and glens with tallblack spires, till they stood out at last in a jagged saw-edge againstthe purple evening sky, along the mountain ranges, thousands of feetaloft; and beyond them again, at the head of the valley, rose vast conesof virgin snow, miles away in reality, but looking so brilliant andso near that one fancied at the first moment that one could have touchedthem with one’s hand. Snow-white they stood, the gloriousthings, seven thousand feet into the air; and I watched their beautifulwhite sides turn rose-colour in the evening sun, and when he set, fadeinto dull cold gray, till the bright moon came out to light them uponce more. When I was tired of wondering and admiring, I wentinto bed; and there I had a dream—such a dream as Alice had whenshe went into Wonderland—such a dream as I dare say you may havehad ere now. Some noise or stir puts into your fancy as you sleepa whole long dream to account for it; and yet that dream, which seemsto you to be hours long, has not taken up a second of time; for thevery same noise which begins the dream, wakes you at the end of it:and so it was with me. I dreamed that some English people hadcome into the hotel where I was, and were sleeping in the room underneathme; and that they had quarrelled and fought, and broke their bed downwith a tremendous crash, and that I must get up, and stop the fight;and at that moment I woke and heard coming up the valley from the northsuch a roar as I never heard before or since; as if a hundred railwaytrains were rolling underground; and just as it passed under my bedthere was a tremendous thump, and I jumped out of bed quicker than Iever did in my life, and heard the roaring sound die away as it rolledup the valley towards the peaks of snow. Still I had in my headthis notion of the Englishmen fighting in the room below. Butthen I recollected that no Englishmen had come in the night before,and that I had been in the room below, and that there was no bed init. Then I opened my window—a woman screamed, a dog barked,some co*cks and hens cackled in a very disturbed humour, and then I couldhear nothing but the roaring of the torrent a hundred feet below.And then it flashed across me what all the noise was about; and I burstout laughing and said “It is only an earthquake,” and wentto bed

Next morning I inquired whether any one had heard a noise.No, nobody had heard anything. And the driver who had broughtme up the valley only winked, but did not choose to speak. Atlast at breakfast I asked the pretty little maid who waited what wasthe meaning of the noise I heard in the night, and she answered, tomy intense amusem*nt, “Ah! bah! ce n’etait qu’un tremblementde terre; il y en a ici toutes les six semaines.” Now thesecret was out. The little maid, I found, came from the lowlandfar away, and did not mind telling the truth: but the good people ofthe place were afraid to let out that they had earthquakes every sixweeks, for fear of frightening visitors away: and because they werereally very good people, and very kind to me, I shall not tell you whatthe name of the place is.

Of course after that I could do no less than ask Madam How, verycivilly, how she made earthquakes in that particular place, hundredsof miles away from any burning mountain? And this was the answerI thought she gave, though I am not so conceited as to say Iam sure.

As I had come up the valley I had seen that the cliffs were all beautifulgray limestone marble; but just at this place they were replaced bygranite, such as you may see in London Bridge or at Aberdeen.I do not mean that the limestone changed to granite, but that the granitehad risen up out of the bottom of the valley, and had carried the limestone(I suppose) up on its back hundreds of feet into the air. Thosecaves with the waterfalls pouring from their mouths were all on onelevel, at the top of the granite, and the bottom of the limestone.That was to be expected; for, as I will explain to you some day, watercan make caves easily in limestone: but never, I think, in granite.But I knew that besides these cold springs which came out of the caves,there were hot springs also, full of curious chemical salts, just belowthe very house where I was in. And when I went to look at them,I found that they came out of the rock just where the limestone andthe granite joined. “Ah,” I said, “now I thinkI have Madam How’s answer. The lid of one of her great steamboilers is rather shaky and cracked just here, because the granite hasbroken and torn the limestone as it lifted it up; and here is the hotwater out of the boiler actually oozing out of the crack; and the earthquakeI heard last night was simply the steam rumbling and thumping inside,and trying to get out.”

And then, my dear child, I fell into a more serious mood. Isaid to myself, “If that stream had been a little, only a littlestronger, or if the rock above it had been only a little weaker, itwould have been no laughing matter then; the village might have beenshaken to the ground; the rocks hurled into the torrent; jets of steamand of hot water, mixed, it may be, with deadly gases, have roared outof the riven ground; that might have happened here, in short, whichhas happened and happens still in a hundred places in the world, wheneverthe rocks are too weak to stand the pressure of the steam below, andthe solid earth bursts as an engine boiler bursts when the steam withinit is too strong.” And when those thoughts came into mymind, I was in no humour to jest any more about “young earthquakes,”or “Madam How’s boilers;” but rather to say with thewise man of old, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we arenot consumed.”

Most strange, most terrible also, are the tricks which this undergroundsteam plays. It will make the ground, which seems to us so hardand firm, roll and rock in waves, till people are sea-sick, as on boarda ship; and that rocking motion (which is the most common) will often,when it is but slight, set the bells ringing in the steeples, or makethe furniture, and things on shelves, jump about quaintly enough.It will make trees bend to and fro, as if a wind was blowing throughthem; open doors suddenly, and shut them again with a slam; make thetimbers of the floors and roofs creak, as they do in a ship at sea;or give men such frights as one of the dock-keepers at Liverpool gotin the earthquake in 1863, when his watchbox rocked so, that he thoughtsome one was going to pitch him over into the dock. But theseare only little hints and warnings of what it can do. When itis strong enough, it will rock down houses and churches into heaps ofruins, or, if it leaves them standing, crack them from top to bottom,so that they must be pulled down and rebuilt.

You saw those pictures of the ruins of Arica, about which our talkbegan; and from them you can guess well enough for yourself what a townlooks like which has been ruined by an earthquake. Of the miseryand the horror which follow such a ruin I will not talk to you, nordarken your young spirit with sad thoughts which grown people must face,and ought to face. But the strangeness of some of the tricks whichthe earthquake shocks play is hardly to be explained, even by scientificmen. Sometimes, it would seem, the force runs round, making thesolid ground eddy, as water eddies in a brook. For it will makestraight rows of trees crooked; it will twist whole walls round—orrather the ground on which the walls stand—without throwing themdown; it will shift the stones of a pillar one on the other sideways,as if a giant had been trying to spin it like a teetotum, and so screwedit half in pieces. There is a story told by a wise man, who sawthe place himself, of the whole furniture of one house being hurledaway by an earthquake, and buried under the ruins of another house;and of things carried hundreds of yards off, so that the neighbourswent to law to settle who was the true owner of them. Sometimes,again, the shock seems to come neither horizontally in waves, nor circularlyin eddies, but vertically, that is, straight up from below; and thenthings—and people, alas! sometimes—are thrown up off theearth high into the air, just as things spring up off the table if youstrike it smartly enough underneath. By that same law (for thereis a law for every sort of motion) it is that the earthquake shock sometimeshurls great rocks off a cliff into the valley below. The shockruns through the mountain till it comes to the cliff at the end of it;and then the face of the cliff, if it be at all loose, flies off intothe air. You may see the very same thing happen, if you will putmarbles or billiard-balls in a row touching each other, and strike theone nearest you smartly in the line of the row. All the ballsstand still, except the last one, and that flies off. The shock,like the earthquake shock, has run through them all; but only the endone, which had nothing beyond it but soft air, has been moved; and whenyou grow old, and learn mathematics, you will know the law of motionaccording to which that happens, and learn to apply what the billiard-ballshave taught you, to explain the wonders of an earthquake. Forin this case, as in so many more, you must watch Madam How at work onlittle and common things, to find out how she works in great and rareones. That is why Solomon says that “a fool’s eyesare in the ends of the earth,” because he is always looking outfor strange things which he has not seen, and which he could not understandif he saw; instead of looking at the petty commonplace matters whichare about his feet all day long, and getting from them sound knowledge,and the art of getting more sound knowledge still.

Another terrible destruction which the earthquake brings, when itis close to the seaside, is the wash of a great sea wave, such as sweptin last year upon the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies; suchas swept in upon the coast of Peru this year. The sea moans, andsinks back, leaving the shore dry; and then comes in from the offinga mighty wall of water, as high as, or higher than, many a tall house;sweeps far inland, washing away quays and houses, and carrying greatships in with it; and then sweeps back again, leaving the ships highand dry, as ships were left in Peru this year.

Now, how is that wave made? Let us think. Perhaps inmany ways. But two of them I will tell you as simply as I can,because they seem the most likely, and probably the most common.

Suppose, as the earthquake shock ran on, making the earth under thesea heave and fall in long earth-waves, the sea-bottom sank down.Then the water on it would sink down too, and leave the shore dry; tillthe sea-bottom rose again, and hurled the water up again against theland. This is one way of explaining it, and it may be true.For certain it is, that earthquakes do move the bottom of the sea; andcertain, too, that they move the water of the sea also, and with tremendousforce. For ships at sea during an earthquake feel such a blowfrom it (though it does them no harm) that the sailors often rush upondeck fancying that they have struck upon a rock; and the force whichcould give a ship, floating in water, such a blow as that, would bestrong enough to hurl thousands of tons of water up the beach, and onto the land.

But there is another way of accounting for this great sea wave, whichI fancy comes true sometimes.

Suppose you put an empty india-rubber ball into water, and then blowinto it through a pipe. Of course, you know, as the ball filled,the upper side of it would rise out of the water. Now, supposethere were a party of little ants moving about upon that ball, and fancyingit a great island, or perhaps the whole world—what would theythink of the ball’s filling and growing bigger?

If they could see the sides of the basin or tub in which the ballwas, and were sure that they did not move, then they would soon judgeby them that they themselves were moving, and that the ball was risingout of the water. But if the ants were so short-sighted that theycould not see the sides of the basin, they would be apt to make a mistake,because they would then be like men on an island out of sight of anyother land. Then it would be impossible further to tell whetherthey were moving up, or whether the water was moving down; whether theirball was rising out of the water, or the water was sinking away fromthe ball. They would probably say, “The water is sinkingand leaving the ball dry.”

Do you understand that? Then think what would happen if youpricked a hole in the ball. The air inside would come hissingout, and the ball would sink again into the water. But the antswould probably fancy the very opposite. Their little heads wouldbe full of the notion that the ball was solid and could not move, justas our heads are full of the notion that the earth is solid and cannotmove; and they would say, “Ah! here is the water rising again.”Just so, I believe, when the sea seems to ebb away during the earthquake,the land is really being raised out of the sea, hundreds of miles ofcoast, perhaps, or a whole island, at once, by the force of the steamand gas imprisoned under the ground. That steam stretches andstrains the solid rocks below, till they can bear no more, and snap,and crack, with frightful roar and clang; then out of holes and chasmsin the ground rush steam, gases—often foul and poisonous ones—hotwater, mud, flame, strange stones—all signs that the great boilerdown below has burst at last.

Then the strain is eased. The earth sinks together again, asthe ball did when it was pricked; and sinks lower, perhaps, than itwas before: and back rushes the sea, which the earth had thrust awaywhile it rose, and sweeps in, destroying all before it.

Of course, there is a great deal more to be said about all this:but I have no time to tell you now. You will read it, I hope,for yourselves when you grow up, in the writings of far wiser men thanI. Or perhaps you may feel for yourselves in foreign lands theactual shock of a great earthquake, or see its work fresh done aroundyou. And if ever that happens, and you be preserved during thedanger, you will learn for yourself, I trust, more about earthquakesthan I can teach you, if you will only bear in mind the simple generalrules for understanding the “how” of them which I have givenyou here.

But you do not seem satisfied yet? What is it that you wantto know?

Oh! There was an earthquake here in England the other night,while you were asleep; and that seems to you too near to be pleasant.Will there ever be earthquakes in England which will throw houses down,and bury people in the ruins?

My dear child, I think you may set your heart at rest upon that point.As far as the history of England goes back, and that is more than athousand years, there is no account of any earthquake which has doneany serious damage, or killed, I believe, a single human being.The little earthquakes which are sometimes felt in England run generallyup one line of country, from Devonshire through Wales, and up the Severnvalley into Cheshire and Lancashire, and the south-west of Scotland;and they are felt more smartly there, I believe, because the rocks areharder there than here, and more tossed about by earthquakes which happenedages and ages ago, long before man lived on the earth. I willshow you the work of these earthquakes some day, in the tilting andtwisting of the layers of rock, and in the cracks (faults, as they arecalled) which run through them in different directions. I showedyou some once, if you recollect, in the chalk cliff at Ramsgate—twoset of cracks, sloping opposite ways, which I told you were made bytwo separate sets of earthquakes, long, long ago, perhaps while thechalk was still at the bottom of a deep sea. But even in the rockyparts of England the earthquake-force seems to have all but died out.Perhaps the crust of the earth has become too thick and solid thereto be much shaken by the gases and steam below. In this easternpart of England, meanwhile, there is but little chance that an earthquakewill ever do much harm, because the ground here, for thousands of feetdown, is not hard and rocky, but soft—sands, clays, chalk, andsands again; clays, soft limestones, and clays again—which allact as buffers to deaden the earthquake shocks, and deaden too the earthquakenoise.

And how?

Put your ear to one end of a soft bolster, and let some one hit theother end. You will hear hardly any noise, and will not feel theblow at all. Put your ear to one end of a hard piece of wood,and let some one hit the other. You will hear a smart tap; andperhaps feel a smart tap, too. When you are older, and learn thelaws of sound, and of motion among the particles of bodies, you willknow why. Meanwhile you may comfort yourself with the thoughtthat Madam How has (doubtless by command of Lady Why) prepared a safesoft bed for this good people of Britain—not that they may lieand sleep on it, but work and till, plant and build and manufacture,and thrive in peace and comfort, we will trust and pray, for many ahundred years to come. All that the steam inside the earth islikely to do to us, is to raise parts of this island (as Hartford BridgeFlats were raised, ages ago, out of the old icy sea) so slowly, probably,that no man can tell whether they are rising or not. Or again,the steam-power may be even now dying out under our island, and lettingparts of it sink slowly into the sea, as some wise friends of mine thinkthat the fens in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire are sinking now. Ihave shown you where that kind of work has gone on in Norfolk; how thebrow of Sandringham Hill was once a sea-cliff, and Dersingham Bog atit* foot a shallow sea; and therefore that the land has risen there.How, again, at Hunstanton Station there is a beach of sea-shells twentyfeet above high-water mark, showing that the land has risen there likewise.And how, farther north again, at Brancaster, there are forests of oak,and fir, and alder, with their roots still in the soil, far below high-watermark, and only uncovered at low tide; which is a plain sign that therethe land has sunk. You surely recollect the sunken forest at Brancaster,and the beautiful shells we picked up in its gullies, and the millionsof live Pholases boring into the clay and peat which once was firm dryland, fed over by giant oxen, and giant stags likewise, and perhapsby the mammoth himself, the great woolly elephant whose teeth the fishermendredge up in the sea outside? You recollect that? Then rememberthat as that Norfolk shore has changed, so slowly but surely is thewhole world changing around us. Hartford Bridge Flat here, forinstance, how has it changed! Ages ago it was the gravelly bottomof a sea. Then the steam-power underground raised it up slowly,through long ages, till it became dry land. And ages hence, perhaps,it will have become a sea-bottom once more. Washed slowly by therain, or sunk by the dying out of the steam-power underground, it willgo down again to the place from whence it came. Seas will rollwhere we stand now, and new lands will rise where seas now roll.For all things on this earth, from the tiniest flower to the tallestmountain, change and change all day long. Every atom of mattermoves perpetually; and nothing “continues in one stay.”The solid-seeming earth on which you stand is but a heaving bubble,bursting ever and anon in this place and in that. Only above all,and through all, and with all, is One who does not move nor change,but is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. And on Him, mychild, and not on this bubble of an earth, do you and I, and all mankind,depend.

But I have not yet told you why the Peruvians ought to have expectedan earthquake. True. I will tell you another time.

CHAPTER III—VOLCANOS

You want to know why the Spaniards in Peru and Ecuador should haveexpected an earthquake.

Because they had had so many already. The shaking of the groundin their country had gone on perpetually, till they had almost ceasedto care about it, always hoping that no very heavy shock would come;and being, now and then, terribly mistaken.

For instance, in the province of Quito, in the year 1797, from thirtyto forty thousand people were killed at once by an earthquake.One would have thought that warning enough: but the warning was nottaken: and now, this very year, thousands more have been killed in thevery same country, in the very same way.

They might have expected as much. For their towns are built,most of them, close to volcanos—some of the highest and most terriblein the world. And wherever there are volcanos there will be earthquakes.You may have earthquakes without volcanos, now and then; but volcanoswithout earthquakes, seldom or never.

How does that come to pass? Does a volcano make earthquakes?No; we may rather say that earthquakes are trying to make volcanos.For volcanos are the holes which the steam underground has burst openthat it may escape into the air above. They are the chimneys ofthe great blast-furnaces underground, in which Madam How pounds andmelts up the old rocks, to make them into new ones, and spread themout over the land above.

And are there many volcanos in the world? You have heard ofVesuvius, of course, in Italy; and Etna, in Sicily; and Hecla, in Iceland.And you have heard, too, of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, and ofPele’s Hair—the yellow threads of lava, like fine spun glass,which are blown from off its pools of fire, and which the Sandwich Islandersbelieved to be the hair of a goddess who lived in the crater;—andyou have read, too, I hope, in Miss Yonge’s Book of GoldenDeeds, the noble story of the Christian chieftainess who, in orderto persuade her subjects to become Christians also, went down into thecrater and defied the goddess of the volcano, and came back unhurt andtriumphant.

But if you look at the map, you will see that there are many, manymore. Get Keith Johnston’s Physical Atlas from the schoolroom—ofcourse it is there (for a schoolroom without a physical atlas is likea needle without an eye)—and look at the map which is called “Phenomenaof Volcanic Action.”

You will see in it many red dots, which mark the volcanos which arestill burning: and black dots, which mark those which have been burningat some time or other, not very long ago, scattered about the world.Sometimes they are single, like the red dot at Otaheite, or at EasterIsland in the Pacific. Sometimes the are in groups, or clusters,like the cluster at the Sandwich Islands, or in the Friendly Islands,or in New Zealand. And if we look in the Atlantic, we shall seefour clusters: one in poor half-destroyed Iceland, in the far north,one in the Azores, one in the Canaries, and one in the Cape de Verds.And there is one dot in those Canaries which we must not overlook, forit is no other than the famous Peak of Teneriffe, a volcano which ishardly burnt out yet, and may burn up again any day, standing up outof the sea more than 12,000 feet high still, and once it must have beendouble that height. Some think that it is perhaps the true MountAtlas, which the old Greeks named when first they ventured out of theStraits of Gibraltar down the coast of Africa, and saw the great peakfar to the westward, with the clouds cutting off its top; and said thatit was a mighty giant, the brother of the Evening Star, who held upthe sky upon his shoulders, in the midst of the Fortunate Islands, thegardens of the daughter of the Evening Star, full of strange goldenfruits; and that Perseus had turned him into stone, when he passed himwith the Gorgon’s Head.

But you will see, too, that most of these red and black dots runin crooked lines; and that many of the clusters run in lines likewise.

Look at one line: by far the largest on the earth. You willlearn a good deal of geography from it.

The red dots begin at a place called the Terribles, on the east sideof the Bay of Bengal. They run on, here and there, along the islandsof Sumatra and Java, and through the Spice Islands; and at New Guineathe line of red dots forks. One branch runs south-east, throughislands whose names you never heard, to the Friendly Islands, and toNew Zealand. The other runs north, through the Philippines, throughJapan, through Kamschatka; and then there is a little break of sea,between Asia and America: but beyond it, the red dots begin again inthe Aleutian Islands, and then turn down the whole west coast of America,down from Mount Elias (in what was, till lately, Russian America) towardsBritish Columbia. Then, after a long gap, there are one or twoin Lower California (and we must not forget the terrible earthquakewhich has just shaken San Francisco, between those two last places);and when we come down to Mexico we find the red dots again plentiful,and only too plentiful; for they mark the great volcanic line of Mexico,of which you will read, I hope, some day, in Humboldt’s works.But the line does not stop there. After the little gap of theIsthmus of Panama, it begins again in Quito, the very country whichhas just been shaken, and in which stand the huge volcanos Chimborazo,Pasto, Antisana, Cotopaxi, Pichincha, Tunguragua,—smooth conesfrom 15,000 to 20,000 feet high, shining white with snow, till the heatinside melts it off, and leaves the cinders of which the peaks are madeall black and ugly among the clouds, ready to burst in smoke and fire.South of them again, there is a long gap, and then another line of reddots—Arequiba, Chipicani, Gualatieri, Atacama,—as high as,or higher than those in Quito; and this, remember, is the other countrywhich has just been shaken. On the sea-shore below those volcanosstood the hapless city of Arica, whose ruins we saw in the picture.Then comes another gap; and then a line of more volcanos in Chili, atthe foot of which happened that fearful earthquake of 1835 (besidesmany more) of which you will read some day in that noble book TheVoyage of the Beagle; and so the line of dots runs down to the southernmostpoint of America.

What a line we have traced! Long enough to go round the worldif it were straight. A line of holes out of which steam, and heat,and cinders, and melted stones are rushing up, perpetually, in one placeand another. Now the holes in this line which are near each otherhave certainly something to do with each other. For instance,when the earth shook the other day round the volcanos of Quito, it shookalso round the volcanos of Peru, though they were 600 miles away.And there are many stories of earthquakes being felt, or awful undergroundthunder heard, while volcanos were breaking out hundreds of miles away.I will give you a very curious instance of that.

If you look at the West Indies on the map, you will see a line ofred dots runs through the Windward Islands: there are two volcanos inthem, one in Guadaloupe, and one in St. Vincent (I will tell you a curiousstory, presently, about that last), and little volcanos (if they haveever been real volcanos at all), which now only send out mud, in Trinidad.There the red dots stop: but then begins along the north coast of SouthAmerica a line of mountain country called Cumana, and Caraccas, whichhas often been horribly shaken by earthquakes. Now once, whenthe volcano in St. Vincent began to pour out a vast stream of meltedlava, a noise like thunder was heard underground, over thousands ofsquare miles beyond those mountains, in the plains of Calabozo, andon the banks of the Apure, more than 600 miles away from the volcano,—aplain sign that there was something underground which joined them together,perhaps a long crack in the earth. Look for yourselves at theplaces, and you will see that (as Humboldt says) it is as strange asif an eruption of Mount Vesuvius was heard in the north of France.

So it seems as if these lines of volcanos stood along cracks in therind of the earth, through which the melted stuff inside was for evertrying to force its way; and that, as the crack got stopped up in oneplace by the melted stuff cooling and hardening again into stone, itwas burst in another place, and a fresh volcano made, or an old onere-opened.

Now we can understand why earthquakes should be most common roundvolcanos; and we can understand, too, why they would be worst beforea volcano breaks out, because then the steam is trying to escape; andwe can understand, too, why people who live near volcanos are glad tosee them blazing and spouting, because then they have hope that thesteam has found its way out, and will not make earthquakes any morefor a while. But still that is merely foolish speculation on chance.Volcanos can never be trusted. No one knows when one will breakout, or what it will do; and those who live close to them—as thecity of Naples is close to Mount Vesuvius—must not be astonishedif they are blown up or swallowed up, as that great and beautiful cityof Naples may be without a warning, any day.

For what happened to that same Mount Vesuvius nearly 1800 years ago,in the old Roman times? For ages and ages it had been lying quiet,like any other hill. Beautiful cities were built at its foot,filled with people who were as handsome, and as comfortable, and (Iam afraid) as wicked, as people ever were on earth. Fair gardens,vineyards, olive-yards, covered the mountain slopes. It was heldto be one of the Paradises of the world. As for the mountain’sbeing a burning mountain, who ever thought of that? To be sure,on the top of it was a great round crater, or cup, a mile or more across,and a few hundred yards deep. But that was all overgrown withbushes and wild vines, full of boars and deer. What sign of firewas there in that? To be sure, also, there was an ugly place belowby the sea-shore, called the Phlegræn fields, where smoke andbrimstone came out of the ground, and a lake called Avernus over whichpoisonous gases hung, and which (old stories told) was one of the mouthsof the Nether Pit. But what of that? It had never harmedany one, and how could it harm them?

So they all lived on, merrily and happily enough, till, in the yearA.D. 79 (that was eight years, you know, after the Emperor Titus destroyedJerusalem), there was stationed in the Bay of Naples a Roman admiral,called Pliny, who was also a very studious and learned man, and authorof a famous old book on natural history. He was staying on shorewith his sister; and as he sat in his study she called him out to seea strange cloud which had been hanging for some time over the top ofMount Vesuvius. It was in shape just like a pine-tree; not, ofcourse, like one of our branching Scotch firs here, but like an Italianstone pine, with a long straight stem and a flat parasol-shaped top.Sometimes it was blackish, sometimes spotted; and the good Admiral Pliny,who was always curious about natural science, ordered his cutter andwent away across the bay to see what it could be. Earthquake shockshad been very common for the last few days; but I do not suppose thatPliny had any notion that the earthquakes and the cloud had aught todo with each other. However, he soon found out that they had,and to his cost. When he got near the opposite shore some of thesailors met him and entreated him to turn back. Cinders and pumice-stoneswere falling down from the sky, and flames breaking out of the mountainabove. But Pliny would go on: he said that if people were in danger,it was his duty to help them; and that he must see this strange cloud,and note down the different shapes into which it changed. Butthe hot ashes fell faster and faster; the sea ebbed out suddenly, andleft them nearly dry, and Pliny turned away to a place called Stabiæ,to the house of his friend Pomponianus, who was just going to escapein a boat. Brave Pliny told him not to be afraid, ordered hisbath like a true Roman gentleman, and then went into dinner with a cheerfulface. Flames came down from the mountain, nearer and nearer asthe night drew on; but Pliny persuaded his friend that they were onlyfires in some villages from which the peasants had fled, and then wentto bed and slept soundly. However, in the middle of the nightthey found the courtyard being fast filled with cinders, and, if theyhad not woke up the Admiral in time, he would never have been able toget out of the house. The earthquake shocks grew stronger andfiercer, till the house was ready to fall; and Pliny and his friend,and the sailors and the slaves, all fled into the open fields, amida shower of stones and cinders, tying pillows over their heads to preventtheir being beaten down. The day had come by this time, but notthe dawn—for it was still pitch dark as night. They wentdown to their boats upon the shore; but the sea raged so horribly thatthere was no getting on board of them. Then Pliny grew tired,and made his men spread a sail for him, and lay down on it; but therecame down upon them a rush of flames, and a horrible smell of sulphur,and all ran for their lives. Some of the slaves tried to helpthe Admiral upon his legs; but he sank down again overpowered with thebrimstone fumes, and so was left behind. When they came back again,there he lay dead, but with his clothes in order and his face as quietas if he had been only sleeping. And that was the end of a braveand learned man—a martyr to duty and to the love of science.

But what was going on in the meantime? Under clouds of ashes,cinders, mud, lava, three of those happy cities were buried at once—Herculaneum,Pompeii, Stabiæ. They were buried just as the people hadfled from them, leaving the furniture and the earthenware, often evenjewels and gold, behind, and here and there among them a human beingwho had not had time to escape from the dreadful deluge of dust.The ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii have been dug into since; and thepaintings, especially in Pompeii, are found upon the walls still fresh,preserved from the air by the ashes which have covered them in.When you are older you perhaps will go to Naples, and see in its famousmuseum the curiosities which have been dug out of the ruined cities;and you will walk, I suppose, along the streets of Pompeii and see thewheel-tracks in the pavement, along which carts and chariots rumbled2000 years ago. Meanwhile, if you go nearer home, to the CrystalPalace and to the Pompeian Court, as it is called, you will see an exactmodel of one of these old buried houses, copied even to the very paintingson the wells, and judge for yourself, as far as a little boy can judge,what sort of life these thoughtless, luckless people lived 2000 yearsago.

And what had become of Vesuvius, the treacherous mountain?Half or more than half of the side of the old crater had been blownaway, and what was left, which is now called the Monte Somma, standsin a half circle round the new cone and new crater which is burningat this very day. True, after that eruption which killed Pliny,Vesuvius fell asleep again, and did not awake for 134 years, and thenagain for 269 years but it has been growing more and more restless asthe ages have passed on, and now hardly a year passes without its sendingout smoke and stones from its crater, and streams of lava from its sides.

And now, I suppose, you will want to know what a volcano is like,and what a cone, and a crater, and lava are?

What a volcano is like, it is easy enough to show you; for they arethe most simply and beautifully shaped of all mountains, and they arealike all over the world, whether they be large or small. Almostevery volcano in the world, I believe, is, or has been once, of theshape which you see in the drawing opposite; even those volcanos inthe Sandwich Islands, of which you have often heard, which are now greatlakes of boiling fire upon flat downs, without any cone to them at all.They, I believe, are volcanos which have fallen in ages ago: just asin Java a whole burning mountain fell in on the night of the 11th ofAugust, in the year 1772. Then, after a short and terrible earthquake,a bright cloud suddenly covered the whole mountain. The peoplewho dwelt around it tried to escape; but before the poor souls couldget away the earth sunk beneath their feet, and the whole mountain fellin and was swallowed up with a noise as if great cannon were being fired.Forty villages and nearly 3000 people were destroyed, and where themountain had been was only a plain of red-hot stones. In the sameway, in the year 1698, the top of a mountain in Quito fell in in a singlenight, leaving only two immense peaks of rock behind, and pouring outgreat floods of mud mixed with dead fish; for there are undergroundlakes among those volcanos which swarm with little fish which neversee the light.

But most volcanos as I say, are, or have been, the shape of the onewhich you see here. This is Cotopaxi, in Quito, more than 19,000feet in height. All those sloping sides are made of cinders andashes, braced together, I suppose, by bars of solid lava-stone inside,which prevent the whole from crumbling down. The upper part, yousee, is white with snow, as far down as a line which is 15,000 feetabove the sea; for the mountain is in the tropics, close to the equator,and the snow will not lie in that hot climate any lower down.But now and then the snow melts off and rushes down the mountain sidein floods of water and of mud, and the cindery cone of Cotopaxi standsout black and dreadful against the clear blue sky, and then the peopleof that country know what is coming. The mountain is growing sohot inside that it melts off its snowy covering; and soon it will burstforth with smoke and steam, and red-hot stones and earthquakes, whichwill shake the ground, and roars that will be heard, it may be, hundredsof miles away.

And now for the words cone, crater, lava. If I can make youunderstand those words, you will see why volcanos must be in generalof the shape of Cotopaxi.

Cone, crater, lava: those words make up the alphabet of volcano learning.The cone is the outside of a huge chimney; the crater is the mouth ofit. The lava is the ore which is being melted in the furnace below,that it may flow out over the surface of the old land, and make newland instead.

And where is the furnace itself? Who can tell that? Underthe roots of the mountains, under the depths of the sea; down “thepath which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath notseen: the lion’s whelp hath not trodden it, nor the fierce lionpassed by it. There He putteth forth His hand upon the rock; Heoverturneth the mountain by the roots; He cutteth out rivers among therocks; and His eye seeth every precious thing”—while we,like little ants, run up and down outside the earth, scratching, likeants, a few feet down, and calling that a deep ravine; or peeping afew feet down into the crater of a volcano, unable to guess what preciousthings may lie below—below even the fire which blazes and roarsup through the thin crust of the earth. For of the inside of thisearth we know nothing whatsoever: we only know that it is, on an average,several times as heavy as solid rock; but how that can be, we know not.

So let us look at the chimney, and what comes out of it; for we cansee very little more.

Why is a volcano like a cone?

For the same cause for which a molehill is like a cone, though avery rough one; and that the little heaps which the burrowing beetlesmake on the moor, or which the ant-lions in France make in the sand,are all something in the shape of a cone, with a hole like a craterin the middle. What the beetle and the ant-lion do on a very littlescale, the steam inside the earth does on a great scale. Whenonce it has forced a vent into the outside air, it tears out the rocksunderground, grinds them small against each other, often into the finestdust, and blasts them out of the hole which it has made. Someof them fall back into the hole, and are shot out again: but most ofthem fall round the hole, most of them close to it, and fewer of themfarther off, till they are piled up in a ring round it, just as thesand is piled up round a beetle’s burrow. For days, andweeks, and months this goes on; even it may be for hundreds of years:till a great cone is formed round the steam vent, hundreds or thousandsof feet in height, of dust and stones, and of cinders likewise.For recollect, that when the steam has blown away the cold earth androck near the surface of the ground, it begins blowing out the hot rocksdown below, red-hot, white-hot, and at last actually melted. Butthese, as they are hurled into the cool air above, become ashes, cinders,and blocks of stone again, making the hill on which they fall biggerand bigger continually. And thus does wise Madam How stand inno need of bricklayers, but makes her chimneys build themselves.

And why is the mouth of the chimney called a crater?

Crater, as you know, is Greek for a cup. And the mouth of thesechimneys, when they have become choked and stopped working, are oftenjust the shape of a cup, or (as the Germans call them) kessels, whichmeans kettles, or caldrons. I have seen some of them as beautifullyand exactly rounded as if a cunning engineer had planned them, and hadthem dug out with the spade. At first, of course, their sidesand bottom are nothing but loose stones, cinders, slag, ashes, suchas would be thrown out of a furnace. But Madam How, who, whenevershe makes an ugly desolate place, always tries to cover over its ugliness,and set something green to grow over it, and make it pretty once more,does so often and often by her worn-out craters. I have seen themcovered with short sweet turf, like so many chalk downs. I haveseen them, too, filled with bushes, which held woodco*cks and wild boars.Once I came on a beautiful round crater on the top of a mountain, whichwas filled at the bottom with a splendid crop of potatoes. ThoughMadam How had not put them there herself, she had at least taught thehonest Germans to put them there. And often Madam How turns herworn-out craters into beautiful lakes. There are many such crater-lakesin Italy, as you will see if ever you go there; as you may see in Englishgalleries painted by Wilson, a famous artist who died before you wereborn. You recollect Lord Macaulay’s ballad, “The Battleof the Lake Regillus”? Then that Lake Regillus (if I recollectright) is one of these round crater lakes. Many such deep clearblue lakes have I seen in the Eifel, in Germany; and many a curiousplant have I picked on their shores, where once the steam blasted, andthe earthquake roared, and the ash-clouds rushed up high into the heaven,and buried all the land around in dust, which is now fertile soil.And long did I puzzle to find out why the water stood in some craters,while others, within a mile of them perhaps, were perfectly dry.That I never found out for myself. But learned men tell me thatthe ashes which fall back into the crater, if the bottom of it be wetfrom rain, will sometimes “set” (as it is called) into ahard cement; and so make the bottom of the great bowl waterproof, asif it were made of earthenware.

But what gives the craters this cup-shape at first?

Think—While the steam and stones are being blown out, the crateris an open funnel, with more or less upright walls inside. Asthe steam grows weaker, fewer and fewer stones fall outside, and moreand more fall back again inside. At last they quite choke up thebottom of the great round hole. Perhaps, too, the lava or meltedrock underneath cools and grows hard, and that chokes up the hole lowerdown. Then, down from the round edge of the crater the stonesand cinders roll inward more and more. The rains wash them down,the wind blows them down. They roll to the middle, and meet eachother, and stop. And so gradually the steep funnel becomes a roundcup. You may prove for yourself that it must be so, if you willtry. Do you not know that if you dig a round hole in the ground,and leave it to crumble in, it is sure to become cup-shaped at last,though at first its sides may have been quite upright, like those ofa bucket? If you do not know, get a trowel and make your littleexperiment.

And now you ought to understand what “cone” and “crater”mean. And more, if you will think for yourself, you may guesswhat would come out of a volcano when it broke out “in an eruption,”as it is usually called. First, clouds of steam and dust (whatyou would call smoke); then volleys of stones, some cool, some burninghot; and at the last, because it lies lowest of all, the melted rockitself, which is called lava.

And where would that come out? At the top of the chimney?At the top of the cone?

No. Madam How, as I told you, usually makes things make themselves.She has made the chimney of the furnace make itself; and next she willmake the furnace-door make itself.

The melted lava rises in the crater—the funnel inside the cone—butit never gets to the top. It is so enormously heavy that the sidesof the cone cannot bear its weight, and give way low down. Andthen, through ashes and cinders, the melted lava burrows out, twistingand twirling like an enormous fiery earth-worm, till it gets to theair outside, and runs off down the mountain in a stream of fire.And so you may see (as are to be seen on Vesuvius now) two eruptionsat once—one of burning stones above, and one of melted lava below.

And what is lava?

That, I think, I must tell you another time. For when I speakof it I shall have to tell you more about Madam How, and her ways ofmaking the ground on which you stand, than I can say just now.But if you want to know (as I dare say you do) what the eruption ofa volcano is like, you may read what follows. I did not see ithappen; for I never had the good fortune of seeing a mountain burning,though I have seen many and many a one which has been burnt—extinctvolcanos, as they are called.

The man who saw it—a very good friend of mine, and a very goodman of science also—went last year to see an eruption on Vesuvius,not from the main crater, but from a small one which had risen up suddenlyon the outside of it; and he gave me leave (when I told him that I waswriting for children) to tell them what he saw.

This new cone, he said, was about 200 feet high, and perhaps 80 or100 feet across at the top. And as he stood below it (it was notsafe to go up it) smoke rolled up from its top, “rosy pink below,”from the glare of the caldron, and above “faint greenish or blueishsilver of indescribable beauty, from the light of the moon.”But more—By good chance, the cone began to send out, not smokeonly, but brilliant burning stones. “Each explosion,”he says, “was like a vast girandole of rockets, with a noise (suchas rockets would make) like the waves on a beach, or the wind blowingthrough shrouds. The mountain was trembling the whole time.So it went on for two hours and more; sometimes eight or ten explosionsin a minute, and more than 1000 stones in each, some as large as twobricks end to end. The largest ones mostly fell back into thecrater; but the smaller ones being thrown higher, and more acted onby the wind, fell in immense numbers on the leeward slope of the cone”(of course, making it bigger and bigger, as I have explained alreadyto you), and of course, as they were intensely hot and bright, makingthe cone look as if it too was red-hot. But it was not so, hesays, really. The colour of the stones was rather “golden,and they spotted the black cone over with their golden showers, thesmaller ones stopping still, the bigger ones rolling down, and jumpingalong just like hares.” “A wonderful pedestal,”he says, “for the explosion which surmounted it.”How high the stones flew up he could not tell. “There wasgenerally one which went much higher than the rest, and pierced upwardstowards the moon, who looked calmly down, mocking such vain attemptsto reach her.” The large stones, of course, did not riseso high; and some, he says, “only just appeared over the rim ofthe cone, above which they came floating leisurely up, to show theirbrilliant forms and intense white light for an instant, and then subsideagain.”

Try and picture that to yourselves, remembering that this was onlya little side eruption, of no more importance to the whole mountainthan the fall of a slate off the roof is of importance to the wholehouse. And then think how mean and weak man’s fireworks,and even man’s heaviest artillery, are compared with the terriblebeauty and terrible strength of Madam How’s artillery underneathour feet.

 C / | \ / | \ A /---+---\ E / | \ /-----+-----\ EGround / | B \ Ground---------/ | \------------ | D | | D | D | --+-----+--+---+-----+------ | | | | | |

Now look at this figure. It represents a section of a volcano;that is, one cut in half to show you the inside. A is the coneof cinders. B, the black line up through the middle, is the funnel,or crack, through which steam, ashes, lava, and everything else rises.C is the crater mouth. D D D, which looks broken, are the oldrocks which the steam heaved up and burst before it could get out.And what are the black lines across, marked E E E? They are thestreams of lava which have burrowed out, some covered up again in cinders,some lying bare in the open air, some still inside the cone, bracingit together, holding it up. Something like this is the insideof a volcano.

CHAPTER IV—THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF A GRAIN OF SOIL

Why, you ask, are there such terrible things as volcanos? Ofwhat use can they be?

They are of use enough, my child; and of many more uses, doubt not,than we know as yet, or ever shall know. But of one of their usesI can tell you.

They make, or help to make, divers and sundry curious things, fromgunpowder to your body and mine.

What? I can understand their helping to make gunpowder, becausethe sulphur in it is often found round volcanos; and I know the storyof the brave Spaniard who, when his fellows wanted materials for gunpowder,had himself lowered in a basket down the crater of a South Americanvolcano, and gathered sulphur for them off the burning cliffs: but howcan volcanos help to make me? Am I made of lava? Or is therelava in me?

My child, I did not say that volcanos helped to make you. Isaid that they helped to make your body; which is a very different matter,as I beg you to remember, now and always. Your body is no moreyou yourself than the hoop which you trundle, or the pony which youride. It is, like them, your servant, your tool, your instrument,your organ, with which you work: and a very useful, trusty, cunningly-contrivedorgan it is; and therefore I advise you to make good use of it, foryou are responsible for it. But you yourself are not your body,or your brain, but something else, which we call your soul, your spirit,your life. And that “you yourself” would remain justthe same if it were taken out of your body, and put into the body ofa bee, or of a lion, or any other body; or into no body at all.At least so I believe; and so, I am happy to say, nine hundred and ninety-ninethousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of every million havealways believed, because they have used their human instincts and theircommon sense, and have obeyed (without knowing it) the warning of agreat and good philosopher called Herder, that “The organ is inno case the power which works by it;” which is as much as to say,that the engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the gardener.

There have always been, and always will be, a few people who cannotsee that. They think that a man’s soul is part of his body,and that he himself is not one thing, but a great number of things.They think that his mind and character are only made up of all the thoughts,and feelings, and recollections which have passed through his brain;and that as his brain changes, he himself must change, and become anotherperson, and then another person again, continually. But do younot agree with them: but keep in mind wise Herder’s warning thatyou are not to “confound the organ with the power,” or theengine with the driver, or your body with yourself: and then we willgo on and consider how a volcano, and the lava which flows from it,helps to make your body.

Now I know that the Scotch have a saying, “That you cannotmake broth out of whinstones” (which is their name for lava).But, though they are very clever people, they are wrong there.I never saw any broth in Scotland, as far as I know, but what whinstoneshad gone to the making of it; nor a Scotch boy who had not eaten manya bit of whinstone, and been all the better for it.

Of course, if you simply put the whinstones into a kettle and boiledthem, you would not get much out of them by such rough cookery as that.But Madam How is the best and most delicate of all cooks; and she knowshow to pound, and soak, and stew whinstones so delicately, that shecan make them sauce and seasoning for meat, vegetables, puddings, andalmost everything that you eat; and can put into your veins things whichwere spouted up red-hot by volcanos, ages and ages since, perhaps atthe bottom of ancient seas which are now firm dry land.

This is very strange—as all Madam How’s doings are.And you would think it stranger still if you had ever seen the flowingof a lava stream.

Out of a cave of slag and cinders in the black hillside rushes agolden river, flowing like honey, and yet so tough that you cannot thrusta stick into it, and so heavy that great stones (if you throw them onit) float on the top, and are carried down like corks on water.It is so hot that you cannot stand near it more than a few seconds;hotter, perhaps, than any fire you ever saw: but as it flows, the outsideof it cools in the cool air, and gets covered with slag and cinders,something like those which you may see thrown out of the furnaces inthe Black Country of Staffordshire. Sometimes these cling togetherabove the lava stream, and make a tunnel, through the cracks in whichyou may see the fiery river rushing and roaring down below. Butmostly they are kept broken and apart, and roll and slide over eachother on the top of the lava, crashing and clanging as they grind togetherwith a horrid noise. Of course that stream, like all streams,runs towards the lower grounds. It slides down glens, and fillsthem up; down the beds of streams, driving off the water in hissingsteam; and sometimes (as it did in Iceland a few years ago) falls oversome cliff, turning what had been a water-fall into a fire-fall, andfilling up the pool below with blocks of lava suddenly cooled, witha clang and roar like that of chains shaken or brazen vessels beaten,which is heard miles and miles away. Of course, woe to the cropsand gardens which stand in its way. It crawls over them all andeats them up. It shoves down houses; it sets woods on fire, andsends the steam and gas out of the tree-trunks hissing into the air.And (curiously enough) it does this often without touching the treesthemselves. It flows round the trunks (it did so in a wood inthe Sandwich Islands a few years ago), and of course sets them on fireby its heat, till nothing is left of them but blackened posts.But the moisture which comes out of the poor tree in steam blows sohard against the lava round that it can never touch the tree, and around hole is left in the middle of the lava where the tree was.Sometimes, too, the lava will spit out liquid fire among the branchesof the trees, which hangs down afterwards from them in tassels of slag,and yet, by the very same means, the steam in the branches will preventthe liquid fire burning them off, or doing anything but just scorchthe bark.

But I can tell you a more curious story still. The lava stream,you must know, is continually sending out little jets of gas and steam:some of it it may have brought up from the very inside of the earth;most of it, I suspect, comes from the damp herbage and damp soil overwhich it runs. Be that as it may, a lava stream out of Mount Etna,in Sicily, came once down straight upon the town of Catania. Everybodythought that the town would be swallowed up; and the poor people there(who knew no better) began to pray to St. Agatha—a famous saint,who, they say, was martyred there ages ago—and who, they fancy,has power in heaven to save them from the lava stream. And reallywhat happened was enough to make ignorant people, such as they were,think that St. Agatha had saved them. The lava stream came straightdown upon the town wall. Another foot, and it would have touchedit, and have begun shoving it down with a force compared with whichall the battering-rams that you ever read of in ancient histories wouldbe child’s toys. But lo and behold! when the lava streamgot within a few inches of the wall it stopped, and began to rear itselfupright and build itself into a wall beside the wall. It roseand rose, till I believe in one place it overtopped the wall and beganto curl over in a crest. All expected that it would fall overinto the town at last: but no, there it stopped, and cooled, and hardened,and left the town unhurt. All the inhabitants said, of course,that St. Agatha had done it: but learned men found out that, as usualMadam How had done it, by making it do itself. The lava was sofull of gas, which was continually blowing out in little jets, thatwhen it reached the wall, it actually blew itself back from the wall;and, as the wall was luckily strong enough not to be blown down, thelava kept blowing itself back till it had time to cool. And so,my dear child, there was no miracle at all in the matter; and the poorpeople of Catania had to thank not St. Agatha, and any interferenceof hers, but simply Him who can preserve, just as He can destroy, bythose laws of nature which are the breath of His mouth and the servantsof His will.

But in many a case the lava does not stop. It rolls on andon over the downs and through the valleys, till it reaches the sea-shore,as it did in Hawaii in the Sandwich Islands this very year. Andthen it cools, of course; but often not before it has killed the fishby its sulphurous gases and heat, perhaps for miles around. Andthere is good reason to believe that the fossil fish which we so oftenfind in rocks, perfect in every bone, lying sometimes in heaps, andtwisted (as I have seen them) as if they had died suddenly and violently,were killed in this very way, either by heat from lava streams, or elseby the bursting up of gases poisoning the water, in earthquakes anderuptions in the bottom of the sea. I could tell you many storiesof fish being killed in thousands by earthquakes and volcanos duringthe last few years. But we have not time to tell about everything.

And now you will ask me, with more astonishment than ever, what possibleuse can there be in these destroying streams of fire? And certainly,if you had ever seen a lava stream even when cool, and looked down,as I have done, at the great river of rough black blocks streaming awayfar and wide over the land, you would think it the most hideous andthe most useless thing you ever saw. And yet, my dear child, thereis One who told men to judge not according to the appearance, but tojudge righteous judgment. He said that about matters spiritualand human: but it is quite as true about matters natural, which alsoare His work, and all obey His will.

Now if you had seen, as I have seen, close round the edges of theselava streams, and sometimes actually upon them, or upon the great bedof dust and ashes which have been hurled far and wide out of ancientvolcanos, happy homesteads, rich crops, hemp and flax, and wheat, tobacco,lucerne, roots, and vineyards laden with white and purple grapes, youwould have begun to suspect that the lava streams were not, after all,such very bad neighbours. And when I tell you that volcanic soils(as they are called), that is, soil which has at first been lava orashes, are generally the richest soils in the world—that, forinstance (as some one told me the other day), there is soil in the beautifulisland of Madeira so thin that you cannot dig more than two or threeinches down without coming to the solid rock of lava, or what is hardereven, obsidian (which is the black glass which volcanos sometimes make,and which the old Mexicans used to chip into swords and arrows, becausethey had no steel)—and that this soil, thin as it is, is yet sofertile, that in it used to be grown the grapes of which the famousMadeira wine was made—when you remember this, and when you remember,too, the Lothians of Scotland (about which I shall have to say a littleto you just now), then you will perhaps agree with me, that Lady Whyhas not been so very wrong in setting Madam How to pour out lava andashes upon the surface of the earth.

For see—down below, under the roots of the mountains, MadamHow works continually like a chemist in his laboratory, melting togetherall the rocks, which are the bones and leavings of the old worlds.If they stayed down below there, they would be of no use; while theywill be of use up here in the open air. For, year by year—bythe washing of rain and rivers, and also, I am sorry to say, by theignorant and foolish waste of mankind—thousands and millions oftons of good stuff are running into the sea every year, which would,if it could be kept on land, make food for men and animals, plants andtrees. So, in order to supply the continual waste of this upperworld, Madam How is continually melting up the under world, and pouringit out of the volcanos like manure, to renew the face of the earth.In these lava rocks and ashes which she sends up there are certain substances,without which men cannot live—without which a stalk of corn orgrass cannot grow. Without potash, without magnesia, both of whichare in your veins and mine—without silicates (as they are called),which give flint to the stems of corn and of grass, and so make themstiff and hard, and able to stand upright—and very probably withoutthe carbonic acid gas, which comes out of the volcanos, and is takenup by the leaves of plants, and turned by Madam How’s cookeryinto solid wood—without all these things, and I suspect withouta great many more things which come out of volcanos—I do not seehow this beautiful green world could get on at all.

Of course, when the lava first cools on the surface of the groundit is hard enough, and therefore barren enough. But Madam Howsets to work upon it at once, with that delicate little water-spadeof hers, which we call rain, and with that alone, century after century,and age after age, she digs the lava stream down, atom by atom, andsilts it over the country round in rich manure. So that if MadamHow has been a rough and hasty workwoman in pumping her treasures upout of her mine with her great steam-pumps, she shows herself delicateand tender and kindly enough in giving them away afterwards.

Nay, even the fine dust which is sometimes blown out of volcanosis useful to countries far away. So light it is, that it risesinto the sky and is wafted by the wind across the seas. So, inthe year 1783, ashes from the Skaptar Jokull, in Iceland, were carriedover the north of Scotland, and even into Holland, hundreds of milesto the south.

So, again, when in the year 1812 the volcano of St. Vincent, in theWest India Islands, poured out torrents of lava, after mighty earthquakeswhich shook all that part of the world, a strange thing happened (aboutwhich I have often heard from those who saw it) in the island of Barbados,several hundred miles away. For when the sun rose in the morning(it was a Sunday morning), the sky remained more dark than any night,and all the poor negroes crowded terrified out of their houses intothe streets, fancying the end of the world was come. But a learnedman who was there, finding that, though the sun was risen, it was stillpitchy dark, opened his window, and found that it was stuck fast bysomething on the ledge outside, and, when he thrust it open, found theledge covered deep in soft red dust; and he instantly said, like a wiseman as he was, “The volcano of St. Vincent must have broken out,and these are the ashes from it.” Then he ran down stairsand quieted the poor negroes, telling them not to be afraid, for theend of the world was not coming just yet. But still the dust wenton falling till the whole island, I am told, was covered an inch thick;and the same thing happened in the other islands round. Peoplethought—and they had reason to think from what had often happenedelsewhere—that though the dust might hurt the crops for that year,it would make them richer in years to come, because it would act asmanure upon the soil; and so it did after a few years; but it did terribledamage at the time, breaking off the boughs of trees and covering upthe crops; and in St. Vincent itself whole estates were ruined.It was a frightful day, but I know well that behind that How there wasa Why for its happening, and happening too, about that very time, whichall who know the history of negro slavery in the West Indies can guessfor themselves, and confess, I hope, that in this case, as in all others,when Lady Why seems most severe she is often most just and kind.

Ah! my dear child, that I could go on talking to you of this forhours and days! But I have time now only to teach you the alphabetof these matters—and, indeed, I know little more than the alphabetmyself; but if the very letters of Madam How’s book, and the mereA, B, AB, of it, which I am trying to teach you, are so wonderful andso beautiful, what must its sentences be and its chapters? Andwhat must the whole book be like? But that last none can readsave He who wrote it before the worlds were made.

But now I see you want to ask a question. Let us have it out.I would sooner answer one question of yours than tell you ten thingswithout your asking.

Is there potash and magnesia and silicates in the soil here?And if there is, where did they come from? For there are no volcanosin England.

Yes. There are such things in the soil; and little enough ofthem, as the farmers here know too well. For we here, in WindsorForest, are on the very poorest and almost the newest soil in England;and when Madam How had used up all her good materials in making therest of the island, she carted away her dry rubbish and shot it downhere for us to make the best of; and I do not think that we and ourforefathers have done so very ill with it. But where the richpart, or staple, of our soils came from first it would be very difficultto say, so often has Madam How made, and unmade, and re-made England,and sifted her materials afresh every time. But if you go to theLowlands of Scotland, you may soon see where the staple of the soilcame from there, and that I was right in saying that there were atomsof lava in every Scotch boy’s broth. Not that there wereever (as far as I know) volcanos in Scotland or in England. MadamHow has more than one string to her bow, or two strings either; so whenshe pours out her lavas, she does not always pour them out in the openair. Sometimes she pours them out at the bottom of the sea, asshe did in the north of Ireland and the south-west of Scotland, whenshe made the Giant’s Causeway, and Fingal’s Cave in Staffatoo, at the bottom of the old chalk ocean, ages and ages since.Sometimes she squirts them out between the layers of rock, or into crackswhich the earthquakes have made, in what are called trap dykes, of whichthere are plenty to be seen in Scotland, and in Wales likewise.And then she lifts the earth up from the bottom of the sea, and setsthe rain to wash away all the soft rocks, till the hard lava standsout in great hills upon the surface of the ground. Then the rainbegins eating away those lava-hills likewise, and manuring the earthwith them; and wherever those lava-hills stand up, whether great orsmall, there is pretty sure to be rich land around them. If youlook at the Geological Map of England and Ireland, and the red spotsupon it, which will show you where those old lavas are, you will seehow much of them there is in England, at the Lizard Point in Cornwall,and how much more in Scotland and the north of Ireland. In SouthDevon, in Shropshire—with its beautiful Wrekin, and Caradoc, andLawley—in Wales, round Snowdon (where some of the soil is veryrich), and, above all, in the Lowlands of Scotland, you see these redmarks, showing the old lavas, which are always fertile, except the poorold granite, which is of little use save to cut into building stone,because it is too full of quartz—that is, flint.

Think of this the next time you go through Scotland in the railway,especially when you get near Edinburgh. As you run through theLothians, with their noble crops of corn, and roots, and grasses—andtheir great homesteads, each with its engine chimney, which makes steamdo the work of men—you will see rising out of the plain, hillsof dark rock, sometimes in single knobs, like Berwick Law or StirlingCrag—sometimes in noble ranges, like Arthur’s Seat, or theSidlaws, or the Ochils. Think what these black bare lumps of whinstoneare, and what they do. Remember they are mines—not goldmines, but something richer still—food mines, which Madam Howthrust into the inside of the earth, ages and ages since, as moltenlava rock, and then cooled them and lifted them up, and pared them awaywith her ice-plough and her rain-spade, and spread the stuff of themover the wide carses round, to make in that bleak northern climate,which once carried nothing but fir-trees and heather, a soil fit tofeed a great people; to cultivate in them industry, and science, andvaliant self-dependence and self-help; and to gather round the Heartof Midlothian and the Castle Rock of Edinburgh the stoutest and theablest little nation which Lady Why has made since she made the Greekswho fought at Salamis.

Of those Greeks you have read, or ought to read, in Mr. Cox’sTales of the Persian War. Some day you will read of themin their own books, written in their grand old tongue. Rememberthat Lady Why made them, as she has made the Scotch, by first preparinga country for them, which would call out all their courage and theirskill; and then by giving them the courage and the skill to make useof the land where she had put them.

And now think what a wonderful fairy tale you might write for yourself—andevery word of it true—of the adventures of one atom of Potashor some other Salt, no bigger than a needle’s point, in such alava stream as I have been telling of. How it has run round andround, and will run round age after age, in an endless chain of change.How it began by being molten fire underground, how then it became partof a hard cold rock, lifted up into a cliff, beaten upon by rain andstorm, and washed down into the soil of the plain, till, perhaps, thelittle atom of mineral met with the rootlet of some great tree, andwas taken up into its sap in spring, through tiny veins, and hardenedthe next year into a piece of solid wood. And then how that treewas cut down, and its logs, it may be, burnt upon the hearth, till thelittle atom of mineral lay among the wood-ashes, and was shovelled outand thrown upon the field and washed into the soil again, and takenup by the roots of a clover plant, and became an atom of vegetable matteronce more. And then how, perhaps, a rabbit came by, and ate theclover, and the grain of mineral became part of the rabbit; and thenhow a hawk killed that rabbit, and ate it, and so the grain became partof the hawk; and how the farmer shot the hawk, and it fell perchanceinto a stream, and was carried down into the sea; and when its bodydecayed, the little grain sank through the water, and was mingled withthe mud at the bottom of the sea. But do its wanderings stop there?Not so, my child. Nothing upon this earth, as I told you oncebefore, continues in one stay. That grain of mineral might stayat the bottom of the sea a thousand or ten thousand years, and yet thetime would come when Madam How would set to work on it again.Slowly, perhaps, she would sink that mud so deep, and cover it up withso many fresh beds of mud, or sand, or lime, that under the heavy weight,and perhaps, too, under the heat of the inside of the earth, that Mudwould slowly change to hard Slate Rock; and ages after, it may be, MadamHow might melt that Slate Rock once more, and blast it out; and thenthrough the mouth of a volcano the little grain of mineral might riseinto the open air again to make fresh soil, as it had done thousandsof years before. For Madam How can manufacture many differentthings out of the same materials. She may have so wrought withthat grain of mineral, that she may have formed it into part of a preciousstone, and men may dig it out of the rock, or pick it up in the river-bed,and polish it, and set it, and wear it. Think of that—thatin the jewels which your mother or your sisters wear, or in your father’ssignet ring, there may be atoms which were part of a live plant, ora live animal, millions of years ago, and may be parts of a live plantor a live animal millions of years hence.

Think over again, and learn by heart, the links of this endless chainof change: Fire turned into Stone—Stone into Soil—Soil intoPlant—Plant into Animal—Animal into Soil—Soil intoStone—Stone into Fire again—and then Fire into Stone again,and the old thing run round once more.

So it is, and so it must be. For all things which are bornin Time must change in Time, and die in Time, till that Last Day ofthis our little earth, in which,

“Like to the baseless fabric of a vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all things which inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”

So all things change and die, and so your body too must change anddie—but not yourself. Madam How made your body; and shemust unmake it again, as she unmakes all her works in Time and Space;but you, child, your Soul, and Life, and Self, she did not make; andover you she has no power. For you were not, like your body, createdin Time and Space; and you will endure though Time and Space shouldbe no more: because you are the child of the Living God, who gives toeach thing its own body, and can give you another body, even as seemsgood to Him.

CHAPTER V—THE ICE-PLOUGH

You want to know why I am so fond of that little bit of limestone,no bigger than my hand, which lies upon the shelf; why I ponder overit so often, and show it to all sensible people who come to see me?

I do so, not only for the sake of the person who gave it to me, butbecause there is written on it a letter out of Madam How’s alphabet,which has taken wise men many a year to decipher. I could notdecipher that letter when first I saw the stone. More shame forme, for I had seen it often before, and understood it well enough, inmany another page of Madam How’s great book. Take the stone,and see if you can find out anything strange about it.

Well, it is only a bit of marble as big as my hand, that looks asif it had been, and really has been, broken off by a hammer. Butwhen you look again, you see there is a smooth scraped part on one edge,that seems to have been rubbed against a stone.

Now look at that rubbed part, and tell me how it was done.

You have seen men often polish one stone on another, or scour floorswith a Bath brick, and you will guess at first that this was polishedso: but if it had been, then the rubbed place would have been flat:but if you put your fingers over it, you will find that it is not flat.It is rolled, fluted, channelled, so that the thing or things whichrubbed it must have been somewhat round. And it is covered, too,with very fine and smooth scratches or grooves, all running over thewhole in the same line. Now what could have done that?

Of course a man could have done it, if he had taken a large roundstone in his hand, and worked the large channellings with that, andthen had taken fine sand and gravel upon the points of his fingers,and worked the small scratches with that. But this stone camefrom a place where man had, perhaps, never stood before,—ay, which,perhaps, had never seen the light of day before since the world wasmade; and as I happen to know that no man made the marks upon that stone,we must set to work and think again for some tool of Madam How’swhich may have made them.

And now I think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you theanswer to the riddle. Those marks were made by a hand which isstrong and yet gentle, tough and yet yielding, like the hand of a man;a hand which handles and uses in a grip stronger than a giant’sits own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as large as thiswhole room to the finest grain of sand. And that is ICE.

That piece of stone came from the side of the Rosenlaüi glacierin Switzerland, and it was polished by the glacier ice. The glaciermelted and shrank this last hot summer farther back than it had donefor many years, and left bare sheets of rock, which it had been scrapingat for ages, with all the marks fresh upon them. And that bitwas broken off and brought to me, who never saw a glacier myself, toshow me how the marks which the ice makes in Switzerland are exactlythe same as those which the ice has made in Snowdon and in the Highlands,and many another place where I have traced them, and written a little,too, about them in years gone by. And so I treasure this, as asign that Madam How’s ways do not change nor her laws become broken;that, as that great philosopher Sir Charles Lyell will tell you, whenyou read his books, Madam How is making and unmaking the surface ofthe earth now, by exactly the same means as she was making and unmakingages and ages since; and that what is going on slowly and surely inthe Alps in Switzerland was going on once here where we stand.

It is very difficult, I know, for a little boy like you to understandhow ice, and much more how soft snow, should have such strength thatit can grind this little stone, much more such strength as to grindwhole mountains into plains. You have never seen ice and snowdo harm. You cannot even recollect the Crimean Winter, as it wascalled then; and well for you you cannot, considering all the miseryit brought at home and abroad. You cannot, I say, recollect theCrimean Winter, when the Thames was frozen over above the bridges, andthe ice piled in little bergs ten to fifteen feet high, which lay, someof them, stranded on the shores, about London itself, and did not melt,if I recollect, until the end of May. You never stood, as I stood,in the great winter of 1837-8 on Battersea Bridge, to see the ice breakup with the tide, and saw the great slabs and blocks leaping and pilingupon each other’s backs, and felt the bridge tremble with theirshocks, and listened to their horrible grind and roar, till one gotsome little picture in one’s mind of what must be the breakingup of an ice-floe in the Arctic regions, and what must be the dangerof a ship nipped in the ice and lifted up on high, like those in thepictures of Arctic voyages which you are so fond of looking through.You cannot recollect how that winter even in our little Blackwater Brookthe alder stems were all peeled white, and scarred, as if they had beengnawed by hares and deer, simply by the rushing and scraping of theice,—a sight which gave me again a little picture of the destructionwhich the ice makes of quays, and stages, and houses along the shoreupon the coasts of North America, when suddenly setting in with windand tide, it jams and piles up high inland, as you may read for yourselfsome day in a delightful book called Frost and Fire. Yourecollect none of these things. Ice and snow are to you mere playthings;and you long for winter, that you may make snowballs and play hockeyand skate upon the ponds, and eat ice like a foolish boy till you makeyour stomach ache. And I dare say you have said, like many anotherboy, on a bright cheery ringing frosty day, “Oh, that it wouldbe always winter!” You little knew for what you asked.You little thought what the earth would soon be like, if it were alwayswinter,—if one sheet of ice on the pond glued itself on to thebottom of the last sheet, till the whole pond was a solid mass,—ifone snow-fall lay upon the top of another snow-fall till the moor wascovered many feet deep and the snow began sliding slowly down the glenfrom Coombs’s, burying the green fields, tearing the trees upby their roots, burying gradually house, church, and village, and makingthis place for a few thousand years what it was many thousand yearsago. Good-bye then, after a very few winters, to bees, and butterflies,and singing-birds, and flowers; and good-bye to all vegetables, andfruit, and bread; good-bye to cotton and woollen clothes. Youwould have, if you were left alive, to dress in skins, and eat fishand seals, if any came near enough to be caught. You would haveto live in a word, if you could live at all, as Esquimaux live now inArctic regions, and as people had to live in England ages since, inthe times when it was always winter, and icebergs floated between hereand Finchampstead. Oh no, my child: thank Heaven that it is notalways winter; and remember that winter ice and snow, though it is avery good tool with which to make the land, must leave the land yearby year if that land is to be fit to live in.

I said that if the snow piled high enough upon the moor, it wouldcome down the glen in a few years through Coombs’s Wood; and Isaid then you would have a small glacier here—such a glacier (tocompare small things with great) as now comes down so many valleys inthe Alps, or has come down all the valleys of Greenland and Spitzbergentill they reach the sea, and there end as cliffs of ice, from whichgreat icebergs snap off continually, and fall and float away, wanderingsouthward into the Atlantic for many a hundred miles. You haveseen drawings of such glaciers in Captain Cook’s Voyages; andyou may see photographs of Swiss glaciers in any good London print-shop;and therefore you have seen almost as much about them as I have seen,and may judge for yourself how you would like to live where it is alwayswinter.

Now you must not ask me to tell you what a glacier is like, for Ihave never seen one; at least, those which I have seen were more thanfifty miles away, looking like white clouds hanging on the gray mountainsides. And it would be an impertinence—that means a meddlingwith things which I have no business—to picture to you glacierswhich have been pictured so well and often by gentlemen who escape everyyear from their hard work in town to find among the glaciers of theAlps health and refreshment, and sound knowledge, and that most wholesomeand strengthening of all medicines, toil.

So you must read of them in such books as Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers,and Mr. Willes’s Wanderings in the High Alps, and ProfessorTyndall’s different works; or you must look at them (as I justnow said) in photographs or in pictures. But when you do that,or when you see a glacier for yourself, you must bear in mind what aglacier means—that it is a river of ice, fed by a lake of snow.The lake from which it springs is the eternal snow-field which stretchesfor miles and miles along the mountain tops, fed continually by freshsnow-storms falling from the sky. That snow slides off into thevalleys hour by hour, and as it rushes down is ground and pounded, andthawed and frozen again into a sticky paste of ice, which flows slowlybut surely till it reaches the warm valley at the mountain foot, andthere melts bit by bit. The long black lines which you see windingalong the white and green ice of the glacier are the stones which havefallen from the cliffs above. They will be dropped at the endof the glacier, and mixed with silt and sand and other stones whichhave come down inside the glacier itself, and piled up in the fieldin great mounds, which are called moraines, such as you may see andwalk on in Scotland many a time, though you might never guess what theyare.

The river which runs out at the glacier foot is, you must remember,all foul and milky with the finest mud; and that mud is the grindingof the rocks over which the glacier has been crawling down, and scrapingthem as it scraped my bit of stone with pebbles and with sand.And this is the alphabet, which, if you learn by heart, you will learnto understand how Madam How uses her great ice-plough to plough downher old mountains, and spread the stuff of them about the valleys tomake rich straths of fertile soil. Nay, so immensely strong, becauseimmensely heavy, is the share of this her great ice-plough, that somewill tell you (and it is not for me to say that they are wrong) thatwith it she has ploughed out all the mountain lakes in Europe and inNorth America; that such lakes, for instance, as Ullswater or Windermerehave been scooped clean out of the solid rock by ice which came downthese glaciers in old times. And be sure of this, that next toMadam How’s steam-pump and her rain-spade, her great ice-ploughhas had, and has still, the most to do with making the ground on whichwe live.

Do I mean that there were ever glaciers here? No, I do not.There have been glaciers in Scotland in plenty. And if any Scotchboy shall read this book, it will tell him presently how to find themarks of them far and wide over his native land. But as you, mychild, care most about this country in which you live, I will show youin any gravel-pit, or hollow lane upon the moor, the marks, not of aglacier, which is an ice-river, but of a whole sea of ice.

Let us come up to the pit upon the top of the hill, and look carefullyat what we see there. The lower part of the pit of course is asolid rock of sand. On the top of that is a cap of gravel, five,six, ten feet thick. Now the sand was laid down there by waterat the bottom of an old sea; and therefore the top of it would naturallybe flat and smooth, as the sands at Hunstanton or at Bournemouth are;and the gravel, if it was laid down by water, would naturally lie flaton it again: but it does not. See how the top of the sand is dugout into deep waves and pits, filled up with gravel. And see,too, how over some of the gravel you get sand again, and then gravelagain, and then sand again, till you cannot tell where one fairly beginsand the other ends. Why, here are little dots of gravel, six oreight feet down, in what looks the solid sand rock, yet the sand musthave been opened somehow to put the gravel in.

You say you have seen that before. You have seen the same curioustwisting of the gravel and sand into each other on the top of FarleyHill, and in the new cutting on Minley Hill; and, best of all, in therailway cutting between Ascot and Sunningdale, where upon the top thewhite sand and gravel is arranged in red and brown waves, and festoons,and curlicues, almost like Prince of Wales’s feathers. Yes,that last is a beautiful section of ice-work; so beautiful, that I hopeto have it photographed some day.

Now, how did ice do this?

Well, I was many a year before I found out that, and I dare say Inever should have found it out for myself. A gentleman named Trimmer,who, alas! is now dead, was, I believe, the first to find it out.He knew that along the coast of Labrador, and other cold parts of NorthAmerica, and on the shores, too, of the great river St. Lawrence, thestranded icebergs, and the ice-foot, as it is called, which is continuallyforming along the freezing shores, grub and plough every tide into themud and sand, and shove up before them, like a ploughshare, heaps ofdirt; and that, too, the ice itself is full of dirt, of sand and stones,which it may have brought from hundreds of miles away; and that, asthis ploughshare of dirty ice grubs onward, the nose of the plough iscontinually being broken off, and left underneath the mud; and that,when summer comes, and the ice melts, the mud falls back into the placewhere the ice had been, and covers up the gravel which was in the ice.So, what between the grubbing of the ice-plough into the mud, and thedirt which it leaves behind when it melts, the stones, and sand, andmud upon the shore are jumbled up into curious curved and twisted layers,exactly like those which Mr. Trimmer saw in certain gravel-pits.And when I first read about that, I said, “And exactly like whatI have been seeing in every gravel-pit round here, and trying to guesshow they could have been made by currents of water, and yet never couldmake any guess which would do.” But after that it was allexplained to me; and I said, “Honour to the man who has let MadamHow teach him what she had been trying to teach me for fifteen years,while I was too stupid to learn it. Now I am certain, as certainas I can be of any earthly thing, that the whole of these Windsor ForestFlats were ages ago ploughed and harrowed over and over again, by ice-floesand icebergs drifting and stranding in a shallow sea.”

And if you say, my dear child, as some people will say, that it islike building a large house upon a single brick to be sure that therewas an iceberg sea here, just because I see a few curlicues in the graveland sand—then I must tell you that there are sometimes—notoften, but sometimes—pages in Madam How’s book in whichone single letter tells you as much as a whole chapter; in which ifyou find one little fact, and know what it really means, it makes youcertain that a thousand other great facts have happened. You maybe astonished: but you cannot deny your own eyes, and your own commonsense. You feel like Robinson Crusoe when, walking along the shoreof his desert island, he saw for the first time the print of a man’sfoot in the sand. How it could have got there without a miraclehe could not dream. But there it was. One footprint wasas good as the footprints of a whole army would have been. A manhad been there; and more men might come. And in fear of the savages—andif you have read Robinson Crusoe you know how just his fears were—hewent home trembling and loaded his muskets, and barricaded his cave,and passed sleepless nights watching for the savages who might come,and who came after all.

And so there are certain footprints in geology which there is nomistaking; and the prints of the ice-plough are among them.

For instance:—When they were trenching the new plantation closeto Wellington College station, the men turned up out of the ground agreat many Sarsden stones; that is, pieces of hard sugary sand, suchas Stonehenge is made of. And when I saw these I said, “Isuspect these were brought here by icebergs:” but I was not sure,and waited. As the men dug on, they dug up a great many largeflints, with bottle-green coats. “Now,” I said, “Iam sure. For I know where these flints must have come from.”And for reasons which would be too long to tell you here, I said, “Sometime or other, icebergs have been floating northward from the Hog’sBack over Aldershot and Farnborough, and have been trying to get intothe Vale of Thames by the slope at Wellington College station; and theyhave stranded, and dropped these flints.” And I am so sureof that, that if I found myself out wrong after all I should be at mywit’s end; for I should know that I was wrong about a hundredthings besides.

Or again, if you ever go up Deeside in Scotland, towards Balmoral,and turn up Glen Muick, towards Alt-na-guisach, of which you may seea picture in the Queen’s last book, you will observe standingon your right hand, just above Birk Hall, three pretty rounded knolls,which they call the Coile Hills. You may easily know them by theirbeing covered with beautiful green grass instead of heather. Thatis because they are made of serpentine or volcanic rock, which (as youhave seen) often cuts into beautiful red and green marble; and whichalso carries a very rich soil because it is full of magnesia.If you go up those hills, you get a glorious view—the mountainssweeping round you where you stand, up to the top of Lochnagar, withits bleak walls a thousand feet perpendicular, and gullies into whichthe sun never shines, and round to the dark fir forests of the Ballochbuie.That is the arc of the bow; and the cord of the bow is the silver Dee,more than a thousand feet below you; and in the centre of the cord,where the arrow would be fitted in, stands Balmoral, with its Castle,and its Gardens, and its Park, and pleasant cottages and homesteadsall around. And when you have looked at the beautiful amphitheatreof forest at your feet, and looked too at the great mountains to thewestward, and Benaun, and Benna-buird and Benna-muicdhui, with theirbright patches of eternal snow, I should advise you to look at the rockon which you stand, and see what you see there. And you will seethat on the side of the Coiles towards Lochnagar, and between the knollsof them, are scattered streams, as it were, of great round boulder stones—whichare not serpentine, but granite from the top of Lochnagar, five milesaway. And you will see that the knolls of serpentine rock, orat least their backs and shoulders towards Lochnagar, are all smoothedand polished till they are as round as the backs of sheep, “rochesmoutonnées,” as the French call ice-polished rocks; andthen, if you understand what that means, you will say, as I said, “Iam perfectly certain that this great basin between me and Lochnagar,which is now 3000 feet deep of empty air was once filled up with iceto the height of the hills on which I stand—about 1700 feet high—andthat that ice ran over into Glen Muick, between these pretty knolls,and covered the ground where Birk Hall now stands.”

And more:—When you see growing on those knolls of serpentinea few pretty little Alpine plants, which have no business down thereso low, you will have a fair right to say, as I said, “The seedsof these plants were brought by the ice ages and ages since from offthe mountain range of Lochnagar, and left here, nestling among the rocks,to found a fresh colony, far from their old mountain home.”

If I could take you with me up to Scotland,—take you, for instance,along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld, or up Strathmore towards Aberdeen,or up the Dee towards Braemar,—I could show you signs, which cannotbe mistaken, of the time when Scotland was, just like Spitzbergen orlike Greenland now, covered in one vast sheet of snow and ice from year’send to year’s end; when glaciers were ploughing out its valleys,icebergs were breaking off the icy cliffs and floating out to sea; whennot a bird, perhaps, was to be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant uponthe rocks but a few lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and such like—desolationand cold and lifeless everywhere. That ice-time went on for agesand for ages; and yet it did not go on in vain. Through it MadamHow was ploughing down the mountains of Scotland to make all those richfarms which stretch from the north side of the Frith of Forth into Sutherlandshire.I could show you everywhere the green banks and knolls of earth, whichScotch people call “kames” and “tomans”—perhapsbrought down by ancient glaciers, or dropped by ancient icebergs—nowso smooth and green through summer and through winter, among the wildheath and the rough peat-moss, that the old Scots fancied, and I daresay Scotch children fancy still, fairies dwelt inside. If youlaid your ear against the mounds, you might hear the fairy music, sweetand faint, beneath the ground. If you watched the mound at night,you might see the fairies dancing the turf short and smooth, or ridingout on fairy horses, with green silk clothes and jingling bells.But if you fell asleep upon the mounds, the fairy queen came out andcarried you for seven years into Fairyland, till you awoke again inthe same place, to find all changed around you, and yourself grown thinand old.

These are all dreams and fancies—untrue, not because they aretoo strange and wonderful, but because they are not strange and wonderfulenough: for more wonderful sure than any fairy tale it is, that MadamHow should make a rich and pleasant land by the brute force of ice.

And were there any men and women in that old age of ice? Thatis a long story, and a dark one too; we will talk of it next time.

CHAPTER VI—THE TRUE FAIRY TALE

You asked if there were men in England when the country was coveredwith ice and snow. Look at this, and judge for yourself.

What is it? a piece of old mortar? Yes. But mortar whichwas made Madam How herself, and not by any man. And what is init? A piece of flint and some bits of bone. But look atthat piece of flint. It is narrow, thin, sharp-edged: quite differentin shape from any bit of flint which you or I ever saw among the hundredsof thousands of broken bits of gravel which we tread on here all daylong; and here are some more bits like it, which came from the sameplace—all very much the same shape, like rough knives or razorblades; and here is a core of flint, the remaining part of a large flint,from which, as you may see, blades like those have been split off.Those flakes of flint, my child, were split off by men; even your youngeyes ought to be able to see that. And here are other pieces offlint—pear-shaped, but flattened, sharp at one end and left roundedat the other, which look like spear-heads, or arrow-heads, or pointedaxes, or pointed hatchets—even your young eyes can see that thesemust have been made by man. And they are, I may tell you, justlike the tools of flint, or of obsidian, which is volcanic glass, andwhich savages use still where they have not iron. There is a greatobsidian knife, you know, in a house in this very parish, which camefrom Mexico; and your eye can tell you how like it is to these flintones. But these flint tools are very old. If you crack afresh flint, you will see that its surface is gray, and somewhat rough,so that it sticks to your tongue. These tools are smooth and shiny:and the edges of some of them are a little rubbed from being washedabout in gravel; while the iron in the gravel has stained them reddish,which it would take hundreds and perhaps thousands of years to do.There are little rough markings, too, upon some of them, which, if youlook at through a magnifying glass, are iron, crystallised into theshape of little sea-weeds and trees—another sign that they arevery very old. And what is more, near the place where these flintflakes come from there are no flints in the ground for hundreds of miles;so that men must have brought them there ages and ages since.And to tell you plainly, these are scrapers such as the Esquimaux inNorth America still use to scrape the flesh off bones, and to cleanthe insides of skins.

But did these people (savages perhaps) live when the country wasicy cold? Look at the bits of bone. They have been split,you see, lengthways; that, I suppose, was to suck the marrow out ofthem, as savages do still. But to what animal do the bones belong?That is the question, and one which I could not have answered you, ifwiser men than I am could not have told me.

They are the bones of reindeer—such reindeer as are now foundonly in Lapland and the half-frozen parts of North America, close tothe Arctic circle, where they have six months day and six months night.You have read of Laplanders, and how they drive reindeer in their sledges,and live upon reindeer milk; and you have read of Esquimaux, who huntseals and walrus, and live in houses of ice, lighted by lamps fed withthe same blubber on which they feed themselves. I need not tellyou about them.

Now comes the question—Whence did these flints and bones come?They came out of a cave in Dordogne, in the heart of sunny France,—faraway to the south, where it is hotter every summer than it was hereeven this summer, from among woods of box and evergreen oak, and vineyardsof rich red wine. In that warm land once lived savages, who huntedamid ice and snow the reindeer, and with the reindeer animals strangerstill.

And now I will tell you a fairy tale: to make you understand it atall I must put it in the shape of a tale. I call it a fairy tale,because it is so strange; indeed I think I ought to call it the fairytale of all fairy tales, for by the time we get to the end of it I thinkit will explain to you how our forefathers got to believe in fairies,and trolls, and elves, and scratlings, and all strange little peoplewho were said to haunt the mountains and the caves.

Well, once upon a time, so long ago that no man can tell when, theland was so much higher, that between England and Ireland, and, whatis more, between England and Norway, was firm dry land. The countrythen must have looked—at least we know it looked so in Norfolk—verylike what our moors look like here. There were forests of Scotchfir, and of spruce too, which is not wild in England now, though youmay see plenty in every plantation. There were oaks and alders,yews and sloes, just as there are in our woods now. There wasbuck-bean in the bogs, as there is in Larmer’s and Heath pond;and white and yellow water-lilies, horn-wort, and pond-weeds, just asthere are now in our ponds. There were wild horses, wild deer,and wild oxen, those last of an enormous size. There were littleyellow roe-deer, which will not surprise you, for there are hundredsand thousands in Scotland to this day; and, as you know, they will thrivewell enough in our woods now. There were beavers too: but thatmust not surprise you, for there were beavers in South Wales long afterthe Norman Conquest, and there are beavers still in the mountain glensof the south-east of France. There were honest little water-ratstoo, who I dare say sat up on their hind legs like monkeys, nibblingthe water-lily pods, thousands of years ago, as they do in our pondsnow. Well, so far we have come to nothing strange: but now beginsthe fairy tale. Mixed with all these animals, there wandered aboutgreat herds of elephants and rhinoceroses; not smooth-skinned, mind,but covered with hair and wool, like those which are still found stickingout of the everlasting ice cliffs, at the mouth of the Lena and otherSiberian rivers, with the flesh, and skin, and hair so fresh upon them,that the wild wolves tear it off, and snarl and growl over the carcaseof monsters who were frozen up thousands of years ago. And withthem, stranger still, were great hippopotamuses; who came, perhaps,northward in summer time along the sea-shore and down the rivers, havingspread hither all the way from Africa; for in those days, you must understand,Sicily, and Italy, and Malta—look at your map—were joinedto the coast of Africa: and so it may be was the rock of Gibraltar itself;and over the sea where the Straits of Gibraltar now flow was firm dryland, over which hyænas and leopards, elephants and rhinocerosesranged into Spain; for their bones are found at this day in the Gibraltarcaves. And this is the first chapter of my fairy tale.

Now while all this was going on, and perhaps before this began, theclimate was getting colder year by year—we do not know how; and,what is more, the land was sinking; and it sank so deep that at lastnothing was left out of the water but the tops of the mountains in Ireland,and Scotland, and Wales. It sank so deep that it left beds ofshells belonging to the Arctic regions nearly two thousand feet highupon the mountain side. And so

“It grew wondrous cold,
And ice mast-high came floating by,
As green as emerald.”

But there were no masts then to measure the icebergs by, nor anyship nor human being there. All we know is that the icebergs broughtwith them vast quantities of mud, which sank to the bottom, and coveredup that pleasant old forest-land in what is called boulder-clay; clayfull of bits of broken rock, and of blocks of stone so enormous, thatnothing but an iceberg could have carried them. So all the animalswere drowned or driven away, and nothing was left alive perhaps, excepta few little hardy plants which clung about cracks and gullies in themountain tops; and whose descendants live there still. That wasa dreadful time; the worst, perhaps, of all the age of Ice; and so endsthe second chapter of my fairy tale.

Now for my third chapter. “When things come to the worst,”says the proverb, “they commonly mend;” and so did thispoor frozen and drowned land of England and France and Germany, thoughit mended very slowly. The land began to rise out of the sea oncemore, and rose till it was perhaps as high as it had been at first,and hundreds of feet higher than it is now: but still it was very cold,covered, in Scotland at least, with one great sea of ice and glaciersdescending down into the sea, as I said when I spoke to you about theIce-Plough. But as the land rose, and grew warmer too, while itrose, the wild beasts who had been driven out by the great drowningcame gradually back again. As the bottom of the old icy sea turnedinto dry land, and got covered with grasses, and weeds, and shrubs oncemore, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, oxen—sometimesthe same species, sometimes slightly different ones—returned toFrance, and then to England (for there was no British Channel then tostop them); and with them came other strange animals, especially thegreat Irish elk, as he is called, as large as the largest horse, withhorns sometimes ten feet across. A pair of those horns with theskull you have seen yourself, and can judge what a noble animal he musthave been. Enormous bears came too, and hyænas, and a tigeror lion (I cannot say which), as large as the largest Bengal tiger nowto be seen in India.

And in those days—we cannot, of course, exactly say when—therecame—first I suppose into the south and east of France, and thengradually onward into England and Scotland and Ireland—creatureswithout any hair to keep them warm, or scales to defend them, withouthorns or tusks to fight with, or teeth to worry and bite; the weakestyou would have thought of the beasts, and yet stronger than all theanimals, because they were Men, with reasonable souls. Whencethey came we cannot tell, nor why; perhaps from mere hunting after food,and love of wandering and being independent and alone. Perhapsthey came into that icy land for fear of stronger and cleverer peoplethan themselves; for we have no proof, my child, none at all, that theywere the first men that trod this earth. But be that as it may,they came; and so cunning were these savage men, and so brave likewise,though they had no iron among them, only flint and sharpened bones,yet they contrived to kill and eat the mammoths, and the giant oxen,and the wild horses, and the reindeer, and to hold their own againstthe hyænas, and tigers, and bears, simply because they had wits,and the dumb animals had none. And that is the strangest partto me of all my fairy tale. For what a man’s wits are, andwhy he has them, and therefore is able to invent and to improve, whileeven the cleverest ape has none, and therefore can invent and improvenothing, and therefore cannot better himself, but must remain from fatherto son, and father to son again, a stupid, pitiful, ridiculous ape,while men can go on civilising themselves, and growing richer and morecomfortable, wiser and happier, year by year—how that comes topass, I say, is to me a wonder and a prodigy and a miracle, strangerthan all the most fantastic marvels you ever read in fairy tales.

You may find the flint weapons which these old savages used buriedin many a gravel-pit up and down France and the south of England; butyou will find none here, for the gravel here was made (I am told) atthe beginning of the ice-time, before the north of England sunk intothe sea, and therefore long, long before men came into this land.But most of their remains are found in caves which water has eaten outof the limestone rocks, like that famous cave of Kent’s Hole atTorquay. In it, and in many another cave, lie the bones of animalswhich the savages ate, and cracked to get the marrow out of them, mixedup with their flint-weapons and bone harpoons, and sometimes with burntashes and with round stones, used perhaps to heat water, as savagesdo now, all baked together into a hard paste or breccia by the lime.These are in the water, and are often covered with a floor of stalagmitewhich has dripped from the roof above and hardened into stone.Of these caves and their beautiful wonders I must tell you another day.We must keep now to our fairy tale. But in these caves, no doubt,the savages lived; for not only have weapons been found in them, butactually drawings scratched (I suppose with flint) on bone or mammothivory—drawings of elk, and bull, and horse, and ibex—andone, which was found in France, of the great mammoth himself, the woollyelephant, with a mane on his shoulders like a lion’s mane.So you see that one of the earliest fancies of this strange creature,called man, was to draw, as you and your schoolfellows love to draw,and copy what you see, you know not why. Remember that.You like to draw; but why you like it neither you nor any man can tell.It is one of the mysteries of human nature; and that poor savage clothedin skins, dirty it may be, and more ignorant than you (happily) canconceive, when he sat scratching on ivory in the cave the figures ofthe animals he hunted, was proving thereby that he had the same wonderfuland mysterious human nature as you—that he was the kinsman ofevery painter and sculptor who ever felt it a delight and duty to copythe beautiful works of God.

Sometimes, again, especially in Denmark, these savages have leftbehind upon the shore mounds of dirt, which are called there “kjökken-möddings”—“kitchen-middens”as they would say in Scotland, “kitchen-dirtheaps” as weshould say here down South—and a very good name for them thatis; for they are made up of the shells of oysters, co*ckles, mussels,and periwinkles, and other shore-shells besides, on which those poorcreatures fed; and mingled with them are broken bones of beasts, andfishes, and birds, and flint knives, and axes, and sling stones; andhere and there hearths, on which they have cooked their meals in somerough way. And that is nearly all we know about them; but thiswe know from the size of certain of the shells, and from other reasonswhich you would not understand, that these mounds were made an enormoustime ago, when the water of the Baltic Sea was far more salt than itis now.

But what has all this to do with my fairy tale? This:—

Suppose that these people, after all, had been fairies?

I am in earnest. Of course, I do not mean that these folk couldmake themselves invisible, or that they had any supernatural powers—anymore, at least, than you and I have—or that they were anythingbut savages; but this I do think, that out of old stories of these savagesgrew up the stories of fairies, elves, and trolls, and scratlings, andcluricaunes, and ogres, of which you have read so many.

When stronger and bolder people, like the Irish, and the Highlandersof Scotland, and the Gauls of France, came northward with their bronzeand iron weapons; and still more, when our own forefathers, the Germansand the Norsem*n, came, these poor little savages with their flint arrowsand axes, were no match for them, and had to run away northward, orto be all killed out; for people were fierce and cruel in those oldtimes, and looked on every one of a different race from themselves asa natural enemy. They had not learnt—alas! too many havenot learned it yet—that all men are brothers for the sake of JesusChrist our Lord. So these poor savages were driven out, till nonewere left, save the little Lapps up in the north of Norway, where theylive to this day.

But stories of them, and of how they dwelt in caves, and had strangecustoms, and used poisoned weapons, and how the elf-bolts (as theirflint arrow-heads are still called) belonged to them, lingered on, andwere told round the fire on winter nights and added to, and played withhalf in fun, till a hundred legends sprang up about them, which usedonce to be believed by grown-up folk, but which now only amuse children.And because some of these savages were very short, as the Lapps andEsquimaux are now, the story grew of their being so small that theycould make themselves invisible; and because others of them were (butprobably only a few) very tall and terrible, the story grew that therewere giants in that old world, like that famous Gogmagog, whom Brutusand his Britons met (so old fables tell), when they landed first atPlymouth, and fought him, and threw him over the cliff. Ogres,too—of whom you read in fairy tales—I am afraid that therewere such people once, even here in Europe; strong and terrible savages,who ate human beings. Of course, the legends and tales about thembecame ridiculous and exaggerated as they passed from mouth to mouthover the Christmas fire, in the days when no one could read or write.But that the tales began by being true any one may well believe whoknows how many cannibal savages there are in the world even now.I think that, if ever there was an ogre in the world, he must have beenvery like a certain person who lived, or was buried, in a cave in theNeanderthal, between Elberfeld and Dusseldorf, on the Lower Rhine.The skull and bones which were found there (and which are very famousnow among scientific men) belonged to a personage whom I should havebeen very sorry to meet, and still more to let you meet, in the wildforest; to a savage of enormous strength of limb (and I suppose of jaw)likewise

“like an ape,
With forehead villainous low,”

who could have eaten you if he would; and (I fear) also would haveeaten you if he could. Such savages may have lingered (I believe,from the old ballads and romances, that they did linger) for a longtime in lonely forests and mountain caves, till they were all killedout by warriors who wore mail-armour and carried steel sword, and battle-axe,and lance.

But had these people any religion?

My dear child, we cannot know, and need not know. But we knowthis—that God beholds all the heathen. He fashions the heartsof them, and understandeth all their works. And we know also thatHe is just and good. These poor folks were, I doubt not, happyenough in their way; and we are bound to believe (for we have no proofa*gainst it), that most of them were honest and harmless enough likewise.Of course, ogres and cannibals, and cruel and brutal persons (if therewere any among them), deserved punishment—and punishment, I donot doubt, they got. But, of course, again, none of them knewthings which you know; but for that very reason they were not boundto do many things which you are bound to do. For those to whomlittle is given, of them shall little be required. What theirreligion was like, or whether they had any religion at all, we cannottell. But this we can tell, that known unto God are all His worksfrom the creation of the world; and that His mercy is over all His works,and He hateth nothing that He has made. These men and women, whateverthey were, were God’s work; and therefore we may comfort ourselveswith the certainty that, whether or not they knew God, God knew them.

And so ends my fairy tale.

But is it not a wonderful tale? More wonderful, if you willthink over it, than any story invented by man. But so it alwaysis. “Truth,” wise men tell us, “is strangerthan fiction.” Even a child like you will see that it mustbe so, if you will but recollect who makes fiction, and who makes facts.

Man makes fiction: he invents stories, pretty enough, fantasticalenough. But out of what does he make them up? Out of a fewthings in this great world which he has seen, and heard, and felt, justas he makes up his dreams. But who makes truth? Who makesfacts? Who, but God?

Then truth is as much larger than fiction, as God is greater thanman; as much larger as the whole universe is larger than the littlecorner of it that any man, even the greatest poet or philosopher, cansee; and as much grander, and as much more beautiful, and as much morestrange. For one is the whole, and the other is one, a few tinyscraps of the whole. The one is the work of God; the other isthe work of man. Be sure that no man can ever fancy anything strange,unexpected, and curious, without finding if he had eyes to see, a hundredthings around his feet more strange, more unexpected, more curious,actually ready-made already by God. You are fond of fairy tales,because they are fanciful, and like your dreams. My dear child,as your eyes open to the true fairy tale which Madam How can tell youall day long, nursery stories will seem to you poor and dull.All those feelings in you which your nursery tales call out,—imagination,wonder, awe, pity, and I trust too, hope and love—will be calledout, I believe, by the Tale of all Tales, the true “Märchenallen Märchen,” so much more fully and strongly and purely,that you will feel that novels and story-books are scarcely worth yourreading, as long as you can read the great green book, of which everybud is a letter, and every tree a page.

Wonder if you will. You cannot wonder too much. Thatyou might wonder all your life long, God put you into this wondrousworld, and gave you that faculty of wonder which he has not given tothe brutes; which is at once the mother of sound science, and a pledgeof immortality in a world more wondrous even than this. But wonderat the right thing, not at the wrong; at the real miracles and prodigies,not at the sham. Wonder not at the world of man. Waste notyour admiration, interest, hope on it, its pretty toys, gay fashions,fine clothes, tawdry luxuries, silly amusem*nts. Wonder at theworks of God. You will not, perhaps, take my advice yet.The world of man looks so pretty, that you will needs have your peepat it, and stare into its shop windows; and if you can, go to a fewof its stage plays, and dance at a few of its balls. Ah—well—Aftera wild dream comes an uneasy wakening; and after too many sweet things,comes a sick headache. And one morning you will awake, I trustand pray, from the world of man to the world of God, and wonder wherewonder is due, and worship where worship is due. You will awakelike a child who has been at a pantomime over night, staring at the“fairy halls,” which are all paint and canvas; and the “dazzlingsplendours,” which are gas and oil; and the “magic transformations,”which are done with ropes and pulleys; and the “brilliant elves,”who are poor little children out of the next foul alley; and the harlequinand clown, who through all their fun are thinking wearily over the olddebts which they must pay, and the hungry mouths at home which theymust feed: and so, having thought it all wondrously glorious, and quitea fairy land, slips tired and stupid into bed, and wakes next morningto see the pure light shining in through the delicate frost-lace onthe window-pane, and looks out over fields of virgin snow, and watchesthe rosy dawn and cloudless blue, and the great sun rising to the musicof cawing rooks and piping stares, and says, “This is the truewonder. This is the true glory. The theatre last night wasthe fairy land of man; but this is the fairy land of God.”

CHAPTER VII—THE CHALK-CARTS

What do you want to know about next? More about the caves inwhich the old savages lived,—how they were made, and how the curiousthings inside them got there, and so forth.

Well, we will talk about that in good time: but now—What isthat coming down the hill?

Oh, only some chalk-carts.

Only some chalk-carts? It seems to me that these chalk-cartsare the very things we want; that if we follow them far enough—Ido not mean with our feet along the public road, but with our thoughtsalong a road which, I am sorry to say, the public do not yet know muchabout—we shall come to a cave, and understand how a cave is made.Meanwhile, do not be in a hurry to say, “Only a chalk-cart,”or only a mouse, or only a dead leaf. Chalk-carts, like mice,and dead leaves, and most other matters in the universe are very curiousand odd things in the eyes of wise and reasonable people. WheneverI hear young men saying “only” this and “only”that, I begin to suspect them of belonging, not to the noble army ofsages—much less to the most noble army of martyrs,—but tothe ignoble army of noodles, who think nothing interesting or importantbut dinners, and balls, and races, and back-biting their neighbours;and I should be sorry to see you enlisting in that regiment when yougrow up. But think—are not chalk-carts very odd and curiousthings? I think they are. To my mind, it is a curious questionhow men ever thought of inventing wheels; and, again, when they firstthought of it. It is a curious question, too, how men ever foundout that they could make horses work for them, and so began to tamethem, instead of eating them, and a curious question (which I thinkwe shall never get answered) when the first horse-tamer lived, and inwhat country. And a very curious, and, to me, a beautiful sightit is, to see those two noble horses obeying that little boy, whom theycould kill with a single kick.

But, beside all this, there is a question, which ought to be a curiousone to you (for I suspect you cannot answer it)—Why does the farmertake the trouble to send his cart and horses eight miles and more, todraw in chalk from Odiham chalk-pit?

Oh, he is going to put it on the land, of course. They arechalking the bit at the top of the next field, where the copse was grubbed.

But what good will he do by putting chalk on it? Chalk is notrich and fertile, like manure, it is altogether poor, barren stuff:you know that, or ought to know it. Recollect the chalk cuttingsand banks on the railway between Basingstoke and Winchester—howutterly barren they are. Though they have been open these thirtyyears, not a blade of grass, hardly a bit of moss, has grown on them,or will grow, perhaps, for centuries.

Come, let us find out something about the chalk before we talk aboutthe caves. The chalk is here, and the caves are not; and “Learnfrom the thing that lies nearest you” is as good a rule as “Dothe duty which lies nearest you.” Let us come into the grubbedbit, and ask the farmer—there he is in his gig.

Well, old friend, and how are you? Here is a little boy whowants to know why you are putting chalk on your field.

Does he then? If he ever tries to farm round here, he willhave to learn for his first rule—No chalk, no wheat.

But why?

Why, is more than I can tell, young squire. But if you wantto see how it comes about, look here at this freshly-grubbed land—howsour it is. You can see that by the colour of it—some black,some red, some green, some yellow, all full of sour iron, which willlet nothing grow. After the chalk has been on it a year or two,those colours will have all gone out of it; and it will turn to a nicewholesome brown, like the rest of the field; and then you will knowthat the land is sweet, and fit for any crop. Now do you mindwhat I tell you, and then I’ll tell you something more.We put on the chalk because, beside sweetening the land, it will holdwater. You see, the land about here, though it is often very wetfrom springs, is sandy and hungry; and when we drain the bottom waterout of it, the top water (that is, the rain) is apt to run through ittoo fast: and then it dries and burns up; and we get no plant of wheat,nor of turnips either. So we put on chalk to hold water, and keepthe ground moist.

But how can these lumps of chalk hold water? They are not madelike cups.

No: but they are made like sponges, which serves our turn betterstill. Just take up that lump, young squire, and you’llsee water enough in it, or rather looking out of it, and staring youin the face.

Why! one side of the lump is all over thick ice.

So it is. All that water was inside the chalk last night, tillit froze. And then it came squeezing out of the holes in the chalkin strings, as you may see it if you break the ice across. Nowyou may judge for yourself how much water a load of chalk will hold,even on a dry summer’s day. And now, if you’ll excuseme, sir, I must be off to market.

Was it all true that the farmer said?

Quite true, I believe. He is not a scientific man—thatis, he does not know the chemical causes of all these things; but hisknowledge is sound and useful, because it comes from long experience.He and his forefathers, perhaps for a thousand years and more, havebeen farming this country, reading Madam How’s books with verykeen eyes, experimenting and watching, very carefully and rationally;making mistakes often, and failing and losing their crops and theirmoney; but learning from their mistakes, till their empiric knowledge,as it is called, helps them to grow sometimes quite as good crops asif they had learned agricultural chemistry.

What he meant by the chalk sweetening the land you would not understandyet, and I can hardly tell you; for chemists are not yet agreed howit happens. But he was right; and right, too, what he told youabout the water inside the chalk, which is more important to us justnow; for, if we follow it out, we shall surely come to a cave at last.

So now for the water in the chalk. You can see now why thechalk-downs at Winchester are always green, even in the hottest summer:because Madam How has put under them her great chalk sponge. Thewinter rains soak into it; and the summer heat draws that rain out ofit again as invisible steam, coming up from below, to keep the rootsof the turf cool and moist under the blazing sun.

You love that short turf well. You love to run and race overthe Downs with your butterfly-net and hunt “chalk-hill blues,”and “marbled whites,” and “spotted burnets,”till you are hot and tired; and then to sit down and look at the quietlittle old city below, with the long cathedral roof, and the tower ofSt. Cross, and the gray old walls and buildings shrouded by noble trees,all embosomed among the soft rounded lines of the chalk-hills; and thenyou begin to feel very thirsty, and cry, “Oh, if there were butsprings and brooks in the Downs, as there are at home!”But all the hollows are as dry as the hill tops. There is nota brook, or the mark of a watercourse, in one of them. You arelike the Ancient Mariner in the poem, with

“Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

To get that you must go down and down, hundreds of feet, to the greenmeadows through which silver Itchen glides toward the sea. Thereyou stand upon the bridge, and watch the trout in water so crystal-clearthat you see every weed and pebble as if you looked through air.If ever there was pure water, you think, that is pure. Is it so?Drink some. Wash your hands in it and try—You feel thatthe water is rough, hard (as they call it), quite different from thewater at home, which feels as soft as velvet. What makes it sohard?

Because it is full of invisible chalk. In every gallon of thatwater there are, perhaps, fifteen grains of solid chalk, which was onceinside the heart of the hills above. Day and night, year afteryear, the chalk goes down to the sea; and if there were such creaturesas water-fairies—if it were true, as the old Greeks and Romansthought, that rivers were living things, with a Nymph who dwelt in eachof them, and was its goddess or its queen—then, if your ears wereopened to hear her, the Nymph of Itchen might say to you—

So child, you think that I do nothing but, as your sister says whenshe sings Mr. Tennyson’s beautiful song,

“I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.”

Yes. I do that: and I love, as the Nymphs loved of old, menwho have eyes to see my beauty, and ears to discern my song, and tofit their own song to it, and tell how

“‘I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

“‘And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

“‘And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.’”

Yes. That is all true: but if that were all, I should not belet to flow on for ever, in a world where Lady Why rules, and MadamHow obeys. I only exist (like everything else, from the sun inheaven to the gnat which dances in his beam) on condition of working,whether we wish it or not, whether we know it or not. I am notan idle stream, only fit to chatter to those who bathe or fish in mywaters, or even to give poets beautiful fancies about me. Youlittle guess the work I do. For I am one of the daughters of MadamHow, and, like her, work night and day, we know not why, though LadyWhy must know. So day by day, and night by night, while you aresleeping (for I never sleep), I carry, delicate and soft as I am, aburden which giants could not bear: and yet I am never tired.Every drop of rain which the south-west wind brings from the West Indianseas gives me fresh life and strength to bear my burden; and it hasneed to do so; for every drop of rain lays a fresh burden on me.Every root and weed which grows in every field; every dead leaf whichfalls in the highwoods of many a parish, from the Grange and Woodmancoteround to Farleigh and Preston, and so to Brighton and the Alresforddowns;—ay, every atom of manure which the farmers put on the land—foulenough then, but pure enough before it touches me—each of these,giving off a tiny atom of what men call carbonic acid, melts a tinygrain of chalk, and helps to send it down through the solid hill byone of the million pores and veins which at once feed and burden mysprings. Ages on ages I have worked on thus, carrying the chalkinto the sea. And ages on ages, it may be, I shall work on yet;till I have done my work at last, and levelled the high downs into aflat sea-shore, with beds of flint gravel rattling in the shallow waves.

She might tell you that; and when she had told you, you would surelythink of the clumsy chalk-cart rumbling down the hill, and then of thegraceful stream, bearing silently its invisible load of chalk; and seehow much more delicate and beautiful, as well as vast and wonderful,Madam How’s work is than that of man.

But if you asked the nymph why she worked on for ever, she couldnot tell you. For like the Nymphs of old, and the Hamadryads wholived, in trees, and Undine, and the little Sea-maiden, she would haveno soul; no reason; no power to say why.

It is for you, who are a reasonable being, to guess why: or at leastlisten to me if I guess for you, and say, perhaps—I can only sayperhaps—that chalk may be going to make layers of rich marl inthe sea between England and France; and those marl-beds may be upheavedand grow into dry land, and be ploughed, and sowed, and reaped by awiser race of men, in a better-ordered world than this: or the chalkmay have even a nobler destiny before it. That may happen to it,which has happened already to many a grain of lime. It may becarried thousands of miles away to help in building up a coral reef(what that is I must tell you afterwards). That coral reef mayharden into limestone beds. Those beds may be covered up, pressed,and, it may be, heated, till they crystallise into white marble: andout of it fairer statues be carved, and grander temples built, thanthe world has ever yet seen.

And if that is not the reason why the chalk is being sent into thesea, then there is another reason, and probably a far better one.For, as I told you at first, Lady Why’s intentions are far wiserand better than our fancies; and she—like Him whom she obeys—isable to do exceeding abundantly, beyond all that we can ask or think.

But you will say now that we have followed the chalk-cart a longway, without coming to the cave.

You are wrong. We have come to the very mouth of the cave.All we have to do is to say—not “Open Sesame,” likeAli Baba in the tale of the Forty Thieves—but some word or twowhich Madam Why will teach us, and forthwith a hill will open, and weshall walk in, and behold rivers and cascades underground, stalactitepillars and stalagmite statues, and all the wonders of the grottoesof Adelsberg, Antiparos, or Kentucky.

Am I joking? Yes, and yet no; for you know that when I jokeI am usually most in earnest. At least, I am now.

But there are no caves in chalk?

No, not that I ever heard of. There are, though, in limestone,which is only a harder kind of chalk. Madam How could turn thischalk into hard limestone, I believe, even now; and in more ways thanone: but in ways which would not be very comfortable or profitable forus Southern folk who live on it. I am afraid that—what betweensqueezing and heating—she would flatten us all out into phosphaticfossils, about an inch thick; and turn Winchester city into a “breccia”which would puzzle geologists a hundred thousand years hence.So we will hope that she will leave our chalk downs for the Itchen towash gently away, while we talk about caves, and how Madam How scoopsthem out by water underground, just in the same way, only more roughly,as she melts the chalk.

Suppose, then, that these hills, instead of being soft, spongy chalk,were all hard limestone marble, like that of which the font in the churchis made. Then the rainwater, instead of sinking through the chalkas now, would run over the ground down-hill, and if it came to a crack(a fault, as it is called) it would run down between the rock; and asit ran it would eat that hole wider and wider year by year, and makea swallow-hole—such as you may see in plenty if you ever go upWhernside, or any of the high hills in Yorkshire—unfathomablepits in the green turf, in which you may hear the water tinkling andtrickling far, far underground.

And now, before we go a step farther, you may understand, why thebones of animals are so often found in limestone caves. Down suchswallow-holes how many beasts must fall: either in hurry and fright,when hunted by lions and bears and such cruel beasts; or more oftenstill in time of snow, when the holes are covered with drift; or, again,if they died on the open hill-sides, their bones might be washed in,in floods, along with mud and stones, and buried with them in the cavebelow; and beside that, lions and bears and hyænas might livein the caves below, as we know they did in some caves, and drag in bonesthrough the caves’ mouths; or, again, savages might live in thatcave, and bring in animals to eat, like the wild beasts; and so thosebones might be mixed up, as we know they were, with things which thesavages had left behind—like flint tools or beads; and then thewhole would be hardened, by the dripping of the limestone water, intoa paste of breccia just like this in my drawer. But the bonesof the savages themselves you would seldom or never find mixed in it—unlesssome one had fallen in by accident from above. And why?(For there is a Why? to that question: and not merely a How?)Simply because they were men; and because God has put into the heartsof all men, even of the lowest savages, some sort of reverence for thosewho are gone; and has taught them to bury, or in some other way takecare of, their bones.

But how is the swallow-hole sure to end in a cave?

Because it cannot help making a cave for itself if it has time.

Think: and you will see that it must be so. For that watermust run somewhere; and so it eats its way out between the beds of therock, making underground galleries, and at last caves and lofty halls.For it always eats, remember, at the bottom of its channel, leavingthe roof alone. So it eats, and eats, more in some places andless in others, according as the stone is harder or softer, and accordingto the different direction of the rock-beds (what we call their dipand strike); till at last it makes one of those wonderful caverns aboutwhich you are so fond of reading—such a cave as there actuallyis in the rocks of the mountain of Whernside, fed by the swallow-holesaround the mountain-top; a cave hundreds of yards long, with halls,and lakes, and waterfalls, and curtains and festoons of stalactite whichhave dripped from the roof, and pillars of stalagmite which have beenbuilt up on the floor below. These stalactites (those tell mewho have seen them) are among the most beautiful of all Madam How’swork; sometimes like branches of roses or of grapes; sometimes likestatues; sometimes like delicate curtains, and I know not what otherbeautiful shapes. I have never seen them, I am sorry to say, andtherefore I cannot describe them. But they are all made in thesame way; just in the same way as those little straight stalactiteswhich you may have seen hanging, like icicles, in vaulted cellars, orunder the arches of a bridge. The water melts more lime than itcan carry, and drops some of it again, making fresh limestone grainby grain as it drips from the roof above; and fresh limestone againwhere it splashes on the floor below: till if it dripped long enough,the stalactite hanging from above would meet the stalagmite rising frombelow, and join in one straight round white graceful shaft, which wouldseem (but only seem) to support the roof of the cave. And outof that cave—though not always out of the mouth of it—willrun a stream of water, which seems to you clear as crystal, though itis actually, like the Itchen at Winchester, full of lime; so full oflime, that it makes beds of fresh limestone, which are called travertine—whichyou may see in Italy, and Greece, and Asia Minor: or perhaps it petrifies,as you call it, the weeds in its bed, like that dropping-well at Knaresborough,of which you have often seen a picture. And the cause is this:the water is so full of lime, that it is forced to throw away some ofit upon everything it touches, and so incrusts with stone—thoughit does not turn to stone—almost anything you put in it.You have seen, or ought to have seen, petrified moss and birds’nests and such things from Knaresborough Well: and now you know a little,though only a very little, of how the pretty toys are made.

Now if you can imagine for yourself (though I suppose a little boycannot) the amount of lime which one of these subterranean rivers wouldcarry away, gnawing underground centuries after centuries, day and night,summer and winter, then you will not be surprised at the enormous sizeof caverns which may be seen in different parts of the world—butalways, I believe, in limestone rock. You would not be surprised(though you would admire them) at the caverns of Adelsberg, in Carniola(in the south of Austria, near the top of the Adriatic), which runs,I believe, for miles in length; and in the lakes of which, in darknessfrom its birth until its death, lives that strange beast, the Proteusa sort of long newt which never comes to perfection—I supposefor want of the genial sunlight which makes all things grow. Buthe is blind; and more, he keeps all his life the same feathery gillswhich newts have when they are babies, and which we have so often lookedat through the microscope, to see the blood-globules run round and roundinside. You would not wonder, either, at the Czirknitz Lake, nearthe same place, which at certain times of the year vanishes suddenlythrough chasms under water, sucking the fish down with it; and aftera certain time boils suddenly up again from the depths, bringing backwith it the fish, who have been swimming comfortably all the time ina subterranean lake; and bringing back, too (and, extraordinary as thisstory is, there is good reason to believe it true), live wild duckswho went down small and unfledged, and come back full-grown and fat,with water-weeds and small fish in their stomachs, showing they havehad plenty to feed on underground. But—and this is the strangestpart of the story, if true—they come up unfledged just as theywent down, and are moreover blind from having been so long in darkness.After a while, however, folks say their eyes get right, their feathersgrow, and they fly away like other birds.

Neither would you be surprised (if you recollect that Madam How isa very old lady indeed, and that some of her work is very old likewise)at that Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the largest cave in the known world,through which you may walk nearly ten miles on end, and in which a hundredmiles of gallery have been explored already, and yet no end found tothe cave. In it (the guides will tell you) there are “226avenues, 47 domes, 8 cataracts, 23 pits, and several rivers;”and if that fact is not very interesting to you (as it certainly isnot to me) I will tell you something which ought to interest you: thatthis cave is so immensely old that various kinds of little animals,who have settled themselves in the outer parts of it, have had timeto change their shape, and to become quite blind; so that blind fathersand mothers have blind children, generation after generation.

There are blind rats there, with large shining eyes which cannotsee—blind landcrabs, who have the foot-stalks of their eyes (youmay see them in any crab) still left; but the eyes which should be onthe top of them are gone. There are blind fish, too, in the cave,and blind insects; for, if they have no use for their eyes in the dark,why should Madam How take the trouble to finish them off?

One more cave I must tell you of, to show you how old some cavesmust be, and then I must stop; and that is the cave of Caripé,in Venezuela, which is the most northerly part of South America.There, in the face of a limestone cliff, crested with enormous floweringtrees, and festooned with those lovely creepers of which you have seena few small ones in hothouses, there opens an arch as big as the westfront of Winchester Cathedral, and runs straight in like a cathedralnave for more than 1400 feet. Out of it runs a stream; and alongthe banks of that stream, as far as the sunlight strikes in, grow wildbananas, and palms, and lords and ladies (as you call them), which arenot, like ours, one foot, but many feet high. Beyond that thecave goes on, with subterranean streams, cascades, and halls, no manyet knows how far. A friend of mine last year went in farther,I believe, than any one yet has gone; but, instead of taking Indiantorches made of bark and resin, or even torches made of Spanish wax,such as a brave bishop of those parts used once when he went in fartherthan any one before him, he took with him some of that beautiful magnesiumlight which you have seen often here at home. And in one place,when he lighted up the magnesium, he found himself in a hall full 300feet high—higher far, that is, than the dome of St. Paul’s—anda very solemn thought it was to him, he said, that he had seen whatno other human being ever had seen; and that no ray of light had everstruck on that stupendous roof in all the ages since the making of theworld. But if he found out something which he did not expect,he was disappointed in something which he did expect. For theIndians warned him of a hole in the floor which (they told him) wasan unfathomable abyss. And lo and behold, when he turned the magnesiumlight upon it, the said abyss was just about eight feet deep.But it is no wonder that the poor Indians with their little smoky torchesshould make such mistakes; no wonder, too, that they should be afraidto enter far into those gloomy vaults; that they should believe thatthe souls of their ancestors live in that dark cave; and that they shouldsay that when they die they will go to the Guacharos, as they call thebirds that fly with doleful screams out of the cave to feed at night,and in again at daylight, to roost and sleep.

Now, it is these very Guacharo birds which are to me the most wonderfulpart of the story. The Indians kill and eat them for their fat,although they believe they have to do with evil spirits. But scientificmen who have studied these birds will tell you that they are more wonderfulthan if all the Indians’ fancies about them were true. Theyare great birds, more than three feet across the wings, somewhat likeowls, somewhat like cuckoos, somewhat like goatsuckers; but, on thewhole, unlike anything in the world but themselves; and instead of feedingon moths or mice, they feed upon hard dry fruits, which they pick offthe trees after the set of sun. And wise men will tell you, thatin making such a bird as that, and giving it that peculiar way of life,and settling it in that cavern, and a few more caverns in that partof the world, and therefore in making the caverns ready for them tolive in, Madam How must have taken ages and ages, more than you canimagine or count.

But that is among the harder lessons which come in the latter partof Madam How’s book. Children need not learn them yet; andthey can never learn them, unless they master her alphabet, and hershort and easy lessons for beginners, some of which I am trying to teachyou now.

But I have just recollected that we are a couple of very stupid fellows.We have been talking all this time about chalk and limestone, and haveforgotten to settle what they are, and how they were made. Wemust think of that next time. It will not do for us (at leastif we mean to be scientific men) to use terms without defining them;in plain English, to talk about—we don’t know what.

CHAPTER VIII—MADAM HOW’S TWO GRANDSONS

You want to know, then, what chalk is? I suppose you mean whatchalk is made of?

Yes. That is it.

That we can only help by calling in the help of a very great giantwhose name is Analysis.

A giant?

Yes. And before we call for him I will tell you a very curiousstory about him and his younger brother, which is every word of it true.

Once upon a time, certainly as long ago as the first man, or perhapsthe first rational being of any kind, was created, Madam How had twograndsons. The elder is called Analysis, and the younger Synthesis.As for who their father and mother were, there have been so many disputeson that question that I think children may leave it alone for the present.For my part, I believe that they are both, like St. Patrick, “gentlemen,and come of decent people;” and I have a great respect and affectionfor them both, as long as each keeps in his own place and minds hisown business.

Now you must understand that, as soon as these two baby giants wereborn, Lady Why, who sets everything to do that work for which it isexactly fitted, set both of them their work. Analysis was to taketo pieces everything he found, and find out how it was made. Synthesiswas to put the pieces together again, and make something fresh out ofthem. In a word, Analysis was to teach men Science; and Synthesisto teach them Art.

But because Analysis was the elder, Madam How commanded Synthesisnever to put the pieces together till Analysis had taken them completelyapart. And, my child, if Synthesis had obeyed that rule of hisgood old grandmother’s, the world would have been far happier,wealthier, wiser, and better than it is now.

But Synthesis would not. He grew up a very noble boy.He could carve, he could paint, he could build, he could make music,and write poems: but he was full of conceit and haste. Wheneverhis elder brother tried to do a little patient work in taking thingsto pieces, Synthesis snatched the work out of his hands before it wasa quarter done, and began putting it together again to suit his ownfancy, and, of course, put it together wrong. Then he went onto bully his elder brother, and locked him up in prison, and starvedhim, till for many hundred years poor Analysis never grew at all, butremained dwarfed, and stupid, and all but blind for want of light; whileSynthesis, and all the hasty conceited people who followed him, grewstout and strong and tyrannous, and overspread the whole world, andruled it at their will. But the fault of all the work of Synthesiswas just this: that it would not work. His watches would not keeptime, his soldiers would not fight, his ships would not sail, his houseswould not keep the rain out. So every time he failed in his workhe had to go to poor Analysis in his dungeon, and bully him into takinga thing or two to pieces, and giving him a few sound facts out of them,just to go on with till he came to grief again, boasting in the meantimethat he and not Analysis had found out the facts. And at lasthe grew so conceited that he fancied he knew all that Madam How couldteach him, or Lady Why either, and that he understood all things inheaven and earth; while it was not the real heaven and earth that hewas thinking of, but a sham heaven and a sham earth, which he had builtup out of his guesses and his own fancies.

And the more Synthesis waxed in pride, and the more he trampled uponhis poor brother, the more reckless he grew, and the more willing todeceive himself. If his real flowers would not grow, he cut outpaper flowers, and painted them and said that they would do just aswell as natural ones. If his dolls would not work, he put stringsand wires behind them to make them nod their heads and open their eyes,and then persuaded other people, and perhaps half-persuaded himself,that they were alive. If the hand of his weather-glass went down,he nailed it up to insure a fine day, and tortured, burnt, or murderedevery one who said it did not keep up of itself. And many otherfoolish and wicked things he did, which little boys need not hear ofyet.

But at last his punishment came, according to the laws of his grandmother,Madam How, which are like the laws of the Medes and Persians, and alternot, as you and all mankind will sooner or later find; for he grew sorich and powerful that he grew careless and lazy, and thought aboutnothing but eating and drinking, till people began to despise him moreand more. And one day he left the dungeon of Analysis so ill guarded,that Analysis got out and ran away. Great was the hue and cryafter him; and terribly would he have been punished had he been caught.But, lo and behold, folks had grown so disgusted with Synthesis thatthey began to take the part of Analysis. Poor men hid him in theircottages, and scholars in their studies. And when war arose abouthim,—and terrible wars did arise,—good kings, wise statesmen,gallant soldiers, spent their treasure and their lives in fighting forhim. All honest folk welcomed him, because he was honest; andall wise folk used him, for, instead of being a conceited tyrant likeSynthesis, he showed himself the most faithful, diligent, humble ofservants, ready to do every man’s work, and answer every man’squestions. And among them all he got so well fed that he grewvery shortly into the giant that he ought to have been all along; andwas, and will be for many a year to come, perfectly able to take careof himself.

As for poor Synthesis, he really has fallen so low in these days,that one cannot but pity him. He now goes about humbly after hisbrother, feeding on any scraps that are thrown to him, and is snubbedand rapped over the knuckles, and told one minute to hold his tongueand mind his own business, and the next that he has no business at allto mind, till he has got into such a poor way that some folks fancyhe will die, and are actually digging his grave already, and composinghis epitaph. But they are trying to wear the bear’s skinbefore the bear is killed; for Synthesis is not dead, nor anything likeit; and he will rise up again some day, to make good friends with hisbrother Analysis, and by his help do nobler and more beautiful workthan he has ever yet done in the world.

So now Analysis has got the upper hand; so much so that he is indanger of being spoilt by too much prosperity, as his brother was beforehim; in which case he too will have his fall; and a great deal of goodit will do him. And that is the end of my story, and a true storyit is.

Now you must remember, whenever you have to do with him, that Analysis,like fire, is a very good servant, but a very bad master. For,having got his freedom only of late years or so, he is, like young menwhen they come suddenly to be their own masters, apt to be conceited,and to fancy that he knows everything, when really he knows nothing,and can never know anything, but only knows about things, which is avery different matter. Indeed, nowadays he pretends that he canteach his old grandmother, Madam How, not only how to suck eggs, butto make eggs into the bargain; while the good old lady just laughs athim kindly, and lets him run on, because she knows he will grow wiserin time, and learn humility by his mistakes and failures, as I hopeyou will from yours.

However, Analysis is a very clever young giant, and can do wonderfulwork as long as he meddles only with dead things, like this bit of lime.He can take it to pieces, and tell you of what things it is made, orseems to be made; and take them to pieces again, and tell you what eachof them is made of; and so on, till he gets conceited, and fancies thathe can find out some one Thing of all things (which he calls matter),of which all other things are made; and some Way of all ways (whichhe calls force), by which all things are made: but when he boasts inthat way, old Madam How smiles, and says, “My child, before youcan say that, you must remember a hundred things which you are forgetting,and learn a hundred thousand things which you do not know;” andthen she just puts her hand over his eyes, and Master Analysis beginsgroping in the dark, and talking the saddest nonsense. So bewareof him, and keep him in his own place, and to his own work, or he willflatter you, and get the mastery of you, and persuade you that he canteach you a thousand things of which he knows no more than he does whya duck’s egg never hatches into a chicken. And remember,if Master Analysis ever grows saucy and conceited with you, just askhim that last riddle, and you will shut him up at once.

And why?

Because Analysis can only explain to you a little about dead things,like stones—inorganic things as they are called. Livingthings—organisms, as they are called—he cannot explain toyou at all. When he meddles with them, he always ends like theman who killed his goose to get the golden eggs. He has to killhis goose, or his flower, or his insect, before he can analyse it; andthen it is not a goose, but only the corpse of a goose; not a flower,but only the dead stuff of the flower.

And therefore he will never do anything but fail, when he tries tofind out the life in things. How can he, when he has to take thelife out of them first? He could not even find out how a plum-puddingis made by merely analysing it. He might part the sugar, and theflour, and the suet; he might even (for he is very clever, and verypatient too, the more honour to him) take every atom of sugar out ofthe flour with which it had got mixed, and every atom of brown colourwhich had got out of the plums and currants into the body of the pudding,and then, for aught I know, put the colouring matter back again intothe plums and currants; and then, for aught I know, turn the boiledpudding into a raw one again,—for he is a great conjurer, as MadamHow’s grandson is bound to be: but yet he would never find outhow the pudding was made, unless some one told him the great secretwhich the sailors in the old story forgot—that the cook boiledit in a cloth.

This is Analysis’s weak point—don’t let it be yours—thatin all his calculations he is apt to forget the cloth, and indeed thecook likewise. No doubt he can analyse the matter of things: buthe will keep forgetting that he cannot analyse their form.

Do I mean their shape?

No, my child; no. I mean something which makes the shape ofthings, and the matter of them likewise, but which folks have lost sightof nowadays, and do not seem likely to get sight of again for a fewhundred years. So I suppose that you need not trouble your headabout it, but may just follow the fashions as long as they last.

About this piece of lime, however, Analysis can tell us a great deal.And we may trust what he says, and believe that he understands whathe says.

Why?

Think now. If you took your watch to pieces, you would probablyspoil it for ever; you would have perhaps broken, and certainly mislaid,some of the bits; and not even a watchmaker could put it together again.You would have analysed the watch wrongly. But if a watchmakertook it to pieces then any other watchmaker could put it together againto go as well as ever, because they both understand the works, how theyfit into each other, and what the use and the power of each is.Its being put together again rightly would be a proof that it had beentaken to pieces rightly.

And so with Master Analysis. If he can take a thing to piecesso that his brother Synthesis can put it together again, you may besure that he has done his work rightly.

Now he can take a bit of chalk to pieces, so that it shall becomeseveral different things, none of which is chalk, or like chalk at all.And then his brother Synthesis can put them together again, so thatthey shall become chalk, as they were before. He can do that verynearly, but not quite. There is, in every average piece of chalk,something which he cannot make into chalk again when he has once unmadeit.

What that is I will show you presently; and a wonderful tale hangsthereby. But first we will let Analysis tell us what chalk ismade of, as far as he knows.

He will say—Chalk is carbonate of lime.

But what is carbonate of lime made of?

Lime and carbonic acid.

And what is lime?

The oxide of a certain metal, called calcium.

What do you mean?

That quicklime is a certain metal mixed with oxygen gas; and slackedlime is the same, mixed with water.

So lime is a metal. What is a metal? Nobody knows.

And what is oxygen gas? Nobody knows.

Well, Analysis, stops short very soon. He does not seem toknow much about the matter.

Nay, nay, you are wrong there. It is just “about thematter” that he does know, and knows a great deal, and very accurately;what he does not know is the matter itself. He will tell you wonderfulthings about oxygen gas—how the air is full of it, the water fullof it, every living thing full of it; how it changes hard bright steelinto soft, foul rust; how a candle cannot burn without it, or you livewithout it. But what it is he knows not.

Will he ever know?

That is Lady Why’s concern, and not ours. Meanwhile hehas a right to find out if he can. But what do you want to askhim next?

What? Oh! What carbonic acid is. He can tell youthat. Carbon and oxygen gas.

But what is carbon?

Nobody knows.

Why, here is this stupid Analysis at fault again.

Nay, nay, again. Be patient with him. If he cannot tellyou what carbon is, he can tell you what is carbon, which is well worthknowing. He will tell you, for instance, that every time you breatheor speak, what comes out of your mouth is carbonic acid; and that, ifyour breath comes on a bit of slacked lime, it will begin to turn itback into the chalk from which it was made; and that, if your breathcomes on the leaves of a growing plant, that leaf will take the carbonout of it, and turn it into wood. And surely that is worth knowing,—thatyou may be helping to make chalk, or to make wood, every time you breathe.

Well; that is very curious.

But now, ask him, What is carbon? And he will tell you, thatmany things are carbon. A diamond is carbon; and so is blacklead;and so is charcoal and co*ke, and coal in part, and wood in part.

What? Does Analysis say that a diamond and charcoal are thesame thing?

Yes.

Then his way of taking things to pieces must be a very clumsy one,if he can find out no difference between diamond and charcoal.

Well, perhaps it is: but you must remember that, though he is veryold—as old as the first man who ever lived—he has only beenat school for the last three hundred years or so. And remember,too, that he is not like you, who have some one else to teach you.He has had to teach himself, and find out for himself, and make hisown tools, and work in the dark besides. And I think it is verymuch to his credit that he ever found out that diamond and charcoalwere the same things. You would never have found it out for yourself,you will agree.

No: but how did he do it?

He taught a very famous chemist, Lavoisier, about ninety years ago,how to burn a diamond in oxygen—and a very difficult trick thatis; and Lavoisier found that the diamond when burnt turned almost entirelyinto carbonic acid and water, as blacklead and charcoal do; and more,that each of them turned into the same quantity of carbonic acid, Andso he knew, as surely as man can know anything, that all these things,however different to our eyes and fingers, are really made of the samething,—pure carbon.

But what makes them look and feel so different?

That Analysis does not know yet. Perhaps he will find out someday; for he is very patient, and very diligent, as you ought to be.Meanwhile, be content with him: remember that though he cannot see througha milestone yet, he can see farther into one than his neighbours.Indeed his neighbours cannot see into a milestone at all, but only seethe outside of it, and know things only by rote, like parrots, withoutunderstanding what they mean and how they are made.

So now remember that chalk is carbonate of lime, and that it is madeup of three things, calcium, oxygen, and carbon; and that thereforeits mark is CaCO(3), in Analysis’s language, which I hope youwill be able to read some day.

But how is it that Analysis and Synthesis cannot take all this chalkto pieces, and put it together again?

Look here; what is that in the chalk?

Oh! a shepherd’s crown, such as we often find in the gravel,only fresh and white.

Well; you know what that was once. I have often told you:—alive sea-egg, covered with prickles, which crawls at the bottom of thesea.

Well, I am sure that Master Synthesis could not put that togetheragain: and equally sure that Master Analysis might spend ages in takingit to pieces, before he found out how it was made. And—weare lucky to-day, for this lower chalk to the south has very few fossilsin it—here is something else which is not mere carbonate of lime.Look at it.

A little co*ckle, something like a wrinkled hazel-nut.

No; that is no co*ckle. Madam How invented that ages and agesbefore she thought of co*ckles, and the animal which lived inside thatshell was as different from a co*ckle-animal as a sparrow is from a dog.That is a Terebratula, a gentleman of a very ancient and worn-out family.He and his kin swarmed in the old seas, even as far back as the timewhen the rocks of the Welsh mountains were soft mud; as you will knowwhen you read that great book of Sir Roderick Murchison’s, Siluria.But as the ages rolled on, they got fewer and fewer, these Terebratulæ;and now there are hardly any of them left; only six or seven sorts areleft about these islands, which cling to stones in deep water; and thefirst time I dredged two of them out of Loch Fyne, I looked at themwith awe, as on relics from another world, which had lasted on throughunnumbered ages and changes, such as one’s fancy could not grasp.

But you will agree that, if Master Analysis took that shell to pieces,Master Synthesis would not be likely to put it together again; muchless to put it together in the right way, in which Madam How made it.

And what was that?

By making a living animal, which went on growing, that is, makingitself; and making, as it grew, its shell to live in. Synthesishas not found out yet the first step towards doing that; and, as I believe,he never will.

But there would be no harm in his trying?

Of course not. Let everybody try to do everything they fancy.Even if they fail, they will have learnt at least that they cannot doit.

But now—and this is a secret which you would never find outfor yourself, at least without the help of a microscope—the greaterpart of this lump of chalk is made up of things which neither Analysiscan perfectly take to pieces, nor Synthesis put together again.It is made of dead organisms, that is, things which have been made byliving creatures. If you washed and brushed that chalk into powder,you would find it full of little things like the Dentalina in this drawing,and many other curious forms. I will show you some under the microscopeone day.

They are the shells of animals called Foraminifera, because the shellsof some of them are full of holes, through which they put out tiny arms.So small they are and so many, that there may be, it is said, fortythousand of them in a bit of chalk an inch every way. In numberspast counting, some whole, some broken, some ground to the finest powder,they make up vast masses of England, which are now chalk downs; andin some foreign countries they make up whole mountains. Part ofthe building stone of the Great Pyramid in Egypt is composed, I am told,entirely of them.

And how did they get into the chalk?

Ah! How indeed? Let us think. The chalk must havebeen laid down at the bottom of a sea, because there are sea-shellsin it. Besides, we find little atomies exactly like these alivenow in many seas; and therefore it is fair to suppose these lived inthe sea also.

Besides, they were not washed into the chalk by any sudden flood.The water in which they settled must have been quite still, or theselittle delicate creatures would have been ground into powder—orrather into paste. Therefore learned men soon made up their mindsthat these things were laid down at the bottom of a deep sea, so deepthat neither wind, nor tide, nor currents could stir the everlastingcalm.

Ah! it is worth thinking over, for it shows how shrewd a giant Analysisis, and how fast he works in these days, now that he has got free andwell fed;—worth thinking over, I say, how our notions about theselittle atomies have changed during the last forty years.

We used to find them sometimes washed up among the sea-sand on thewild Atlantic coast; and we were taught, in the days when old Dr. Turtonwas writing his book on British shells at Bideford, to call them Nautili,because their shells were like Nautilus shells. Men did not knowthen that the animal which lives in them is no more like a Nautilusanimal than it is like a cow.

For a Nautilus, you must know, is made like a cuttlefish, with eyes,and strong jaws for biting, and arms round them; and has a heart, andgills, and a stomach; and is altogether a very well-made beast, and,I suspect, a terrible tyrant to little fish and sea-slugs, just as thecuttlefish is. But the creatures which live in these little shellsare about the least finished of Madam How’s works. Theyhave neither mouth nor stomach, eyes nor limbs. They are merelive bags full of jelly, which can take almost any shape they like,and thrust out arms—or what serve for arms—through the holesin their shells, and then contract them into themselves again, as thisGlobigerina does. What they feed on, how they grow, how they maketheir exquisitely-formed shells, whether, indeed, they are, strictlyspeaking, animals or vegetables, Analysis has not yet found out.But when you come to read about them, you will find that they, in theirown way, are just as wonderful and mysterious as a butterfly or a rose;and just as necessary, likewise, to Madam How’s work; for outof them, as I told you, she makes whole sheets of down, whole rangesof hills.

No one knew anything, I believe, about them, save that two or threekinds of them were found in chalk, till a famous Frenchman, called D’Orbigny,just thirty years ago, told the world how he had found many beautifulfresh kinds; and, more strange still, that some of these kinds werestill alive at the bottom of the Adriatic, and of the harbour of Alexandria,in Egypt.

Then in 1841 a gentleman named Edward Forbes,—now with God—whosename will be for ever dear to all who love science, and honour geniusand virtue,—found in the Ægean Sea “a bed of chalk,”he said, “full of Foraminifera, and shells of Pteropods,”forming at the bottom of the sea.

And what are Pteropods?

What you might call sea-moths (though they are not really moths),which swim about on the surface of the water, while the right-whalessuck them in tens of thousands into the great whalebone net which fringestheir jaws. Here are drawings of them. 1. Limacina (on whichthe whales feed); and 2. Hyalea, a lovely little thing in a glass shell,which lives in the Mediterranean.

But since then strange discoveries have been made, especially bythe naval officers who surveyed the bottom of the great Atlantic Oceanbefore laying down the electric cable between Ireland and America.And this is what they found:

That at the bottom of the Atlantic were vast plains of soft mud,in some places 2500 fathoms (15,000 feet) deep; that is, as deep asthe Alps are high. And more: they found out, to their surprise,that the oozy mud of the Atlantic floor was made up almost entirelyof just the same atomies as make up our chalk, especially globigerinas;that, in fact, a vast bed of chalk was now forming at the bottom ofthe Atlantic, with living shells and sea-animals of the most brilliantcolours crawling about on it in black darkness, and beds of spongesgrowing out of it, just as the sponges grew at the bottom of the oldchalk ocean, and were all, generation after generation, turned intoflints.

And, for reasons which you will hardly understand, men are beginningnow to believe that the chalk has never ceased to be made, somewhereor other, for many thousand years, ever since the Winchester Downs wereat the bottom of the sea: and that “the Globigerina-mud is notmerely a chalk formation, but a continuation of the chalkformation, so that we may be said to be still living in the age ofChalk.” {1}Ah, my little man, what would I not give to see you, before I die, addone such thought as that to the sum of human knowledge!

So there the little creatures have been lying, making chalk out ofthe lime in the sea-water, layer over layer, the young over the old,the dead over the living, year after year, age after age—for howlong?

Who can tell? How deep the layer of new chalk at the bottomof the Atlantic is, we can never know. But the layer of live atomieson it is not an inch thick, probably not a tenth of an inch. Andif it grew a tenth of an inch a year, or even a whole inch, how manyyears must it have taken to make the chalk of our downs, which is insome parts 1300 feet thick? How many inches are there in 1300feet? Do that sum, and judge for yourself.

One difference will be found between the chalk now forming at thebottom of the ocean, if it ever become dry land, and the chalk on whichyou tread on the downs. The new chalk will be full of the teethand bones of whales—warm-blooded creatures, who suckle their younglike cows, instead of laying eggs, like birds and fish. For therewere no whales in the old chalk ocean; but our modern oceans are fullof cachalots, porpoises, dolphins, swimming in shoals round any ship;and their bones and teeth, and still more their ear-bones, will dropto the bottom as they die, and be found, ages hence, in the mud whichthe live atomies make, along with wrecks of mighty ships

“Great anchors, heaps of pearl,”

and all that man has lost in the deep seas. And sadder fossilsyet, my child, will be scattered on those white plains:—

“To them the love of woman hath gone down,
Dark roll their waves o’er manhood’s noble head.
O’er youth’s bright locks, and beauty’s flowing crown;
Yet shall they hear a voice, ‘Restore the dead.’
Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee.
Give back the dead, thou Sea!”

CHAPTER IX—THE CORAL-REEF

Now you want to know what I meant when I talked of a bit of limegoing out to sea, and forming part of a coral island, and then of alimestone rock, and then of a marble statue. Very good.Then look at this stone.

What a curious stone! Did it come from any place near here?

No. It came from near Dudley, in Staffordshire, where the soilsare worlds on worlds older than they are here, though they were madein the same way as these and all other soils. But you are notlistening to me.

Why, the stone is full of shells, and bits of coral; and what arethese wonderful things coiled and tangled together, like the snakesin Medusa’s hair in the picture? Are they snakes?

If they are, then they must be snakes who have all one head; forsee, they are joined together at their larger ends; and snakes whichare branched, too, which no snake ever was.

Yes. I suppose they are not snakes. And they grow outof a flower, too; and it has a stalk, jointed, too, as plants sometimesare; and as fishes’ backbones are too. Is it a petrifiedplant or flower?

No; though I do not deny that it looks like one. The creaturemost akin to it which you ever saw is a star-fish.

What! one of the red star-fishes which one finds on the beach?Its arms are not branched.

No. But there are star-fishes with branched arms still in thesea. You know that pretty book (and learned book, too), Forbes’sBritish Star-fishes? You like to look it through for thesake of the vignettes,—the mermaid and her child playing in thesea.

Oh yes, and the kind bogie who is piping while the sandstars dance;and the other who is trying to pull out the star-fish which the oysterhas caught.

Yes. But do you recollect the drawing of the Medusa’shead, with its curling arms, branched again and again without end?Here it is. No, you shall not look at the vignettes now.We must mind business. Now look at this one; the Feather-star,with arms almost like fern-fronds. And in foreign seas there aremany other branched star-fish beside.

But they have no stalks?

Do not be too sure of that. This very feather-star, soon afterit is born, grows a tiny stalk, by which it holds on to corallines andsea-weeds; and it is not till afterwards that it breaks loose from thatstalk, and swims away freely into the wide water. And in foreignseas there are several star-fish still who grow on stalks all theirlives, as this fossil one did.

How strange that a live animal should grow on a stalk, like a flower!

Not quite like a flower. A flower has roots, by which it feedsin the soil. These things grow more like sea-weeds, which haveno roots, but only hold on to the rock by the foot of the stalk, asa ship holds on by her anchor. But as for its being strange thatlive animals should grow on stalks, if it be strange it is common enough,like many far stranger things. For under the water are millionson millions of creatures, spreading for miles on miles, building upat last great reefs of rocks, and whole islands, which all grow rootedfirst to the rock, like sea-weeds; and what is more, they grow, mostof them, from one common root, branching again and again, and everybranchlet bearing hundreds of living creatures, so that the whole creationis at once one creature and many creatures. Do you not understandme?

No.

Then fancy to yourself a bush like that hawthorn bush, with numberlessblossoms, and every blossom on that bush a separate living thing, withits own mouth, and arms, and stomach, budding and growing fresh livebranches and fresh live flowers, as fast as the old ones die: and thenyou will see better what I mean.

How wonderful!

Yes; but not more wonderful than your finger, for it, too, is madeup of numberless living things.

My finger made of living things?

What else can it be? When you cut your finger, does not theplace heal?

Of course.

And what is healing but growing again? And how could the atomsof your fingers grow, and make fresh skin, if they were not each ofthem alive? There, I will not puzzle you with too much at once;you will know more about all that some day. Only remember now,that there is nothing wonderful in the world outside you but has itscounterpart of something just as wonderful, and perhaps more wonderful,inside you. Man is the microcosm, the little world, said the philosophersof old; and philosophers nowadays are beginning to see that their oldguess is actual fact and true.

But what are these curious sea-creatures called, which are animals,yet grow like plants?

They have more names than I can tell you, or you remember.Those which helped to make this bit of stone are called coral-insects:but they are not really insects, and are no more like insects than youare. Coral-polypes is the best name for them, because they havearms round their mouths, something like a cuttlefish, which the ancientscalled Polypus. But the animal which you have seen likest to mostof them is a sea-anemone.

Look now at this piece of fresh coral—for coral it is, thoughnot like the coral which your sister wears in her necklace. Yousee it is full of pipes; in each of those pipes has lived what we willcall, for the time being, a tiny sea-anemone, joined on to his brothersby some sort of flesh and skin; and all of them together have builtup, out of the lime in the sea-water, this common house, or rather town,of lime.

But is it not strange and wonderful?

Of course it is: but so is everything when you begin to look intoit; and if I were to go on, and tell you what sort of young ones thesecoral-polypes have, and what becomes of them, you would hear such wonders,that you would be ready to suspect that I was inventing nonsense, ortalking in my dreams. But all that belongs to Madam How’sdeepest book of all, which is called the BOOK OF KIND: the book whichchildren cannot understand, and in which only the very wisest men areable to spell out a few words, not knowing, and of course not daringto guess, what wonder may come next.

Now we will go back to our stone, and talk about how it was made,and how the stalked star-fish, which you mistook for a flower, evergot into the stone.

Then do you think me silly for fancying that a fossil star-fish wasa flower?

I should be silly if I did. There is no silliness in not knowingwhat you cannot know. You can only guess about new things, whichyou have never seen before, by comparing them with old things, whichyou have seen before; and you had seen flowers, and snakes, and fishes’backbones, and made a very fair guess from them. After all, someof these stalked star-fish are so like flowers, lilies especially, thatthey are called Encrinites; and the whole family is called Crinoids,or lily-like creatures, from the Greek work krinon, a lily; andas for corals and corallines, learned men, in spite of all their careand shrewdness, made mistake after mistake about them, which they hadto correct again and again, till now, I trust, they have got at somethingvery like the truth. No, I shall only call you silly if you dowhat some little boys are apt to do—call other boys, and, stillworse, servants or poor people, silly for not knowing what they cannotknow.

But are not poor people often very silly about animals and plants?The boys at the village school say that slowworms are poisonous; isnot that silly?

Not at all. They know that adders bite, and so they think thatslowworms bite too. They are wrong; and they must be told thatthey are wrong, and scolded if they kill a slowworm. But sillythey are not.

But is it not silly to fancy that swallows sleep all the winter atthe bottom of the pond?

I do not think so. The boys cannot know where the swallowsgo; and if you told them—what is true—that the swallowsfind their way every autumn through France, through Spain, over theStraits of Gibraltar, into Morocco, and some, I believe, over the greatdesert of Zahara into Negroland: and if you told them—what istrue also—that the young swallows actually find their way intoAfrica without having been along the road before; because the old swallowsgo south a week or two first, and leave the young ones to guess outthe way for themselves: if you told them that, then they would havea right to say, “Do you expect us to believe that? Thatis much more wonderful than that the swallows should sleep in the pond.”

But is it?

Yes; to them. They know that bats and dormice and other thingssleep all the winter; so why should not swallows sleep? They seethe swallows about the water, and often dipping almost into it.They know that fishes live under water, and that many insects—likeMay-flies and caddis-flies and water-beetles—live sometimes inthe water, sometimes in the open air; and they cannot know—youdo not know—what it is which prevents a bird’s living underwater. So their guess is really a very fair one; no more sillythan that of the savages, who when they first saw the white men’sships, with their huge sails, fancied they were enormous sea-birds;and when they heard the cannons fire, said that the ships spoke in thunderand lightning. Their guess was wrong, but not silly; for it wasthe best guess they could make.

But I do know of one old woman who was silly. She was a boy’snurse, and she gave the boy a thing which she said was one of the snakeswhich St. Hilda turned into stone; and told him that they found plentyof them at Whitby, where she was born, all coiled up; but what was veryodd, their heads had always been broken of. And when he took it,to his father, he told him it was only a fossil shell—an Ammonite.And he went back and laughed at his nurse, and teased her till she wasquite angry.

Then he was very lucky that she did not box his ears, for that waswhat he deserved. I dare say that, though his nurse had neverheard of Ammonites, she was a wise old dame enough, and knew a hundredthings which he did not know, and which were far more important thanAmmonites, even to him.

How?

Because if she had not known how to nurse him well, he would perhapshave never grown up alive and strong. And if she had not knownhow to make him obey and speak the truth, he might have grown up a naughtyboy.

But was she not silly?

No. She only believed what the Whitby folk, I understand, havesome of them believed for many hundred years. And no one can beblamed for thinking as his forefathers did, unless he has cause to knowbetter.

Surely she might have known better?

How? What reason could she have to believe the Ammonite wasa shell? It is not the least like co*ckles, or whelks, or any shellshe ever saw.

What reason either could she have to guess that Whitby cliff hadonce been coral-mud, at the bottom of the sea? No more reason,my dear child, than you would have to guess that this stone had beencoral-mud likewise, if I did not teach you so,—or rather, tryto make you teach yourself so.

No. I say it again. If you wish to learn, I will onlyteach you on condition that you do not laugh at, or despise, those goodand honest and able people who do not know or care about these things,because they have other things to think of: like old John out thereploughing. He would not believe you—he would hardly believeme—if we told him that this stone had been once a swarm of livingthings, of exquisite shapes and glorious colours. And yet he canplough and sow, and reap and mow, and fell and strip, and hedge andditch, and give his neighbours sound advice, and take the measure ofa man’s worth from ten minutes’ talk, and say his prayers,and keep his temper, and pay his debts,—which last three thingsare more than a good many folks can do who fancy themselves a wholeworld wiser than John in the smock-frock.

Oh, but I want to hear about the exquisite shapes and glorious colours.

Of course you do, little man. A few fine epithets take yourfancy far more than a little common sense and common humility; but inthat you are no worse than some of your elders. So now for theexquisite shapes and glorious colours. I have never seen them;though I trust to see them ere I die. So what they are like Ican only tell from what I have learnt from Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Wallace,and Mr. Jukes, and Mr. Gosse, and last, but not least, from one whosesoul was as beautiful as his face, Lucas Barrett,—too soon lostto science,—who was drowned in exploring such a coral-reef asthis stone was once.

Then there are such things alive now?

Yes, and no. The descendants of most of them live on, alteredby time, which alters all things; and from the beauty of the childrenwe can guess at the beauty of their ancestors; just as from the coral-reefswhich exist now we can guess how the coral-reefs of old were made.And that this stone was once part of a coral-reef the corals in it proveat first sight.

And what is a coral-reef like?

You have seen the room in the British Museum full of corals, madrepores,brain-stones, corallines, and sea-ferns?

Oh yes.

Then fancy all those alive. Not as they are now, white stone:but covered in jelly; and out of every pore a little polype, like aflower, peeping out. Fancy them of every gaudy colour you choose.No bed of flowers, they say, can be more brilliant than the corals,as you look down on them through the clear sea. Fancy, again,growing among them and crawling over them, strange sea-anemones, shells,star-fish, sea-slugs, and sea-cucumbers with feathery gills, crabs,and shrimps, and hundreds of other animals, all as strange in shape,and as brilliant in colour. You may let your fancy run wild.Nothing so odd, nothing so gay, even entered your dreams, or a poet’s,as you may find alive at the bottom of the sea, in the live flower-gardensof the sea-fairies.

There will be shoals of fish, too, playing in and out, as strangeand gaudy as the rest,—parrot-fish who browse on the live coralwith their beak-like teeth, as cattle browse on grass; and at the bottom,it may be, larger and uglier fish, who eat the crabs and shell-fish,shells and all, grinding them up as a dog grinds a bone, and so turningshells and corals into fine soft mud, such as this stone is partly madeof.

But what happens to all the delicate little corals if a storm comeson?

What, indeed? Madam How has made them so well and wisely, that,like brave and good men, the more trouble they suffer the stronger theyare. Day and night, week after week, the trade-wind blows uponthem, hurling the waves against them in furious surf, knocking off greatlumps of coral, grinding them to powder, throwing them over the reefinto the shallow water inside. But the heavier the surf beatsupon them, the stronger the polypes outside grow, repairing their brokenhouses, and building up fresh coral on the dead coral below, becauseit is in the fresh sea-water that beats upon the surf that they findmost lime with which to build. And as they build they form a barrieragainst the surf, inside of which, in water still as glass, the weakerand more delicate things can grow in safety, just as these very Encrinitesmay have grown, rooted in the lime-mud, and waving their slender armsat the bottom of the clear lagoon. Such mighty builders are theselittle coral polypes, that all the works of men are small compared withtheirs. One single reef, for instance, which is entirely madeby them, stretches along the north-east coast of Australia for nearlya thousand miles. Of this you must read some day in Mr. Jukes’sVoyage of H.M.S. “Fly.” Every island throughouta great part of the Pacific is fringed round each with its coral-reef,and there are hundreds of islands of strange shapes, and of Atolls,as they are called, or ring-islands, which are composed entirely ofcoral, and of nothing else.

A ring-island? How can an island be made in the shape of aring?

Ah! it was a long time before men found out that riddle. Mr.Darwin was the first to guess the answer, as he has guessed many ananswer beside. These islands are each a ring, or nearly a ringof coral, with smooth shallow water inside: but their outsides run down,like a mountain wall, sheer into seas hundreds of fathoms deep.People used to believe, and reasonably enough, that the coral polypesbegan to build up the islands from the very bottom of the deep sea.

But that would not account for the top of them being of the shapeof a ring; and in time it was found out that the corals would not buildexcept in shallow water, twenty or thirty fathoms deep at most, andmen were at their wits’ ends to find out the riddle. Thensaid Mr. Darwin, “Suppose one of those beautiful South Sea Islands,like Tahiti, the Queen of Isles, with its ring of coral-reef all roundits shore, began sinking slowly under the sea. The land, as itsunk, would be gone for good and all: but the coral-reef round it wouldnot, because the coral polypes would build up and up continually uponthe skeletons of their dead parents, to get to the surface of the water,and would keep close to the top outside, however much the land sunkinside; and when the island had sunk completely beneath the sea, whatwould be left? What must be left but a ring of coral reef, aroundthe spot where the last mountain peak of the island sank beneath thesea?” And so Mr. Darwin explained the shapes of hundredsof coral islands in the Pacific; and proved, too, some strange thingsbesides (he proved, and other men, like Mr. Wallace, whose excellentbook on the East Indian islands you must read some day, have provedin other ways) that there was once a great continent, joined perhapsto Australia and to New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean, where is now nothingbut deep sea, and coral-reefs which mark the mountain ranges of thatsunken world.

But how does the coral ever rise above the surface of the water andturn into hard stone?

Of course the coral polypes cannot build above the high-tide mark;but the surf which beats upon them piles up their broken fragments justas a sea-beach is piled up, and hammers them together with that waterhammer which is heavier and stronger than any you have ever seen ina smith’s forge. And then, as is the fashion of lime, thewhole mass sets and becomes hard, as you may see mortar set; and soyou have a low island a few feet above the sea. Then sea-birdscome to it, and rest and build; and seeds are floated thither from farlands; and among them almost always the cocoa-nut, which loves to growby the sea-shore, and groves of cocoa palms grow up upon the lonelyisle. Then, perhaps, trees and bushes are drifted thither beforethe trade-wind; and entangled in their roots are seeds of other plants,and eggs or cocoons of insects; and so a few flowers and a few butterfliesand beetles set up for themselves upon the new land. And thena bird or two, caught in a storm and blown away to sea finds shelterin the cocoa-grove; and so a little new world is set up, in which (youmust remember always) there are no four-footed beasts, nor snakes, norlizards, nor frogs, nor any animals that cannot cross the sea.And on some of those islands they may live (indeed there is reason tobelieve they have lived), so long, that some of them have changed theirforms, according to the laws of Madam How, who sooner or later fitseach thing exactly for the place in which it is meant to live, tillupon some of them you may find such strange and unique creatures asthe famous cocoa-nut crab, which learned men call Birgus latro.A great crab he is, who walks upon the tips of his toes a foot highabove the ground. And because he has often nothing to eat butcocoa-nuts, or at least they are the best things he can find, cocoa-nutshe has learned to eat, and after a fashion which it would puzzle youto imitate. Some say that he climbs up the stems of the cocoa-nuttrees, and pulls the fruit down for himself; but that, it seems, hedoes not usually do. What he does is this: when he finds a fallencocoa-nut, he begins tearing away the thick husk and fibre with hisstrong claws; and he knows perfectly well which end to tear it from,namely, from the end where the three eye-holes are, which you call themonkey’s face, out of one of which you know, the young cocoa-nuttree would burst forth. And when he has got to the eye-holes,he hammers through one of them with the point of his heavy claw.So far, so good: but how is he to get the meat out? He cannotput his claw in. He has no proboscis like a butterfly to insertand suck with. He is as far off from his dinner as the fox waswhen the stork offered him a feast in a long-necked jar. Whatthen do you think he does? He turns himself round, puts in a pairof his hind pincers, which are very slender, and with them scoops themeat out of the cocoa-nut, and so puts his dinner into his mouth withhis hind feet. And even the cocoa-nut husk he does not waste;for he lives in deep burrows which he makes like a rabbit; and beinga luxurious crab, and liking to sleep soft in spite of his hard shell,he lines them with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre, picked out clean andfine, just as if he was going to make cocoa-nut matting of it.And being also a clean crab, as I hope you are a clean little boy, hegoes down to the sea every night to have his bath and moisten his gills,and so lives happy all his days, and gets so fat in his old age thathe carries about his body nearly a quart of pure oil.

That is the history of the cocoa-nut crab. And if any one tellsme that that crab acts only on what is called “instinct”;and does not think and reason, just as you and I think and reason, thoughof course not in words as you and I do: then I shall be inclined tosay that that person does not think nor reason either.

Then were there many coral-reefs in Britain in old times?

Yes, many and many, again and again; some whole ages older than this,a bit of which you see, and some again whole ages newer. But look:then judge for yourself. Look at this geological map. Whereveryou see a bit of blue, which is the mark for limestone, you may say,“There is a bit of old coral-reef rising up to the surface.”But because I will not puzzle your little head with too many thingsat once, you shall look at one set of coral-reefs which are far newerthan this bit of Dudley limestone, and which are the largest, I suppose,that ever were in this country; or, at least, there is more of themleft than of any others.

Look first at Ireland. You see that almost all the middle ofIreland is coloured blue. It is one great sheet of old coral-reefand coral-mud, which is now called the carboniferous limestone.You see red and purple patches rising out of it, like islands—andislands I suppose they were, of hard and ancient rock, standing up inthe middle of the coral sea.

But look again, and you will see that along the west coast of Ireland,except in a very few places, like Galway Bay, the blue limestone doesnot come down to the sea; the shore is coloured purple and brown, andthose colours mark the ancient rocks and high mountains of Mayo andGalway and Kerry, which stand as barriers to keep the raging surf ofthe Atlantic from bursting inland and beating away, as it surely wouldin course of time, the low flat limestone plain of the middle of Ireland.But the same coral-reefs once stretched out far to the westward intothe Atlantic Ocean; and you may see the proof upon that map. Forin the western bays, in Clew Bay with its hundred islands, and GalwayBay with its Isles of Arran, and beautiful Kenmare, and beautiful Bantry,you see little blue spots, which are low limestone islands, standingin the sea, overhung by mountains far aloft. You have often heardthose islands in Kenmare Bay talked of, and how some whom you know goto fish round them by night for turbot and conger; and when you hearthem spoken of again, you must recollect that they are the last fragmentsof a great fringing coral-reef, which will in a few thousand years followthe fate of the rest, and be eaten up by the waves, while the mountainsof hard rock stand round them still unchanged.

Now look at England, and there you will see patches at least of agreat coral-reef which was forming at the same time as that Irish one,and on which perhaps some of your schoolfellows have often stood.You have heard of St. Vincent’s Rocks at Bristol, and the marblecliffs, 250 feet in height, covered in part with rich wood and rareflowers, and the Avon running through the narrow gorge, and the statelyships sailing far below your feet from Bristol to the Severn sea.And you may see, for here they are, corals from St. Vincent’sRocks, cut and polished, showing too that they also, like the Dudleylimestone, are made up of corals and of coral-mud. Now, wheneveryou see St. Vincent’s Rocks, as I suspect you very soon will,recollect where you are, and use your fancy, to paint for yourself apicture as strange as it is true. Fancy that those rocks are whatthey once were, a coral-reef close to the surface of a shallow sea.Fancy that there is no gorge of the Avon, no wide Severn sea—forthose were eaten out by water ages and ages afterwards. But pictureto yourself the coral sea reaching away to the north, to the foot ofthe Welsh mountains; and then fancy yourself, if you will, in a canoe,paddling up through the coral-reefs, north and still north, up the valleydown which the Severn now flows, up through what is now Worcestershire,then up through Staffordshire, then through Derbyshire, into Yorkshire,and so on through Durham and Northumberland, till your find yourselfstopped by the Ettrick hills in Scotland; while all to the westwardof you, where is now the greater part of England, was open sea.You may say, if you know anything of the geography of England, “Impossible!That would be to paddle over the tops of high mountains; over the topof the Peak in Derbyshire, over the top of High Craven and Whernsideand Pen-y-gent and Cross Fell, and to paddle too over the Cheviot Hills,which part England and Scotland.” I know it, my child, Iknow it. But so it was once on a time. The high limestonemountains which part Lancashire and Yorkshire—the very chine andbackbone of England—were once coral-reefs at the bottom of thesea. They are all made up of the carboniferous limestone, so called,as your little knowledge of Latin ought to tell you, because it carriesthe coal; because the coalfields usually lie upon it. It may beimpossible in your eyes: but remember always that nothing is impossiblewith God.

But you said that the coal was made from plants and trees, and didplants and trees grow on this coral-reef?

That I cannot say. Trees may have grown on the dry parts ofthe reef, as cocoa-nuts grow now in the Pacific. But the coalwas not laid down upon it till long afterwards, when it had gone throughmany and strange changes. For all through the chine of England,and in a part of Ireland too, there lies upon the top of the limestonea hard gritty rock, in some places three thousand feet thick, whichis commonly called “the mill-stone grit.” And abovethat again the coal begins. Now to make that 3000 feet of hardrock, what must have happened? The sea-bottom must have sunk,slowly no doubt, carrying the coral-reefs down with it, 3000 feet atleast. And meanwhile sand and mud, made from the wearing awayof the old lands in the North must have settled down upon it.I say from the North—for there are no fossils, as far as I know,or sign of life, in these rocks of mill-stone grit; and therefore itis reasonable to suppose that they were brought from a cold currentat the Pole, too cold to allow sea-beasts to live,—quite coldenough, certainly, to kill coral insects, who could only thrive in warmwater coming from the South.

Then, to go on with my story, upon the top of these mill-stone gritscame sand and mud, and peat, and trees, and plants, washed out to sea,as far as we can guess, from the mouths of vast rivers flowing fromthe West, rivers as vast as the Amazon, the Mississippi, or the Orinocoare now; and so in long ages, upon the top of the limestone and uponthe top of the mill-stone grit, were laid down those beds of coal whichyou see burnt now in every fire.

But how did the coral-reefs rise till they became cliffs at Bristoland mountains in Yorkshire?

The earthquake steam, I suppose, raised them. One earthquakeindeed, or series of earthquakes, there was, running along between Lancashireand Yorkshire, which made that vast crack and upheaval in the rocks,the Craven Fault, running, I believe, for more than a hundred miles,and lifting the rocks in some places several hundred feet. Thatearthquake helped to make the high hills which overhang Manchester andPreston, and all the manufacturing county of Lancashire. Thatearthquake helped to make the perpendicular cliff at Malham Cove, andmany another beautiful bit of scenery. And that and other earthquakes,by heating the rocks from the fires below, may have helped to changethem from soft coral into hard crystalline marble as you see them now,just as volcanic heat has hardened and purified the beautiful whitemarbles of Pentelicus and Paros in Greece, and Carrara in Italy, fromwhich statues are carved unto this day. Or the same earthquakemay have heated and hardened the limestones simply by grinding and squeezingthem; or they may have been heated and hardened in the course of longages simply by the weight of the thousands of feet of other rock whichlay upon them. For pressure, you must remember, produces heat.When you strike flint and steel together, the pressure of the blow notonly makes bits of steel fly off, but makes them fly off in red-hotsparks. When you hammer a piece of iron with a hammer, you willsoon find it get quite warm. When you squeeze the air togetherin your pop-gun, you actually make the air inside warmer, till the pelletflies out, and the air expands and cools again. Nay, I believeyou cannot hold up a stone on the palm of your hand without that stoneafter a while warming your hand, because it presses against you in tryingto fall, and you press against it in trying to hold it up. Andrecollect above all the great and beautiful example of that law whichyou were lucky enough to see on the night of the 14th of November 1867,how those falling stars, as I told you then, were coming out of boundlessspace, colder than any ice on earth, and yet, simply by pressing againstthe air above our heads, they had their motion turned into heat, tillthey burned themselves up into trains of fiery dust. So rememberthat wherever you have pressure you have heat, and that the pressureof the upper rocks upon the lower is quite enough, some think, to accountfor the older and lower rocks being harder than the upper and newerones.

But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer?You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages olderthan Windsor Forest, upon which we stand: but yet how much lower weare here than if we were on a Welsh mountain.

Ah, my dear child, of course that puzzles you, and I am afraid itmust puzzle you still till we have another talk; or rather it seemsto me that the best way to explain that puzzle to you would be for youand me to go a journey into the far west, and look into the matter forourselves; and from here to the far west we will go, either in fancyor on a real railroad and steamboat, before we have another talk aboutthese things.

Now it is time to stop. Is there anything more you want toknow? for you look as if something was puzzling you still.

Were there any men in the world while all this was going on?

I think not. We have no proof that there were not: but alsowe have no proof that there were; the cave-men, of whom I told you,lived many ages after the coal was covered up. You seem to besorry that there were no men in the world then.

Because it seems a pity that there was no one to see those beautifulcoral-reefs and coal-forests.

No one to see them, my child? Who told you that? Whotold you there are not, and never have been any rational beings in thisvast universe, save certain weak, ignorant, short-sighted creaturesshaped like you and me? But even if it were so, and no createdeye had ever beheld those ancient wonders, and no created heart everenjoyed them, is there not one Uncreated who has seen them and enjoyedthem from the beginning? Were not these creatures enjoying themselveseach after their kind? And was there not a Father in Heaven whowas enjoying their enjoyment, and enjoying too their beauty, which Hehad formed according to the ideas of His Eternal Mind? Recollectwhat you were told on Trinity Sunday—That this world was not madefor man alone: but that man, and this world, and the whole Universewas made for God; for He created all things, and for His pleasure theyare, and were created.

CHAPTER X—FIELD AND WILD

Where were we to go next? Into the far west, to see how allthe way along the railroads the new rocks and soils lie above the older,and yet how, when we get westward, the oldest rocks rise highest intothe air.

Well, we will go: but not, I think, to-day. Indeed I hardlyknow how we could get as far as Reading; for all the world is in thehay-field, and even the old horse must go thither too, and take histurn at the hay-cart. Well, the rocks have been where they arefor many a year, and they will wait our leisure patiently enough: butMidsummer and the hay-field will not wait. Let us take what Godgives when He sends it, and learn the lesson that lies nearest to us.After all, it is more to my old mind, and perhaps to your young mindtoo, to look at things which are young and fresh and living, ratherthan things which are old and worn and dead. Let us leave theold stones, and the old bones, and the old shells, the wrecks of ancientworlds which have gone down into the kingdom of death, to teach us theirgrand lessons some other day; and let us look now at the world of lightand life and beauty, which begins here at the open door, and stretchesaway over the hay-fields, over the woods, over the southern moors, oversunny France, and sunnier Spain, and over the tropic seas, down to theequator, and the palm-groves of the eternal summer. If we cannotfind something, even at starting from the open door, to teach us aboutWhy and How, we must be very short-sighted, or very shallow-hearted.

There is the old co*ck starling screeching in the eaves, because hewants to frighten us away, and take a worm to his children, withoutour finding out whereabouts his hole is. How does he know thatwe might hurt him? and how again does he not know that we shall nothurt him? we, who for five-and-twenty years have let him and his ancestorsbuild under those eaves in peace? How did he get that quantityof half-wit, that sort of stupid cunning, into his little brain, andyet get no more? And why (for this is a question of Why, and notof How) does he labour all day long, hunting for worms and insects forhis children, while his wife nurses them in the nest? Why, too,did he help her to build that nest with toil and care this spring, forthe sake of a set of nestlings who can be of no gain or use to him,but only take the food out of his mouth? Simply out of—whatshall I call it, my child?—Love; that same sense of love and duty,coming surely from that one Fountain of all duty and all love, whichmakes your father work for you. That the mother should take careof her young, is wonderful enough; but that (at least among many birds)the father should help likewise, is (as you will find out as you growolder) more wonderful far. So there already the old starling hasset us two fresh puzzles about How and Why, neither of which we shallget answered, at least on this side of the grave.

Come on, up the field, under the great generous sun, who quarrelswith no one, grudges no one, but shines alike upon the evil and thegood. What a gay picture he is painting now, with his light-pencils;for in them, remember, and not in the things themselves the colour lies.See how, where the hay has been already carried, he floods all the slopeswith yellow light, making them stand out sharp against the black shadowsof the wood; while where the grass is standing still, he makes the sheetsof sorrel-flower blush rosy red, or dapples the field with white oxeyes.

But is not the sorrel itself red, and the oxeyes white?

What colour are they at night, when the sun is gone?

Dark.

That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.

Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.

No, no. It is the light of the lantern, which happens to bestrong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strongenough to make a geranium look red.

Not red?

No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaveslook green. If you don’t believe me, we will try.

But why is that?

Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall,if you ever have the honour of meeting him.

But now—hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night-jar.Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the longgrass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merelyfallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cutoff.

Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learnthe lessons which Madam How can teach them. There is that boy,fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than sixstrong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machinegoes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by ittwo hundredweight of hay on every acre. And see, too, how perseveringold Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut offall the grass which she has been making for the last three months; foras fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again. There arefresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprungup in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in nextweek.

But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will havenothing to do.

Not so. They are all busy enough elsewhere. There isplenty of other work to be done, thank God; and wholesomer and easierwork than mowing with a burning sun on their backs, drinking gallonsof beer, and getting first hot and then cold across the loins, tillthey lay in a store of lumbago and sciatica, to cripple them in theirold age. You delight in machinery because it is curious: you shoulddelight in it besides because it does good, and nothing but good, whereit is used, according to the laws of Lady Why, with care, moderation,and mercy, and fair-play between man and man. For example: justas the mowing-machine saves the mowers, the threshing-machine savesthe threshers from rheumatism and chest complaints,—which theyused to catch in the draught and dust of the unhealthiest place in thewhole parish, which is, the old-fashioned barn’s floor.And so, we may hope, in future years all heavy drudgery and dirty workwill be done more and more by machines, and people will have more andmore chance of keeping themselves clean and healthy, and more and moretime to read, and learn, and think, and be true civilised men and women,instead of being mere live ploughs, or live manure-carts, such as Ihave seen ere now.

A live manure-cart?

Yes, child. If you had seen, as I have seen, in foreign lands,poor women, haggard, dirty, grown old before their youth was over, toilingup hill with baskets of foul manure upon their backs, you would havesaid, as I have said, “Oh for Madam How to cure that ignorance!Oh for Lady Why to cure that barbarism! Oh that Madam How wouldteach them that machinery must always be cheaper in the long run thanhuman muscles and nerves! Oh that Lady Why would teach them thata woman is the most precious thing on earth, and that if she be turnedinto a beast of burden, Lady Why—and Madam How likewise—willsurely avenge the wrongs of their human sister!” There,you do not quite know what I mean, and I do not care that you should.It is good for little folk that big folk should now and then “talkover their heads,” as the saying is, and make them feel how ignorantthey are, and how many solemn and earnest questions there are in theworld on which they must make up their minds some day, though not yet.But now we will talk about the hay: or rather do you and the rest goand play in the hay and gather it up, build forts of it, storm them,pull them down, build them up again, shout, laugh, and scream till youare hot and tired. You will please Madam How thereby, and LadyWhy likewise.

How?

Because Madam How naturally wants her work to succeed, and she isat work now making you.

Making me?

Of course. Making a man of you, out of a boy. And thatcan only be done by the life-blood which runs through and through you.And the more you laugh and shout, the more pure air will pass into yourblood, and make it red and healthy; and the more you romp and play—unlessyou overtire yourself—the quicker will that blood flow throughall your limbs, to make bone and muscle, and help you to grow into aman.

But why does Lady Why like to see us play?

She likes to see you happy, as she likes to see the trees and birdshappy. For she knows well that there is no food, nor medicineeither, like happiness. If people are not happy enough, they areoften tempted to do many wrong deeds, and to think many wrong thoughts:and if by God’s grace they know the laws of Lady Why, and keepfrom sin, still unhappiness, if it goes on too long, wears them out,body and mind; and they grow ill and die, of broken hearts, and brokenbrains, my child; and so at last, poor souls, find “Rest beneaththe Cross.”

Children, too, who are unhappy; children who are bullied, and frightened,and kept dull and silent, never thrive. Their bodies do not thrive;for they grow up weak. Their minds do not thrive; for they growup dull. Their souls do not thrive; for they learn mean, sly,slavish ways, which God forbid you should ever learn. Well saidthe wise man, “The human plant, like the vegetables, can onlyflower in sunshine.”

So do you go, and enjoy yourself in the sunshine; but remember this—Youknow what happiness is. Then if you wish to please Lady Why, andLady Why’s Lord and King likewise, you will never pass a littlechild without trying to make it happier, even by a passing smile.And now be off, and play in the hay, and come back to me when you aretired.

* * * * *

Let us lie down at the foot of this old oak, and see what we cansee.

And hear what we can hear, too. What is that humming all roundus, now that the noisy mowing-machine has stopped?

And as much softer than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the machineswhich make it are more delicate and more curious. Madam How isa very skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and clearerthan all microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to see what makesthat “Midsummer hum” of which the haymakers are so fond,because it promises fair weather.

Why, it is only the gnats and flies.

Only the gnats and flies? You might study those gnats and fliesfor your whole life without finding out all—or more than a verylittle—about them. I wish I knew how they move those tinywings of theirs—a thousand times in a second, I dare say, someof them. I wish I knew how far they know that they are happy—forhappy they must be, whether they know it or not. I wish I knewhow they live at all. I wish I even knew how many sorts thereare humming round us at this moment.

How many kinds? Three or four?

More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.

But why should there be so many kinds of living things? Wouldnot one or two have done just as well?

Why, indeed? Why should there not have been only one sort ofbutterfly, and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain white?

And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the gardenat once? Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches,and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtit*.

And there are four kinds of tomtit* round here, remember: but wemay go on with such talk for ever. Wiser men than we have askedthe same question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet. However,there is another question, which Madam How seems inclined to answerjust now, which is almost as deep and mysterious.

What?

How all these different kinds of things became different.

Oh, do tell me!

Not I. You must begin at the beginning, before you can endat the end, or even make one step towards the end.

What do you mean?

You must learn the differences between things, before you can findout how those differences came about. You must learn Madam How’salphabet before you can read her book. And Madam How’s alphabetof animals and plants is, Species, Kinds of things. You must seewhich are like, and which unlike; what they are like in, and what theyare unlike in. You are beginning to do that with your collectionof butterflies. You like to arrange them, and those that are mostlike nearest to each other, and to compare them. You must do thatwith thousands of different kinds of things before you can read onepage of Madam How’s Natural History Book rightly.

But it will take so much time and so much trouble.

God grant that you may not spend more time on worse matters, andtake more trouble over things which will profit you far less.But so it must be, willy-nilly. You must learn the alphabet ifyou mean to read. And you must learn the value of the figuresbefore you can do a sum. Why, what would you think of any onewho sat down to play at cards—for money too (which I hope andtrust you never will do)—before he knew the names of the cards,and which counted highest, and took the other?

Of course he would be very foolish.

Just as foolish are those who make up “theories” (asthey call them) about this world, and how it was made, before they havefound out what the world is made of. You might as well try tofind out how this hay-field was made, without finding out first whatthe hay is made of.

How the hay-field was made? Was it not always a hay-field?

Ah, yes; the old story, my child: Was not the earth always just whatit is now? Let us see for ourselves whether this was always ahay-field.

How?

Just pick out all the different kinds of plants and flowers you canfind round us here. How many do you think there are?

Oh—there seem to be four or five.

Just as there were three or four kinds of flies in the air.Pick them, child, and count. Let us have facts.

How many? What! a dozen already?

Yes—and here is another, and another. Why, I have gotI don’t know how many.

Why not? Bring them here, and let us see. Nine kindsof grasses, and a rush. Six kinds of clovers and vetches; andbesides, dandelion, and rattle, and oxeye, and sorrel, and plantain,and buttercup, and a little stitchwort, and pignut, and mouse-ear hawkweed,too, which nobody wants.

Why?

Because they are a sign that I am not a good farmer enough, and havenot quite turned my Wild into Field.

What do you mean?

Look outside the boundary fence, at the moors and woods; they areforest, Wild—“Wald,” as the Germans would call it.Inside the fence is Field—“Feld,” as the Germans wouldcall it. Guess why?

Is it because the trees inside have been felled?

Well, some say so, who know more than I. But now go over thefence, and see how many of these plants you can find on the moor.

Oh, I think I know. I am so often on the moor.

I think you would find more kinds outside than you fancy. Butwhat do you know?

That beside some short fine grass about the cattle-paths, there arehardly any grasses on the moor save deer’s hair and glade-grass;and all the rest is heath, and moss, and furze, and fern.

Softly—not all; you have forgotten the bog plants; and thereare (as I said) many more plants beside on the moor than you fancy.But we will look into that another time. At all events, the plantsoutside are on the whole quite different from the hay-field.

Of course: that is what makes the field look green and the moor brown.

Not a doubt. They are so different, that they look like bitsof two different continents. Scrambling over the fence is likescrambling out of Europe into Australia. Now, how was that differencemade? Think. Don’t guess, but think. Why doesthe rich grass come up to the bank, and yet not spread beyond it?

I suppose because it cannot get over.

Not get over? Would not the wind blow the seeds, and the birdscarry them? They do get over, in millions, I don’t doubt,every summer.

Then why do they not grow?

Think.

Is there any difference in the soil inside and out?

A very good guess. But guesses are no use without facts.Look.

Oh, I remember now. I know now the soil of the field is brown,like the garden; and the soil of the moor all black and peaty.

Yes. But if you dig down two or three feet, you will find thesoils of the moor and the field just the same. So perhaps thetop soils were once both alike.

I know.

Well, and what do you think about it now? I want you to lookand think. I want every one to look and think. Half themisery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from notthinking. And I do not want you to be miserable.

But shall I be miserable if I do not find out such little thingsas this.

You will be miserable if you do not learn to understand little things:because then you will not be able to understand great things when youmeet them. Children who are not trained to use their eyes andtheir common sense grow up the more miserable the cleverer they are.

Why?

Because they grow up what men call dreamers, and bigots, and fanatics,causing misery to themselves and to all who deal with them. SoI say again, think.

Well, I suppose men must have altered the soil inside the bank.

Well done. But why do you think so?

Because, of course, some one made the bank; and the brown soil onlygoes up to it.

Well, that is something like common sense. Now you will notsay any more, as the cows or the butterflies might, that the hay-fieldwas always there.

And how did men change the soil?

By tilling it with the plough, to sweeten it, and manuring it, tomake it rich.

And then did all these beautiful grasses grow up of themselves?

You ought to know that they most likely did not. You know thenew enclosures?

Yes.

Well then, do rich grasses come up on them, now that they are brokenup?

Oh no, nothing but groundsel, and a few weeds.

Just what, I dare say, came up here at first. But this landwas tilled for corn, for hundreds of years, I believe. And justabout one hundred years ago it was laid down in grass; that is, sownwith grass seeds.

And where did men get the grass seeds from?

Ah, that is a long story; and one that shows our forefathers (thoughthey knew nothing about railroads or electricity) were not such simpletonsas some folks think. The way it must have been done was this.Men watched the natural pastures where cattle get fat on the wild grass,as they do in the Fens, and many other parts of England. And thenthey saved the seeds of those fattening wild grasses, and sowed themin fresh spots. Often they made mistakes. They were careless,and got weeds among the seed—like the buttercups, which do somuch harm to this pasture. Or they sowed on soil which would notsuit the seed, and it died. But at last, after many failures,they have grown so careful and so clever, that you may send to certainshops, saying what sort of soil yours is, and they will send you justthe seeds which will grow there, and no other; and then you have a goodpasture for as long as you choose to keep it good.

And how is it kept good?

Look at all those loads of hay, which are being carried off the field.Do you think you can take all that away without putting anything inits place?

Why not?

If I took all the butter out of the churn, what must I do if I wantmore butter still?

Put more cream in.

So, if I want more grass to grow, I must put on the soil more ofwhat grass is made of.

But the butter don’t grow, and the grass does.

What does the grass grow in?

The soil.

Yes. Just as the butter grows in the churn. So you mustput fresh grass-stuff continually into the soil, as you put fresh creaminto the churn. You have heard the farm men say, “That crophas taken a good deal out of the land”?

Yes.

Then they spoke exact truth. What will that hay turn into byChristmas? Can’t you tell? Into milk, of course, whichyou will drink; and into horseflesh too, which you will use.

Use horseflesh? Not eat it?

No; we have not got as far as that. We did not even make upour minds to taste the Cambridge donkey. But every time the horsedraws the carriage, he uses up so much muscle; and that muscle he mustget back again by eating hay and corn; and that hay and corn must beput back again into the land by manure, or there will be all the lessfor the horse next year. For one cannot eat one’s cake andkeep it too; and no more can one eat one’s grass.

So this field is a truly wonderful place. It is no ugly pileof brick and mortar, with a tall chimney pouring out smoke and evilsmells, with unhealthy, haggard people toiling inside. Why doyou look surprised?

Because—because nobody ever said it was. You mean a manufactory.

Well, and this hay-field is a manufactory: only like most of MadamHow’s workshops, infinitely more beautiful, as well as infinitelymore crafty, than any manufactory of man’s building. Itis beautiful to behold, and healthy to work in; a joy and blessing aliketo the eye, and the mind, and the body: and yet it is a manufactory.

But a manufactory of what?

Of milk of course, and cows, and sheep, and horses; and of your bodyand mine—for we shall drink the milk and eat the meat. Andtherefore it is a flesh and milk manufactory. We must put intoit every year yard-stuff, tank-stuff, guano, bones, and anything andeverything of that kin, that Madam How may cook it for us into grass,and cook the grass again into milk and meat. But if we don’tgive Madam How material to work on, we cannot expect her to work forus. And what do you think will happen then? She will setto work for herself. The rich grasses will dwindle for want ofammonia (that is smelling salts), and the rich clovers for want of phosphates(that is bone-earth): and in their places will come over the bank theold weeds and grass off the moor, which have not room to get in now,because the ground is coveted already. They want no ammonia norphosphates—at all events they have none, and that is why the cattleon the moor never get fat. So they can live where these rich grassescannot. And then they will conquer and thrive; and the Field willturn into Wild once more.

Ah, my child, thank God for your forefathers, when you look overthat boundary mark. For the difference between the Field and theWild is the difference between the old England of Madam How’smaking, and the new England which she has taught man to make, carryingon what she had only begun and had not time to finish.

That moor is a pattern bit left to show what the greater part ofthis land was like for long ages after it had risen out of the sea;when there was little or nothing on the flat upper moors save heaths,and ling, and club-mosses, and soft gorse, and needle-whin, and creepingwillows; and furze and fern upon the brows; and in the bottoms oak andash, beech and alder, hazel and mountain ash, holly and thorn, withhere and there an aspen or a buckthorn (berry-bearing alder as you callit), and everywhere—where he could thrust down his long root,and thrust up his long shoots—that intruding conqueror and insolenttyrant, the bramble. There were sedges and rushes, too, in thebogs, and coarse grass on the forest pastures—or “leas”as we call them to this day round here—but no real green fields;and, I suspect, very few gay flowers, save in spring the sheets of goldengorse, and in summer the purple heather. Such was old England—orrather, such was this land before it was England; a far sadder, damper,poorer land than now. For one man or one cow or sheep which couldhave lived on it then, a hundred can live now. And yet, what itwas once, that it might become again,—it surely would round here,if this brave English people died out of it, and the land was left toitself once more.

What would happen then, you may guess for yourself, from what yousee happen whenever the land is left to itself, as it is in the woodabove. In that wood you can still see the grass ridges and furrowswhich show that it was once ploughed and sown by man; perhaps as lateas the time of Henry the Eighth, when a great deal of poor land, asyou will read some day, was thrown out of tillage, to become forestand down once more. And what is the mount now? A jungleof oak and beech, cherry and holly, young and old all growing up together,with the mountain ash and bramble and furze coming up so fast beneaththem, that we have to cut the paths clear again year by year.Why, even the little cow-wheat, a very old-world plant, which only growsin ancient woods, has found its way back again, I know not whence, andcovers the open spaces with its pretty yellow and white flowers.Man had conquered this mount, you see, from Madam How, hundreds of yearsago. And she always lets man conquer her, because Lady Why wishesman to conquer: only he must have a fair fight with Madam How first,and try his strength against hers to the utmost. So man conqueredthe wood for a while; and it became cornfield instead of forest: buthe was not strong and wise enough three hundred years ago to keep whathe had conquered; and back came Madam How, and took the place into herown hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come back again—asthey would come if they were not stopped year by year, down from thewood, over the pastures—killing the rich grasses as they went,till they met another forest coming up from below, and fought it formany a year, till both made peace, and lived quietly side by side forages.

Another forest coming up from below? Where would it come from?

From where it is now. Come down and look along the brook, andevery drain and grip which runs into the brook. What is here?

Seedling alders, and some withies among them.

Very well. You know how we pull these alders up, and cut themdown, and yet they continually come again. Now, if we and allhuman beings were to leave this pasture for a few hundred years, wouldnot those alders increase into a wood? Would they not kill thegrass, and spread right and left, seeding themselves more and more asthe grass died, and left the ground bare, till they met the oaks andbeeches coming down the hill? And then would begin a great fight,for years and years, between oak and beech against alder and willow.

But how can trees fight? Could they move or beat each otherwith their boughs?

Not quite that; though they do beat each other with their boughs,fiercely enough, in a gale of wind; and then the trees who have strongand stiff boughs wound those who have brittle and limp boughs, and sohurt them, and if the storms come often enough, kill them. Butamong these trees in a sheltered valley the larger and stronger wouldkill the weaker and smaller by simply overshadowing their tops, andstarving their roots; starving them, indeed, so much when they growvery thick, that the poor little acorns, and beech mast, and alder seedswould not be able to sprout at all. So they would fight, killingeach other’s children, till the war ended—I think I canguess how.

How?

The beeches are as dainty as they are beautiful; and they do notlike to get their feet wet. So they would venture down the hillonly as far as the dry ground lasts, and those who tried to grow anylower would die. But the oaks are hardy, and do not care muchwhere they grow. So they would fight their way down into the wetground among the alders and willows, till they came to where their enemieswere so thick and tall, that the acorns as they fell could not sproutin the darkness. And so you would have at last, along the hill-side,a forest of beech and oak, lower down a forest of oak and alder, andalong the stream-side alders and willows only. And that wouldbe a very fair example of the great law of the struggle for existence,which causes the competition of species.

What is that?

Madam How is very stern, though she is always perfectly just; andtherefore she makes every living thing fight for its life, and earnits bread, from its birth till its death; and rewards it exactly accordingto its deserts, and neither more nor less.

And the competition of species means, that each thing, and kind ofthings, has to compete against the things round it; and to see whichis the stronger; and the stronger live, and breed, and spread, and theweaker die out.

But that is very hard.

I know it, my child, I know it. But so it is. And MadamHow, no doubt, would be often very clumsy and very cruel, without meaningit, because she never sees beyond her own nose, or thinks at all aboutthe consequences of what she is doing. But Lady Why, who doesthink about consequences, is her mistress, and orders her about forever. And Lady Why is, I believe, as loving as she is wise; andtherefore we must trust that she guides this great war between livingthings, and takes care that Madam How kills nothing which ought notto die, and takes nothing away without putting something more beautifuland something more useful in its place; and that even if England were,which God forbid, overrun once more with forests and bramble-brakes,that too would be of use somehow, somewhere, somewhen, in the long ageswhich are to come hereafter.

And you must remember, too, that since men came into the world withrational heads on their shoulders, Lady Why has been handing over moreand more of Madam How’s work to them, and some of her own worktoo: and bids them to put beautiful and useful things in the place ofugly and useless ones; so that now it is men’s own fault if theydo not use their wits, and do by all the world what they have done bythese pastures—change it from a barren moor into a rich hay-field,by copying the laws of Madam How, and making grass compete against heath.But you look thoughtful: what is it you want to know?

Why, you say all living things must fight and scramble for what theycan get from each other: and must not I too? For I am a livingthing.

Ah, that is the old question, which our Lord answered long ago, andsaid, “Be not anxious what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,or wherewithal you shall be clothed. For after all these thingsdo the heathen seek, and your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have needof these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and Hisrighteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”A few, very few, people have taken that advice. But they havebeen just the salt of the earth, which has kept mankind from decaying.

But what has that to do with it?

See. You are a living thing, you say. Are you a plant?

No.

Are you an animal?

I do not know. Yes. I suppose I am. I eat, anddrink, and sleep, just as dogs and cats do.

Yes. There is no denying that. No one knew that betterthan St. Paul when he told men that they had a flesh; that is, a body,and an animal’s nature in them. But St. Paul told them—ofcourse he was not the first to say so, for all the wise heathens haveknown that—that there was something more in us, which he calleda spirit. Some call it now the moral sentiment, some one thing,some another, but we will keep to the old word: we shall not find abetter.

Yes, I know that I have a spirit, a soul.

Better to say that you are a spirit. But what does St. Paulsay? That our spirit is to conquer our flesh, and keep it down.That the man in us, in short, which is made in the likeness of God,is to conquer the animal in us, which is made in the likeness of thedog and the cat, and sometimes (I fear) in the likeness of the ape orthe pig. You would not wish to be like a cat, much less like anape or a pig?

Of course not.

Then do not copy them, by competing and struggling for existenceagainst other people.

What do you mean?

Did you never watch the pigs feeding?

Yes, and how they grudge and quarrel, and shove each other’snoses out of the trough, and even bite each other because they are sojealous which shall get most.

That is it. And how the biggest pig drives the others away,and would starve them while he got fat, if the man did not drive himoff in his turn.

Oh, yes; I know.

Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge,and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame,most power over their fellow-men. They will tell you, my child,that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom; that competitionis the natural law of society, and the source of wealth and prosperity.Do not you listen to them. That is the wisdom of this world, whichthe flesh teaches the animals; and those who follow it, like the animals,will perish. Such men are not even as wise as Sweep the retriever.

Not as wise as Sweep?

Not they. Sweep will not take away Victor’s bone, thoughhe is ten times as big as Victor, and could kill him in a moment; andwhen he catches a rabbit, does he eat it himself?

Of course not; he brings it and lays it down at our feet.

Because he likes better to do his duty, and be praised for it, thanto eat the rabbit, dearly as he longs to eat it.

But he is only an animal. Who taught him to be generous, anddutiful, and faithful?

Who, indeed! Not we, you know that, for he has grown up withus since a puppy. How he learnt it, and his parents before him,is a mystery, of which we can only say, God has taught them, we knownot how. But see what has happened—that just because dogshave learnt not to be selfish and to compete—that is, have becomecivilised and tame—therefore we let them live with us, and lovethem. Because they try to be good in their simple way, thereforethey too have all things added to them, and live far happier, and morecomfortable lives than the selfish wolf and fox.

But why have not all animals found out that?

I cannot tell: there may be wise animals and foolish animals, asthere are wise and foolish men. Indeed there are. I seea very wise animal there, who never competes; for she has learned somethingof the golden lesson—that it is more blessed to give than to receive;and she acts on what she has learnt, all day long.

Which do you mean? Why, that is a bee.

Yes, it is a bee: and I wish I were as worthy in my place as thatbee is in hers. I wish I could act up as well as she does to thetrue wisdom, which is self-sacrifice. For whom is that bee working?For herself? If that was all, she only needs to suck the honeyas she goes. But she is storing up the wax under her stomach,and bee-bread in her thighs—for whom? Not for herself only,or even for her own children: but for the children of another bee, herqueen. For them she labours all day long, builds for them, feedsthem, nurses them, spends her love and cunning on them. So doesthat ant on the path. She is carrying home that stick to buildfor other ants’ children. So do the white ants in the tropics.They have learnt not to compete, but to help each other; not to be selfish,but to sacrifice themselves; and therefore they are strong.

But you told me once that ants would fight and plunder each other’snests. And once we saw two hives of bees fighting in the air,and falling dead by dozens.

My child, do not men fight, and kill each other by thousands withsharp shot and cold steel, because, though they have learnt the virtueof patriotism, they have not yet learnt that of humanity? We mustnot blame the bees and ants if they are no wiser than men. Atleast they are wise enough to stand up for their country, that is, theirhive, and work for it, and die for it, if need be; and that makes themstrong.

But how does that make them strong?

How, is a deep question, and one I can hardly answer yet. Butthat it has made them so there is no doubt. Look at the solitarybees—the governors as we call them, who live in pairs, in littleholes in the banks. How few of them there are; and they neverseem to increase in numbers. Then look at the hive bees, how,just because they are civilised,—that is, because they help eachother, and feed each other, instead of being solitary and selfish,—theybreed so fast, and get so much food, that if they were not killed fortheir honey, they would soon become a nuisance, and drive us out ofthe parish.

But then we give them their hives ready made.

True. But in old forest countries, where trees decay and growhollow, the bees breed in them.

Yes. I remember the bee tree in the fir avenue.

Well then, in many forests in hot countries the bees swarm in hollowtrees; and they, and the ants, and the white ants, have it all theirown way, and are lords and masters, driving the very wild beasts beforethem, while the ants and white ants eat up all gardens, and plantations,and clothes, and furniture; till it is a serious question whether insome hot countries man will ever be able to settle, so strong have theants grown, by ages of civilisation, and not competing against theirbrothers and sisters.

But may I not compete for prizes against the other boys?

Well, there is no harm in that; for you do not harm the others, evenif you win. They will have learnt all the more, while trying forthe prize; and so will you, even if you don’t get it. ButI tell you fairly, trying for prizes is only fit for a child; and whenyou become a man, you must put away childish things—competitionamong the rest.

But surely I may try to be better and wiser and more learned thaneverybody else?

My dearest child, why try for that? Try to be as good, andwise, and learned as you can, and if you find any man, or ten thousandmen, superior to you, thank God for it. Do you think that therecan be too much wisdom in the world?

Of course not: but I should like to be the wisest man in it.

Then you would only have the heaviest burden of all men on your shoulders.

Why?

Because you would be responsible for more foolish people than anyone else. Remember what wise old Moses said, when some one cameand told him that certain men in the camp were prophesying—“WouldGod all the Lord’s people did prophesy!” Yes; it wouldhave saved Moses many a heartache, and many a sleepless night, if allthe Jews had been wise as he was, and wiser still. So do not youcompete with good and wise men, but simply copy them: and whatever youdo, do not compete with the wolves, and the apes, and the swine of thisworld; for that is a game at which you are sure to be beaten.

Why?

Because Lady Why, if she loves you (as I trust she does), will takecare that you are beaten, lest you should fancy it was really profitableto live like a cunning sort of animal, and not like a true man.And how she will do that I can tell you. She will take care thatyou always come across a worse man than you are trying to be,—amore apish man, who can tumble and play monkey-tricks for people’samusem*nt better than you can; or a more swinish man, who can get atmore of the pig’s-wash than you can; or a more wolfish man, whowill eat you up if you do not get out of his way; and so she will disappointand disgust you, my child, with that greedy, selfish, vain animal life,till you turn round and see your mistake, and try to live the true humanlife, which also is divine;—to be just and honourable, gentleand forgiving, generous and useful—in one word, to fear God, andkeep His commandments: and as you live that life, you will find that,by the eternal laws of Lady Why, all other things will be added to you;that people will be glad to know you, glad to help you, glad to employyou, because they see that you will be of use to them, and will do themno harm. And if you meet (as you will meet) with people betterand wiser than yourself, then so much the better for you; for they willlove you, and be glad to teach you when they see that you are livingthe unselfish and harmless life; and that you come to them, not as foolishCritias came to Socrates, to learn political cunning, and become a selfishand ambitious tyrant, but as wise Plato came, that he might learn thelaws of Lady Why, and love them for her sake, and teach them to allmankind. And so you, like the plants and animals, will get yourdeserts exactly, without competing and struggling for existence as theydo.

And all this has come out of looking at the hay-field and the wildmoor.

Why not? There is an animal in you, and there is a man in you.If the animal gets the upper hand, all your character will fall backinto wild useless moor; if the man gets the upper hand, all your characterwill be cultivated into rich and fertile field. Choose.

Now come down home. The haymakers are resting under the hedge.The horses are dawdling home to the farm. The sun is getting low,and the shadows long. Come home, and go to bed while the houseis fragrant with the smell of hay, and dream that you are still playingamong the hayco*cks. When you grow old, you will have other andsadder dreams.

CHAPTER XI—THE WORLD’S END

Hullo! hi! wake up. Jump out of bed, and come to the window,and see where you are.

What a wonderful place!

So it is: though it is only poor old Ireland. Don’t yourecollect that when we started I told you we were going to Ireland,and through it to the World’s End; and here we are now safe atthe end of the old world, and beyond us the great Atlantic, and beyondthat again, thousands of miles away, the new world, which will be richand prosperous, civilised and noble, thousands of years hence, whenthis old world, it may be, will be dead, and little children there willbe reading in their history books of Ancient England and of AncientFrance, as you now read of Greece and Rome.

But what a wonderful place it is! What are those great greenthings standing up in the sky, all over purple ribs and bars, with theirtops hid in the clouds?

Those are mountains; the bones of some old world, whose poor baresides Madam How is trying to cover with rich green grass.

And how far off are they?

How I should like to walk up to the top of that one which looks quiteclose.

You will find it a long walk up there; three miles, I dare say, overblack bogs and banks of rock, and up corries and cliffs which you couldnot climb. There are plenty of cows on that mountain: and yetthey look so small, you could not see them, nor I either, without aglass. That long white streak, zigzagging down the mountain side,is a roaring cataract of foam five hundred feet high, full now withlast night’s rain; but by this afternoon it will have dwindledto a little thread; and to-morrow, when you get up, if no more rainhas come down, it will be gone. Madam How works here among themountains swiftly and hugely, and sometimes terribly enough; as youshall see when you have had your breakfast, and come down to the bridgewith me.

But what a beautiful place it is! Flowers and woods and a lawn;and what is that great smooth patch in the lawn just under the window?

Is it an empty flower-bed?

Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale. We will go and look at itafter breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of thewonders which I have been telling you of.

And what is that shining between the trees?

Water.

Is it a lake?

Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt water,not fresh. Look away to the right, and you see it through theopening of the woods again and again: and now look above the woods.You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like clouds, whichrest upon it far away. That, child, is the great Atlantic Ocean,and those are islands in the far west. The water which washesthe bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago pouring out of the Gulfof Mexico, between the Bahamas and Florida, and swept away here as thegreat ocean river of warm water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringingwith it out of the open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoisesand whales which feed upon them. Some fine afternoon we will rundown the bay and catch strange fishes, such as you never saw before,and very likely see a living whale.

What? such a whale as they get whalebone from, and which eats sea-moths?

No, they live far north, in the Arctic circle; these are grampuses,and bottle-noses, which feed on fish; not so big as the right whales,but quite big enough to astonish you, if one comes up and blows closeto the boat. Get yourself dressed and come down, and then we willgo out; we shall have plenty to see and talk of at every step.

Now, you have finished your breakfast at last, so come along, andwe shall see what we shall see. First run out across the gravel,and scramble up that bank of lawn, and you will see what you fanciedwas an empty flower-bed.

Why, it is all hard rock.

Ah, you are come into the land of rocks now: out of the land of sandand gravel; out of a soft young corner of the world into a very hard,old, weather-beaten corner; and you will see rocks enough, and too manyfor the poor farmers, before you go home again.

But how beautifully smooth and flat the rock is: and yet it is allrounded.

What is it like?

Like—like the half of a shell.

Not badly said, but think again.

Like—like—I know what it is like. Like the backof some great monster peeping up through the turf.

You have got it. Such rocks as these are called in Switzerland“roches moutonnées,” because they are, people fancy,like sheep’s backs. Now look at the cracks and layers init. They run across the stone; they have nothing to do with theshape of it. You see that?

Yes: but here are cracks running across them, all along the stone,till the turf hides them.

Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the stone.

I see. They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stemat home, where the cats sharpen their claws. But it would takea big cat to make them.

Do you recollect what I told you of Madam How’s hand, moreflexible than any hand of man, and yet strong enough to grind the mountainsinto paste?

I know. Ice! ice! ice! But are these really ice-marks?

Child, on the place where we now stand, over rich lawns, and warmwoods, and shining lochs, lay once on a time hundreds, it may be thousands,of feet of solid ice, crawling off yonder mountain-tops into the oceanthere outside; and this is one of its tracks. See how the scratchesall point straight down the valley, and straight out to sea. Thosemountains are 2000 feet high: but they were much higher once; for theice has planed the tops off them. Then, it seems to me, the icesank, and left the mountains standing out of it about half their height,and at that level it stayed, till it had planed down all those lowermoors of smooth bare rock between us and the Western ocean; and thenit sank again, and dwindled back, leaving moraines (that is, heaps ofdirt and stones) all up these valleys here and there, till at the lastit melted all away, and poor old Ireland became fit to live in again.We will go down the bay some day and look at those moraines, some ofthem quite hills of earth, and then you will see for yourself how mightya chisel the ice-chisel was, and what vast heaps of chips it has leftbehind. Now then, down over the lawn towards the bridge.Listen to the river, louder and louder every step we take.

What a roar! Is there a waterfall there?

No. It is only the flood. And underneath the roar ofthat flood, do you not hear a deeper note—a dull rumbling, asif from underground?

Yes. What is it?

The rolling of great stones under water, which are being polishedagainst each other, as they hurry toward the sea. Now, up on theparapet of the bridge. I will hold you tight. Look and seeMadam How’s rain-spade at work. Look at the terrible yellowtorrent below us, almost filling up the arches of the bridge, and leapinghigh in waves and crests of foam.

Oh, the bridge is falling into the water!

Not a bit. You are not accustomed to see water running belowyou at ten miles an hour. Never mind that feeling. It willgo off in a few seconds. Look; the water is full six feet up thetrunks of the trees; over the grass and the king fern, and the tallpurple loose-strife—

Oh! Here comes a tree dancing down!

And there are some turfs which have been cut on the mountain.And there is a really sad sight. Look what comes now.

One—two—three.

Why, they are sheep.

Yes. And a sad loss they will be to some poor fellow in theglen above.

And oh! Look at the pig turning round and round solemnly inthe corner under the rock. Poor piggy! He ought to havebeen at home safe in his stye, and not wandering about the hills.And what are these coming now?

Butter firkins, I think. Yes. This is a great flood.It is well if there are no lives lost.

But is it not cruel of Madam How to make such floods?

Well—let us ask one of these men who are looking over the bridge.

Why, what does he say? I cannot understand one word.Is he talking Irish?

Irish-English at least: but what he said was, that it was a mightyfine flood entirely, praised be God; and would help on the potatoesand oats after the drought, and set the grass growing again on the mountains.

And what is he saying now?

That the river will be full of salmon and white trout after this.

What does he mean?

That under our feet now, if we could see through the muddy water,dozens of salmon and sea-trout are running up from the sea.

What! up this furious stream?

Yes. What would be death to you is pleasure and play to them.Up they are going, to spawn in the little brooks among the mountains;and all of them are the best of food, fattened on the herrings and spratsin the sea outside, Madam How’s free gift, which does not costman a farthing, save the expense of nets and rods to catch them.

How can that be?

I will give you a bit of political economy. Suppose a poundof salmon is worth a shilling; and a pound of beef is worth a shillinglikewise. Before we can eat the beef, it has cost perhaps tenpenceto make that pound of beef out of turnips and grass and oil-cake; andso the country is only twopence a pound richer for it. But Mr.Salmon has made himself out of what he eats in the sea, and so has costnothing; and the shilling a pound is all clear gain. There—youdon’t quite understand that piece of political economy.Indeed, it is only in the last two or three years that older heads thanyours have got to understand it, and have passed the wise new salmonlaws, by which the rivers will be once more as rich with food as theland is, just as they were hundreds of years ago. But now, lookagain at the river. What do you think makes it so yellow and muddy?

Dirt, of course.

And where does that come from?

Off the mountains?

Yes. Tons on tons of white mud are being carried down pastus now; and where will they go?

Into the sea?

Yes, and sink there in the still water, to make new strata at thebottom; and perhaps in them, ages hence, some one will find the bonesof those sheep, and of poor Mr. Pig too, fossil—

And the butter firkins too. What fun to find a fossil butterfirkin!

But now lift up your eyes to the jagged mountain crests, and theirdark sides all laced with silver streams. Out of every crack andcranny there aloft, the rain is bringing down dirt, and stones too,which have been split off by the winter’s frosts, deepening everylittle hollow, and sharpening every peak, and making the hills morejagged and steep year by year.

When the ice went away, the hills were all scraped smooth and roundby the glaciers, like the flat rock upon the lawn; and ugly enough theymust have looked, most like great brown buns. But ever since then,Madam How has been scooping them out again by her water-chisel intodeep glens, mighty cliffs, sharp peaks, such as you see aloft, and makingthe old hills beautiful once more. Why, even the Alps in Switzerlandhave been carved out by frost and rain, out of some great flat.The very peak of the Matterhorn, of which you have so often seen a picture,is but one single point left of some enormous bun of rock. Allthe rest has been carved away by rain and frost; and some day the Matterhornitself will be carved away, and its last stone topple into the glacierat its foot. See, as we have been talking, we have got into thewoods.

Oh, what beautiful woods, just like our own.

Not quite. There are some things growing here which do notgrow at home, as you will soon see. And there are no rocks athome, either, as there are here.

How strange, to see trees growing out of rocks! How do theirroots get into the stone?

There is plenty of rich mould in the cracks for them to feed on—

“Health to the oak of the mountains; he truststo the might of the rock-clefts.
Deeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone.”

How many sorts of trees there are—oak, and birch and nuts,and mountain-ash, and holly and furze, and heather.

And if you went to some of the islands in the lake up in the glen,you would find wild arbutus—strawberry-tree, as you call it.We will go and get some one day or other.

How long and green the grass is, even on the rocks, and the ferns,and the moss, too. Everything seems richer here than at home.

Of course it is. You are here in the land of perpetual spring,where frost and snow seldom, or never comes.

Oh, look at the ferns under this rock! I must pick some.

Pick away. I will warrant you do not pick all the sorts.

Yes. I have got them all now.

Not so hasty, child; there is plenty of a beautiful fern growingamong that moss, which you have passed over. Look here.

What! that little thing a fern!

Hold it up to the light, and see.

What a lovely little thing, like a transparent sea-weed, hung onblack wire. What is it?

Film fern, Hymenophyllum. But what are you staring at now,with all your eyes?

Oh! that rock covered with green stars and a cloud of little whiteand pink flowers growing out of them.

Aha! my good little dog! I thought you would stand to thatgame when you found it.

What is it, though?

You must answer that yourself. You have seen it a hundred timesbefore.

Why, it is London Pride, that grows in the garden at home.

Of course it is: but the Irish call it St. Patrick’s cabbage;though it got here a long time before St. Patrick; and St. Patrick musthave been very short of garden-stuff if he ever ate it.

But how did it get here from London?

No, no. How did it get to London from hence? For fromthis country it came. I suppose the English brought it home inQueen Bess’s or James the First’s time.

But if it is wild here, and will grow so well in England, why dowe not find it wild in England too?

For the same reason that there are no toads or snakes in Ireland.They had not got as far as Ireland before Ireland was parted off fromEngland. And St. Patrick’s cabbage, and a good many otherplants, had not got as far as England.

But why?

Why, I don’t know. But this I know: that when Madam Howmakes a new sort of plant or animal, she starts it in one single place,and leaves it to take care of itself and earn its own living—asshe does you and me and every one—and spread from that place allround as far as it can go. So St. Patrick’s cabbage gotinto this south-west of Ireland, long, long ago; and was such a bravesturdy little plant, that it clambered up to the top of the highestmountains, and over all the rocks. But when it got to the richlowlands to the eastward, in county Cork, it found all the ground takenup already with other plants; and as they had enough to do to live themselves,they would not let St. Patrick’s cabbage settle among them; andit had to be content with living here in the far-west—and, whatwas very sad, had no means of sending word to its brothers and sistersin the Pyrenees how it was getting on.

What do you mean? Are you making fun of me?

Not the least. I am only telling you a very strange story,which is literally true. Come, and sit down on this bench.You can’t catch that great butterfly, he is too strong on thewing for you.

But oh, what a beautiful one!

Yes, orange and black, silver and green, a glorious creature.But you may see him at home sometimes: that plant close to you, youcannot see at home.

Why, it is only great spurge, such as grows in the woods at home.

No. It is Irish spurge which grows here, and sometimes in Devonshire,and then again in the west of Europe, down to the Pyrenees. Don’ttouch it. Our wood spurge is poisonous enough, but this is worsestill; if you get a drop of its milk on your lip or eye, you will bein agonies for half a day. That is the evil plant with which thepoachers kill the salmon.

How do they do that?

When the salmon are spawning up in the little brooks, and the wateris low, they take that spurge, and grind it between two stones underwater, and let the milk run down into the pool; and at that all thepoor salmon turn up dead. Then comes the water-bailiff, and catchesthe poachers. Then comes the policeman, with his sword at hisside and his truncheon under his arm: and then comes a “cheapjourney” to Tralee Gaol, in which those foolish poachers sit andreconsider themselves, and determine not to break the salmon laws—atleast till next time.

But why is it that this spurge, and St. Patrick’s cabbage,grow only here in the west? If they got here of themselves, wheredid they come from? All outside there is sea; and they could notfloat over that.

Come, I say, and sit down on this bench, and I will tell you a tale,—thestory of the Old Atlantis, the sunken land in the far West. OldPlato, the Greek, told legends of it, which you will read some day;and now it seems as if those old legends had some truth in them, afterall. We are standing now on one of the last remaining scraps ofthe old Atlantic land. Look down the bay. Do you see faraway, under, the mountains, little islands, long and low?

Oh, yes.

Some of these are old slate, like the mountains; others are limestone;bits of the old coral-reef to the west of Ireland which became dry land.

I know. You told me about it.

Then that land, which is all eaten up by the waves now, once joinedIreland to Cornwall, and to Spain, and to the Azores, and I suspectto the Cape of Good Hope, and what is stranger, to Labrador, on thecoast of North America.

Oh! How can you know that?

Listen, and I will give you your first lesson in what I call Bio-geology.

What a long word!

If you can find a shorter one I shall be very much obliged to you,for I hate long words. But what it means is,—Telling howthe land has changed in shape, by the plants and animals upon it.And if you ever read (as you will) Mr. Wallace’s new book on theIndian Archipelago, you will see what wonderful discoveries men maymake about such questions if they will but use their common sense.You know the common pink heather—ling, as we call it?

Of course.

Then that ling grows, not only here and in the north and west ofEurope, but in the Azores too; and, what is more strange, in Labrador.Now, as ling can neither swim nor fly, does not common sense tell youthat all those countries were probably joined together in old times?

Well: but it seems so strange.

So it is, my child; and so is everything. But, as the foolsays in Shakespeare—

“A long time ago the world began,
With heigh ho, the wind and the rain.”

And the wind and the rain have made strange work with the poor oldworld ever since. And that is about all that we, who are not verymuch wiser than Shakespeare’s fool, can say about the matter.But again—the London Pride grows here, and so does another saxifragevery like it, which we call Saxifraga Geum. Now, when I saw thosetwo plants growing in the Western Pyrenees, between France and Spain,and with them the beautiful blue butterwort, which grows in these Kerrybogs—we will go and find some—what could I say but thatSpain and Ireland must have been joined once?

I suppose it must be so.

Again. There is a little pink butterwort here in the bogs,which grows, too, in dear old Devonshire and Cornwall; and also in thesouth-west of Scotland. Now, when I found that too, in the bogsnear Biarritz, close to the Pyrenees, and knew that it stretched awayalong the Spanish coast, and into Portugal, what could my common senselead me to say but that Scotland, and Ireland, and Cornwall, and Spainwere all joined once? Those are only a few examples. I couldgive you a dozen more. For instance, on an island away there tothe west, and only in one spot, there grows a little sort of lily, whichis found I believe in Brittany, and on the Spanish and Portuguese heaths,and even in North-west Africa. And that Africa and Spain werejoined not so very long ago at the Straits of Gibraltar there is nodoubt at all.

But where did the Mediterranean Sea run out then?

Perhaps it did not run out at all; but was a salt-water lake, likethe Caspian, or the Dead Sea. Perhaps it ran out over what isnow the Sahara, the great desert of sand, for, that was a sea-bottomnot long ago.

But then, how was this land of Atlantis joined to the Cape of GoodHope?

I cannot say how, or when either. But this is plain: the placein the world where the most beautiful heaths grow is the Cape of GoodHope? You know I showed you Cape heaths once at the nursery gardener’sat home.

Oh yes, pink, and yellow, and white; so much larger than ours.

Then it seems (I only say it seems) as if there must have been someland once to the westward, from which the different sorts of heath spreadsouth-eastward to the Cape, and north-eastward into Europe. Andthat they came north-eastward into Europe seems certain; for there areno heaths in America or Asia.

But how north-eastward?

Think. Stand with your face to the south and think. Ifa thing comes from the south-west—from there, it must go to thenorth-east-towards there. Must it not?

Oh yes, I see.

Now then—The farther you go south-west, towards Spain, themore kinds of heath there are, and the handsomer; as if their originalhome, from which they started, was somewhere down there.

More sorts! What sorts?

How many sorts of heath have we at home?

Three, of course: ling, and purple heath, and bottle heath.

And there are no more in all England, or Wales, or Scotland, except—Now,listen. In the very farthest end of Cornwall there are two moresorts, the Cornish heath and the Orange-bell; and they say (though Inever saw it) that the Orange-bell grows near Bournemouth.

Well. That is south and west too.

So it is: but that makes five heaths. Now in the south andwest of Ireland all these five heaths grow, and two more: the greatIrish heath, with purple bells, and the Mediterranean heath, which flowersin spring.

Oh, I know them. They grow in the Rhododendron beds at home.

Of course. Now again. If you went down to Spain, youwould find all those seven heaths, and other sorts with them, and thosewhich are rare in England and Ireland are common there. AboutBiarritz, on the Spanish frontier, all the moors are covered with Cornishheath, and the bogs with Orange-bell, and lovely they are to see; andgrowing among them is a tall heath six feet high, which they call therebruyère, or Broomheath, because they make brooms of it:and out of its roots the “briar-root” pipes are made.There are other heaths about that country, too, whose names I do notknow; so that when you are there, you fancy yourself in the very homeof the heaths: but you are not. They must have come from someland near where the Azores are now; or how could heaths have got pastAfrica, and the tropics, to the Cape of Good Hope?

It seems very wonderful, to be able to find out that there was agreat land once in the ocean all by a few little heaths.

Not by them only, child. There are many other plants, and animalstoo, which make one think that so it must have been. And now Iwill tell you something stranger still. There may have been atime—some people say that there must—when Africa and SouthAmerica were joined by land.

Africa and South America! Was that before the heaths came here,or after?

I cannot tell: but I think, probably after. But this is certain,that there must have been a time when figs, and bamboos, and palms,and sarsaparillas, and many other sorts of plants could get from Africato America, or the other way, and indeed almost round the world.About the south of France and Italy you will see one beautiful sarsaparilla,with hooked prickles, zigzagging and twining about over rocks and ruins,trunks and stems: and when you do, if you have understanding, it willseem as strange to you as it did to me to remember that the home ofthe sarsaparillas is not in Europe, but in the forests of Brazil, andthe River Plate.

Oh, I have heard about their growing there, and staining the riversbrown, and making them good medicine to drink: but I never thought therewere any in Europe.

There are only one or two, and how they got there is a marvel indeed.But now—If there was not dry land between Africa and South America,how did the cats get into America? For they cannot swim.

Cats? People might have brought them over.

Jaguars and Pumas, which you read of in Captain Mayne Reid’sbooks, are cats, and so are the Ocelots or tiger cats.

Oh, I saw them at the Zoological Gardens.

But no one would bring them over, I should think, except to put themin the Zoo.

Not unless they were very foolish.

And much stronger and cleverer than the savages of South America.No, those jaguars and pumus have been in America for ages: and thereare those who will tell you—and I think they have some reasonon their side—that the jaguar, with his round patches of spots,was once very much the same as the African and Indian leopard, who canclimb trees well. So when he got into the tropic forests of America,he took to the trees, and lived among the branches, feeding on slothsand monkeys, and never coming to the ground for weeks, till he grewfatter and stronger and far more terrible than his forefathers.And they will tell you, too, that the puma was, perhaps—I onlysay perhaps—something like the lion, who (you know) has no spots.But when he got into the forests, he found very little food under thetrees, only a very few deer; and so he was starved, and dwindled downto the poor little sheep-stealing rogue he is now, of whom nobody isafraid.

Oh, yes! I remember now A. said he and his men killed six inone day. But do you think it is all true about the pumas and jaguars?

My child, I don’t say that it is true: but only that it islikely to be true. In science we must be cautious and modest,and ready to alter our minds whenever we learn fresh facts; only keepingsure of one thing, that the truth, when we find it out, will be farmore wonderful than any notions of ours. See! As we havebeen talking we have got nearly home: and luncheon must be ready.

* * * * *

Why are you opening your eyes at me like the dog when he wants togo out walking?

Because I want to go out. But I don’t want to go outwalking. I want to go in the yacht.

In the yacht? It does not belong to me.

Oh, that is only fun. I know everybody is going out in it tosee such a beautiful island full of ferns, and have a picnic on therocks; and I know you are going.

Then you know more than I do myself.

But I heard them say you were going.

Then they know more than I do myself.

But would you not like to go?

I might like to go very much indeed; but as I have been knocked aboutat sea a good deal, and perhaps more than I intend to be again, it isno novelty to me, and there might be other things which I liked stillbetter: for instance, spending the afternoon with you.

Then am I not to go?

I think not. Don’t pull such a long face: but be a man,and make up your mind to it, as the geese do to going barefoot.

But why may I not go?

Because I am not Madam How, but your Daddy.

What can that have to do with it?

If you asked Madam How, do you know what she would answer in a moment,as civilly and kindly as could be? She would say—Oh yes,go by all means, and please yourself, my pretty little man. Myworld is the Paradise which the Irishman talked of, in which “aman might do what was right in the sight of his own eyes, and what waswrong too, as he liked it.”

Then Madam How would let me go in the yacht?

Of course she would, or jump overboard when you were in it; or putyour finger in the fire, and your head afterwards; or eat Irish spurge,and die like the salmon; or anything else you liked. Nobody isso indulgent as Madam How: and she would be the dearest old lady inthe world, but for one ugly trick that she has. She never tellsany one what is coming, but leaves them to find it out for themselves.She lets them put their fingers in the fire, and never tells them thatthey will get burnt.

But that is very cruel and treacherous of her.

My boy, our business is not to call hard names, but to take thingsas we find them, as the Highlandman said when he ate the braxy mutton.Now shall I, because I am your Daddy, tell you what Madam How wouldnot have told you? When you get on board the yacht, you will thinkit all very pleasant for an hour, as long as you are in the bay.But presently you will get a little bored, and run about the deck, anddisturb people, and want to sit here, there, and everywhere, which Ishould not like. And when you get beyond that headland, you willfind the great rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and the cutter tossingand heaving as you never felt before, under a burning sun. Andthen my merry little young gentleman will begin to feel a little sick;and then very sick, and more miserable than he ever felt in his life;and wish a thousand times over that he was safe at home, even doingsums in long division; and he will give a great deal of trouble to variouskind ladies—which no one has a right to do, if he can help it.

Of course I do not wish to be sick: only it looks such beautifulweather.

And so it is: but don’t fancy that last night’s rainand wind can have passed without sending in such a swell as will frightenyou, when you see the cutter climbing up one side of a wave, and runningdown the other; Madam How tells me that, though she will not tell youyet.

Then why do they go out?

Because they are accustomed to it. They have come hither allround from Cowes, past the Land’s End, and past Cape Clear, andthey are not afraid or sick either. But shall I tell you how youwould end this evening?—at least so I suspect. Lying miserablein a stuffy cabin, on a sofa, and not quite sure whether you were deador alive, till you were bundled into a boat about twelve o’clockat night, when you ought to be safe asleep, and come home cold, andwet, and stupid, and ill, and lie in bed all to-morrow.

But will they be wet and cold?

I cannot be sure; but from the look of the sky there to westward,I think some of them will be. So do you make up your mind to staywith me. But if it is fine and smooth to-morrow, perhaps we mayrow down the bay, and see plenty of wonderful things.

But why is it that Madam How will not tell people beforehand whatwill happen to them, as you have told me?

Now I will tell you a great secret, which, alas! every one has notfound out yet. Madam How will teach you, but only by experience.Lady Why will teach you, but by something very different—by somethingwhich has been called—and I know no better names for it—graceand inspiration; by putting into your heart feelings which no man, noteven your father and mother, can put there; by making you quick to lovewhat is right, and hate what is wrong, simply because they are rightand wrong, though you don’t know why they are right and wrong;by making you teachable, modest, reverent, ready to believe those whoare older and wiser than you when they tell you what you could neverfind out for yourself: and so you will be prudent, that is provident,foreseeing, and know what will happen if you do so-and-so; and thereforewhat is really best and wisest for you.

But why will she be kind enough to do that for me?

For the very same reason that I do it. For God’s sake.Because God is your Father in heaven, as I am your father on earth,and He does not wish His little child to be left to the hard teachingof Nature and Law, but to be helped on by many, many unsought and undeservedfavours, such as are rightly called “Means of Grace;” andabove all by the Gospel and good news that you are God’s child,and that God loves you, and has helped and taught you, and will helpyou and teach you, in a thousand ways of which you are not aware, ifonly you will be a wise child, and listen to Lady Why, when she criesfrom her Palace of Wisdom, and the feast which she has prepared, “Whosois simple let him turn in hither;” and says to him who wants understanding—“Come,eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.”

“Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I havestrength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness.”

Yes, I will try and listen to Lady Why: but what will happen if Ido not?

That will happen to you, my child—but God forbid it ever shouldhappen—which happens to wicked kings and rulers, and all men,even the greatest and cleverest, if they do not choose to reign by LadyWhy’s laws, and decree justice according to her eternal ideasof what is just, but only do what seems pleasant and profitable to themselves.On them Lady Why turns round, and says—for she, too, can be awful,ay dreadful, when she needs—

“Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched outmy hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel,and would have none of my reproof—” And then comewords so terrible, that I will not speak them here in this happy place:but what they mean is this:—

That these foolish people are handed over—as you and I shallbe if we do wrong wilfully—to Madam How and her terrible school-house,which is called Nature and the Law, to be treated just as the plantsand animals are treated, because they did not choose to behave likemen and children of God. And there they learn, whether they likeor not, what they might have learnt from Lady Why all along. Theylearn the great law, that as men sow so they will reap; as they maketheir bed so they will lie on it: and Madam How can teach that as noone else can in earth or heaven: only, unfortunately for her scholars,she is apt to hit so hard with her rod, which is called Experience,that they never get over it; and therefore most of those who will onlybe taught by Nature and Law are killed, poor creatures, before theyhave learnt their lesson; as many a savage tribe is destroyed, ay andgreat and mighty nations too—the old Roman Empire among them.

And the poor Jews, who were carried away captive to Babylon?

Yes; they would not listen to Lady Why, and so they were taken inhand by Madam How, and were seventy years in her terrible school-house,learning a lesson which, to do them justice, they never forgot again.But now we will talk of something pleasanter. We will go backto Lady Why, and listen to her voice. It sounds gentle and cheerfulenough just now. Listen.

What? is she speaking to us now?

Hush! open your eyes and ears once more, for you are growing sleepywith my long sermon. Watch the sleepy shining water, and the sleepygreen mountains. Listen to the sleepy lapping of the ripple, andthe sleepy sighing of the woods, and let Lady Why talk to you throughthem in “songs without words,” because they are deeper thanall words, till you, too, fall asleep with your head upon my knee.

But what does she say?

She says—“Be still. The fulness of joy is peace.”There, you are fast asleep; and perhaps that is the best thing for you;for sleep will (so I am informed, though I never saw it happen, norany one else) put fresh gray matter into your brain; or save the wearand tear of the old gray matter; or something else—when they havesettled what it is to do: and if so, you will wake up with a fresh fiddle-stringto your little fiddle of a brain, on which you are playing new tunesall day long. So much the better: but when I believe that yourbrain is you, pretty boy, then I shall believe also that the fiddleris his fiddle.

CHAPTER XII—HOMEWARD BOUND

Come: I suppose you consider yourself quite a good sailor by now?

Oh, yes. I have never been ill yet, though it has been quiterough again and again.

What you call rough, little man. But as you are grown sucha very good sailor, and also as the sea is all but smooth, I think wewill have a sail in the yacht to-day, and that a tolerably long one.

Oh, how delightful! but I thought we were going home; and the thingsare all packed up.

And why should we not go homewards in the yacht, things and all?

What, all the way to England?

No, not so far as that; but these kind people, when they came intothe harbour last night, offered to take us up the coast to a town, wherewe will sleep, and start comfortably home to-morrow morning. Sonow you will have a chance of seeing something of the great sea outside,and of seeing, perhaps, the whale himself.

I hope we shall see the whale. The men say he has been outsidethe harbour every day this week after the fish.

Very good. Now do you keep quiet, and out of the way, whilewe are getting ready to go on board; and take a last look at this prettyplace, and all its dear kind people.

And the dear kind dogs too, and the cat and the kittens.

* * * * *

Now, come along, and bundle into the boat, if you have done biddingevery one good-bye; and take care you don’t slip down in the ice-groovings,as you did the other day. There, we are off at last.

Oh, look at them all on the rock watching us and waving their handkerchiefs;and Harper and Paddy too, and little Jimsy and Isy, with their fat barefeet, and their arms round the dogs’ necks. I am so sorryto leave them all.

Not sorry to go home?

No, but—They have been so kind; and the dogs were so kind.I am sure they knew we were going, and were sorry too.

Perhaps they were. They knew we were going away, at all events.They know what bringing out boxes and luggage means well enough.

Sam knew, I am sure; but he did not care for us. He was onlyuneasy because he thought Harper was going, and he should lose his shooting;and as soon as he saw Harper was not getting into the boat, he sat downand scratched himself, quite happy. But do dogs think?

Of course they do, only they do not think in words, as we do.

But how can they think without words?

That is very difficult for you and me to imagine, because we alwaysthink in words. They must think in pictures, I suppose, by rememberingthings which have happened to them. You and I do that in our dreams.I suspect that savages, who have very few words to express their thoughtswith, think in pictures, like their own dogs. But that is a longstory. We must see about getting on board now, and under way.

* * * * *

Well, and what have you been doing?

Oh, I looked all over the yacht, at the ropes and curious things;and then I looked at the mountains, till I was tired; and then I heardyou and some gentleman talking about the land sinking, and I listened.There was no harm in that?

None at all. But what did you hear him say?

That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogseverywhere below high-water mark. Is that true?

Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where thesalt water could get at it, as it does now every tide.

But what was it he said about that cliff over there?

He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainlyonce joined on to that low island on our left.

What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?

That is no house. That is a square lump of mud, the last remainingbit of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier. Every yearit crumbles into the sea more and more; and in a few years it will beall gone, and nothing left but the great round boulder-stones whichthe ice brought down from the glaciers behind us.

But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?

Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are fed,is made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and stones;and that is why it is bright and green beside the gray rocks and brownheather of the moors at its foot. He knows that it must be anold glacier moraine; and he has reason to think that moraine once stretchedright across the bay to the low island, and perhaps on to the othershore, and was eaten out by the sea as the land sank down.

But how does he know that the land sank?

Of that, he says, he is quite certain; and this is what he says.—Supposethere was a glacier here, where we are sailing now: it would end inan ice cliff, such as you have seen a picture of in Captain Cook’sVoyages, of which you are so fond. You recollect the picturesof Christmas Sound and Possession Bay?

Oh yes, and pictures of Greenland and Spitzbergen too, with glaciersin the sea.

Then icebergs would break off from that cliff, and carry all thedirt and stones out to sea, perhaps hundreds of miles away, insteadof letting it drop here in a heap; and what did fall in a heap herethe sea would wash down at once, and smooth it over the sea-bottom,and never let it pile up in a huge bank like that. Do you understand?

I think I do.

Therefore, he says, that great moraine must have been built upondry land, in the open air; and must have sunk since into the sea, whichis gnawing at it day and night, and will some day eat it all up, asit would eat up all the dry land in the world, if Madam How was notcontinually lifting up fresh land, to make up for what the sea has carriedoff.

Oh, look there! some one has caught a fish, and is hauling it up.What a strange creature! It is not a mackerel, nor a gurnet, nora pollock.

How do you know that?

Why, it is running along the top of the water like a snake; and theynever do that. Here it comes. It has got a long beak, likea snipe. Oh, let me see.

See if you like: but don’t get in the way. Remember youare but a little boy.

What is it? a snake with a bird’s head?

No: a snake has no fins; and look at its beak: it is full of littleteeth, which no bird has. But a very curious fellow he is, nevertheless:and his name is Gar-fish. Some call him Green-bone, because hisbones are green.

But what kind of fish is he? He is like nothing I ever saw.

I believe he is nearest to a pike, though his backbone is differentfrom a pike, and from all other known fishes.

But is he not very rare?

Oh no: he comes to Devonshire and Cornwall with the mackerel, ashe has come here; and in calm weather he will swim on the top of thewater, and play about, and catch flies, and stand bolt upright withhis long nose in the air; and when the fisher-boys throw him a stick,he will jump over it again and again, and play with it in the most ridiculousway.

And what will they do with him?

Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.

Certainly, he does smell very nasty.

Have you only just found out that? Sometimes when I have caughtone, he has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him overboard,and so he saved his life by his nastiness. But they will catchplenty of mackerel now; for where he is they are; and where they are,perhaps the whale will be; for we are now well outside the harbour,and running across the open bay; and lucky for you that there are norollers coming in from the Atlantic, and spouting up those cliffs incolumns of white foam.

* * * * *

“Hoch!”

Ah! Who was that coughed just behind the ship?

Who, indeed? look round and see.

There is nobody. There could not be in the sea.

Look—there, a quarter of a mile away.

Oh! What is that turning over in the water, like a great blackwheel? And a great tooth on it, and—oh! it is gone!

Never mind. It will soon show itself again.

But what was it?

The whale: one of them, at least; for the men say there are two differentones about the bay. That black wheel was part of his back, ashe turned down; and the tooth on it was his back-fin.

But the noise, like a giant’s cough?

Rather like the blast of a locomotive just starting. That washis breath.

What? as loud as that?

Why not? He is a very big fellow, and has big lungs.

How big is he?

I cannot say: perhaps thirty or forty feet long. We shall beable to see better soon. He will come up again, and very likelynearer us, where those birds are.

I don’t want him to come any nearer.

You really need not be afraid. He is quite harmless.

But he might run against the yacht.

He might: and so might a hundred things happen which never do.But I never heard of one of these whales running against a vessel; soI suppose he has sense enough to know that the yacht is no concern ofhis, and to keep out of its way.

But why does he make that tremendous noise only once, and then gounder water again?

You must remember that he is not a fish. A fish takes the waterin through his mouth continually, and it runs over his gills, and outbehind through his gill-covers. So the gills suck-up the air outof the water, and send it into the fish’s blood, just as theydo in the newt-larva.

Yes, I know.

But the whale breathes with lungs like you and me; and when he goesunder water he has to hold his breath, as you and I have.

What a long time he can hold it.

Yes. He is a wonderful diver. Some whales, they say,will keep under for an hour. But while he is under, mind, theair in his lungs is getting foul, and full of carbonic acid, just asit would in your lungs, if you held your breath. So he is forcedto come up at last: and then out of his blowers, which are on the topof his head, he blasts out all the foul breath, and with it the waterwhich has got into his mouth, in a cloud of spray. Then he sucksin fresh air, as much as he wants, and dives again, as you saw him dojust now.

And what does he do under water?

Look—and you will see. Look at those birds. Wewill sail up to them; for Mr. Whale will probably rise among them soon.

Oh, what a screaming and what a fighting! How many sorts thereare! What are those beautiful little ones, like great white swallows,with crested heads and forked tails, who hover, and then dip down andpick up something?

Terns—sea-swallows. And there are gulls in hundreds,you see, large and small, gray-backed and black-backed; and over themall two or three great gannets swooping round and round.

Oh! one has fallen into the sea!

Yes, with a splash just like a cannon ball. And here he comesup again, with a fish in his beak. If he had fallen on your head,with that beak of his, he would have split it open. I have heardof men catching gannets by tying a fish on a board, and letting it float;and when the gannet strikes at it he drives his bill into the board,and cannot get it out.

But is not that cruel?

I think so. Gannets are of no use, for eating, or anythingelse.

What a noise! It is quite deafening. And what are thoseblack birds about, who croak like crows, or parrots?

Look at them. Some have broad bills, with a white stripe onit, and cry something like the moor-hens at home. Those are razor-bills.

And what are those who say “marrock,” something likea parrot?

The ones with thin bills? they are guillemots, “murres”as we call them in Devon: but in some places they call them “marrocks,”from what they say.

And each has a little baby bird swimming behind it. Oh! there:the mother has co*cked up her tail and dived, and the little one is swimmingabout looking for her! How it cries! It is afraid of theyacht.

And there she comes up again, and cries “marrock” tocall it.

Look at it swimming up to her, and cuddling to her, quite happy.

Quite happy. And do you not think that any one who took a gunand shot either that mother or that child would be both cowardly andcruel?

But they might eat them.

These sea-birds are not good to eat. They taste too strongof fish-oil. They are of no use at all, except that the gulls’and terns’ feathers are put into girls’ hats.

Well they might find plenty of other things to put in their hats.

So I think. Yes: it would be very cruel, very cruel indeed,to do what some do, shoot at these poor things, and leave them floatingabout wounded till they die. But I suppose, if one gave them one’smind about such doings, and threatened to put the new Sea Fowl Act inforce against them, and fine them, and show them up in the newspapers,they would say they meant no harm, and had never thought about its beingcruel.

Then they ought to think.

They ought; and so ought you. Half the cruelty in the world,like half the misery, comes simply from people’s not thinking;and boys are often very cruel from mere thoughtlessness. So whenyou are tempted to rob birds’ nests, or to set the dogs on a moorhen,or pelt wrens in the hedge, think; and say—How should I like thatto be done to me?

I know: but what are all the birds doing?

Look at the water, how it sparkles. It is alive with tiny fish,“fry,” “brett” as we call them in the West,which the mackerel are driving up to the top.

Poor little things! How hard on them! The big fish atthem from below, and the birds at them from above. And what isthat? Thousands of fish leaping out of the water, scrambling overeach other’s backs. What a curious soft rushing roaringnoise they make!

Aha! The eaters are going to be eaten in turn. Thoseare the mackerel themselves; and I suspect they see Mr. Whale, and arescrambling out of the way as fast as they can, lest he should swallowthem down, a dozen at a time. Look out sharp for him now.

I hope he will not come very near.

No. The fish are going from us and past us. If he comesup, he will come up astern of us, so look back. There he is!

That? I thought it was a boat.

Yes. He does look very like a boat upside down. But thatis only his head and shoulders. He will blow next.

“Hoch!”

Oh! What a jet of spray, like the Geysers! And the sunmade a rainbow on the top of it. He is quite still now.

Yes; he is taking a long breath or two. You need not hold myhand so tight. His head is from us; and when he goes down he willgo right away.

Oh, he is turning head over heels! There is his back fin again.And—Ah! was that not a slap! How the water boiled and foamed;and what a tail he had! And how the mackerel flew out of the water!

Yes. You are a lucky boy to have seen that. I have notseen one of those gentlemen show his “flukes,” as they callthem, since I was a boy on the Cornish coast.

Where is he gone?

Hunting mackerel, away out at sea. But did you notice somethingodd about his tail, as you call it—though it is really none?

It looked as if it was set on flat, and not upright, like a fish’s.But why is it not a tail?

Just because it is set on flat, not upright: and learned men willtell you that those two flukes are the “rudiments”—thatis, either the beginning, or more likely the last remains—of twohind feet. But that belongs to the second volume of Madam How’sBook of Kind; and you have not yet learned any of the first volume,you know, except about a few butterflies. Look here! Hereare more whales coming. Don’t be frightened. Theyare only little ones, mackerel-hunting, like the big one.

What pretty smooth things, turning head over heels, and saying, “Hush,Hush!”

They don’t really turn clean over; and that “Hush”is their way of breathing.

Are they the young ones of that great monster?

No; they are porpoises. That big one is, I believe, a bottle-nose.But if you want to know about the kinds of whales, you must ask Dr.Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons, and not me: and he will tellyou wonderful things about them.—How some of them have mouthsfull of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and others, like the greatsperm whale in the South Sea, have huge teeth in their lower jaws, andin the upper only holes into which those teeth fit; others like thebottle-nose, only two teeth or so in the lower jaw; and others, likethe narwhal, two straight tusks in the upper jaw, only one of whichgrows, and is what you call a narwhal’s horn.

Oh yes. I know of a walking-stick made of one.

And strangest of all, how the right-whales have a few little teethwhen they are born, which never come through the gums; but, instead,they grow all along their gums, an enormous curtain of clotted hair,which serves as a net to keep in the tiny sea-animals on which theyfeed, and let the water strain out.

You mean whalebone? Is whalebone hair?

So it seems. And so is a rhinoceros’s horn. A rhinocerosused to be hairy all over in old times: but now he carries all his hairon the end of his nose, except a few bristles on his tail. Andthe right-whale, not to be done in oddity, carries all his on his gums.

But have no whales any hair?

No real whales: but the Manati, which is very nearly a whale, haslong bristly hair left. Don’t you remember M.’s letterabout the one he saw at Rio Janeiro?

This is all very funny: but what is the use of knowing so much aboutthings’ teeth and hair?

What is the use of learning Latin and Greek, and a dozen things morewhich you have to learn? You don’t know yet: but wiser peoplethan you tell you that they will be of use some day. And I cantell you, that if you would only study that gar-fish long enough, andcompare him with another fish something like him, who has a long beakto his lower jaw, and none to his upper—and how he eats I cannotguess,—and both of them again with certain fishes like them, whichM. Agassiz has found lately, not in the sea, but in the river Amazon;and then think carefully enough over their bones and teeth, and theirhistory from the time they are hatched—why, you would find out,I believe, a story about the river Amazon itself, more wonderful thanall the fairy tales you ever read.

Now there is luncheon ready. Come down below, and don’ttumble down the companion-stairs; and by the time you have eaten yourdinner we shall be very near the shore.

* * * * *

So? Here is my little man on deck, after a good night’srest. And he has not been the least sick, I hear.

Not a bit: but the cabin was so stuffy and hot, I asked leave tocome on deck. What a huge steamer! But I do not like itas well as the yacht. It smells of oil and steam, and—

And pigs and bullocks too, I am sorry to say. Don’t goforward above them, but stay here with me, and look round.

Where are we now? What are those high hills, far away to theleft, above the lowlands and woods?

Those are the shore of the Old World—the Welsh mountains.

And in front of us I can see nothing but flat land. Where isthat?

That is the mouth of the Severn and Avon; where we shall be in halfan hour more.

And there, on the right, over the low hills, I can see higher ones,blue and hazy.

Those are an island of the Old World, called now the Mendip Hills;and we are steaming along the great strait between the Mendips and theWelsh mountains, which once was coral reef, and is now the Severn sea;and by the time you have eaten your breakfast we shall steam in througha crack in that coral-reef; and you will see what you missed seeingwhen you went to Ireland, because you went on board at night.

* * * * *

Oh! Where have we got to now? Where is the wide SevernSea?

Two or three miles beyond us; and here we are in narrow little Avon.

Narrow indeed. I wonder that the steamer does not run againstthose rocks. But how beautiful they are, and how the trees hangdown over the water, and are all reflected in it!

Yes. The gorge of the Avon is always lovely. I saw itfirst when I was a little boy like you; and I have seen it many a timesince, in sunshine and in storm, and thought it more lovely every time.Look! there is something curious.

What? Those great rusty rings fixed into the rock?

Yes. Those may be as old, for aught I know, as Queen Elizabeth’sor James’s reign.

But why were they put there?

For ships to hold on by, if they lost the tide.

What do you mean?

It is high tide now. That is why the water is almost up tothe branches of the trees. But when the tide turns, it will allrush out in a torrent which would sweep ships out to sea again, if theyhad not steam, as we have, to help them up against the stream.So sailing ships, in old times, fastened themselves to those rings,and rode against the stream till the tide turned, and carried them upto Bristol.

But what is the tide? And why does it go up and down?And why does it alter with the moon, as I heard you all saying so oftenin Ireland?

That is a long story, which I must tell you something about someother time. Now I want you to look at something else: and thatis, the rocks themselves, in which the rings are. They are verycurious in my eyes, and very valuable; for they taught me a lesson ingeology when I was quite a boy: and I want them to teach it to you now.

What is there curious in them?

This. You will soon see for yourself, even from the steamer’sdeck, that they are not the same rock as the high limestone hills above.They are made up of red sand and pebbles; and they are a whole worldyounger, indeed some say two worlds younger, than the limestone hillsabove, and lie upon the top of the limestone. Now you may seewhat I meant when I said that the newer rocks, though they lie on thetop of the older, were often lower down than they are.

But how do you know that they lie on the limestone?

Look into that corner of the river, as we turn round, and you willsee with your own eyes. There are the sandstones, lying flat onthe turned-up edges of another rock.

Yes; I see. The layers of it are almost upright.

Then that upright rock underneath is part of the great limestonehill above. So the hill must have been raised out of the sea,ages ago, and eaten back by the waves; and then the sand and pebblesmade a beach at its foot, and hardened into stone; and there it is.And when you get through the limestone hills to Bristol, you will seemore of these same red sandstone rocks, spread about at the foot ofthe limestone-hills, on the other side.

But why is the sandstone two worlds newer than the limestone?

Because between that sandstone and that limestone come hundreds offeet of rock, which carry in them all the coal in England. Don’tyou remember that I told you that once before?

Oh yes. But I see no coal between them there.

No. But there is plenty of coal between them over in Wales;and plenty too between them on the other side of Bristol. Whatyou are looking at there is just the lip of a great coal-box, wherethe bottom and the lid join. The bottom is the mountain limestone;and the lid is the new red sandstone, or Trias, as they call it now:but the coal you cannot see. It is stowed inside the box, milesaway from here. But now, look at the cliffs and the downs, which(they tell me) are just like the downs in the Holy Land; and the woodsand villas, high over your head.

And what is that in the air? A bridge?

Yes—that is the famous Suspension Bridge—and a beautifulwork of art it is. Ay, stare at it, and wonder at it, little man,of course.

But is it not wonderful?

Yes: it was a clever trick to get those chains across the gulf, highup in the air: but not so clever a trick as to make a single stone ofwhich those piers are built, or a single flower or leaf in those woods.The more you see of Madam How’s masonry and carpentry, the clumsierman’s work will look to you. But now we must get ready togive up our tickets, and go ashore, and settle ourselves in the train;and then we shall have plenty to see as we run home; more curious, tomy mind, than any suspension bridge.

And you promised to show me all the different rocks and soils aswe went home, because it was so dark when we came from Reading.

Very good.

* * * * *

Now we are settled in the train. And what do you want to knowfirst?

More about the new rocks being lower than the old ones, though theylie on the top of them.

Well, look here, at this sketch.

A boy piling up slates? What has that to do with it?

I saw you in Ireland piling slates against a rock just in this way.And I thought to myself—“That is something like Madam How’swork.”

How?

Why, see. The old rock stands for the mountains of the OldWorld, like the Welsh mountains, or the Mendip Hills. The slatesstand for the new rocks, which have been piled up against these, oneover the other. But, you see, each slate is lower than the onebefore it, and slopes more; till the last slate which you are puttingon is the lowest of all, though it overlies all.

I see now. I see now.

Then look at the sketch of the rocks between this and home.It is only a rough sketch, of course: but it will make you understandsomething more about the matter. Now. You see, the lumpmarked A. With twisted lines in it. That stands for theMendip Hills to the west, which are made of old red sandstone, verymuch the same rock (to speak roughly) as the Kerry mountains.

And why are the lines in it twisted?

To show that the strata, the layers in it, are twisted, and set upat quite different angles from the limestone.

But how was that done?

By old earthquakes and changes which happened in old worlds, ageson ages since. Then the edges of the old red sandstone were eatenaway by the sea—and some think by ice too, in some earlier ageof ice; and then the limestone coral reef was laid down on them, “unconformably,”as geologists say—just as you saw the new red sandstone laid downon the edges of the limestone; and so one world is built up on the edgeof another world, out of its scraps and ruins.

Then do you see B. With a notch in it? That means theselimestone hills on the shoulder of the Mendips; and that notch is thegorge of the Avon which we have steamed through.

And what is that black above it?

That is the coal, a few miles off, marked C.

And what is this D, which comes next?

That is what we are on now. New red sandstone, lying unconformablyon the coal. I showed it you in the bed of the river, as we camealong in the cab. We are here in a sort of amphitheatre, or halfa one, with the limestone hills around us, and the new red sandstoneplastered on, as it were, round the bottom of it inside.

But what is this high bit with E against it?

Those are the high hills round Bath, which we shall run through soon.They are newer than the soil here; and they are (for an exception) highertoo; for they are so much harder than the soil here, that the sea hasnot eaten them away, as it has all the lowlands from Bristol right intothe Somersetshire flats.

* * * * *

There. We are off at last, and going to run home to Reading,through one of the loveliest lines (as I think) of old England.And between the intervals of eating fruit, we will geologize on theway home, with this little bit of paper to show us where we are.

What pretty rocks!

Yes. They are a boss of the coal measures, I believe, shovedup with the lias, the lias lying round them. But I warn you Imay not be quite right: because I never looked at a geological map ofthis part of the line, and have learnt what I know, just as I want youto learn simply by looking out of the carriage window.

Look. Here is lias rock in the side of the cutting; layersof hard blue limestone, and then layers of blue mud between them, inwhich, if you could stop to look, you would find fossils in plenty;and along that lias we shall run to Bath, and then all the rocks willchange.

* * * * *

Now, here we are at Bath; and here are the handsome fruit-women,waiting for you to buy.

And oh, what strawberries and cherries!

Yes. All this valley is very rich, and very sheltered too,and very warm; for the soft south-western air sweeps up it from theBristol Channel; so the slopes are covered with fruit-orchards, as youwill see as you get out of the station.

Why, we are above the tops of the houses.

Yes. We have been rising ever since we left Bristol; and youwill soon see why. Now we have laid in as much fruit as is safefor you, and away we go.

Oh, what high hills over the town! And what beautiful stonehouses! Even the cottages are built of stone.

All that stone comes out of those high hills, into which we are goingnow. It is called Bath-stone freestone, or oolite; and it lieson the top of the lias, which we have just left. Here it is markedF.

What steep hills, and cliffs too, and with quarries in them!What can have made them so steep? And what can have made thislittle narrow valley?

Madam How’s rain-spade from above, I suppose, and perhaps thesea gnawing at their feet below. Those freestone hills once stretchedhigh over our heads, and far away, I suppose, to the westward.Now they are all gnawed out into cliffs,—indeed gnawed clean throughin the bottom of the valley, where the famous hot springs break outin which people bathe.

Is that why the place is called Bath?

Of course. But the Old Romans called the place Aquæ Solis—thewaters of the sun; and curious old Roman remains are found here, whichwe have not time to stop and see.

Now look out at the pretty clear limestone stream running to meetus below, and the great limestone hills closing over us above.How do you think we shall get out from among them?

Shall we go over their tops?

No. That would be too steep a climb, for even such a greatengine as this.

Then there is a crack which we can get through?

Look and see.

Why, we are coming to a regular wall of hill, and—

And going right through it in the dark. We are in the Box Tunnel.

* * * * *

There is the light again: and now I suppose you will find your tongue.

How long it seemed before we came out!

Yes, because you were waiting and watching, with nothing to lookat: but the tunnel is only a mile and a quarter long after all, I believe.If you had been looking at fields and hedgerows all the while, you wouldhave thought no time at all had passed.

What curious sandy rocks on each side of the cutting, in lines andlayers.

Those are the freestone still: and full of fossils they are.But do you see that they dip away from us? Remember that.All the rocks are sloping eastward, the way we are going; and each newrock or soil we come to lies on the top of the one before it.Now we shall run down hill for many a mile, down the back of the oolites,past pretty Chippenham, and Wootton-Bassett, towards Swindon spire.Look at the country, child; and thank God for this fair English land,in which your lot is cast.

What beautiful green fields; and such huge elm trees; and orchards;and flowers in the cottage gardens!

Ay, and what crops, too: what wheat and beans, turnips and mangold.All this land is very rich and easily worked; and hereabouts is someof the best farming in England. The Agricultural College at Cirencester,of which you have so often heard, lies thereaway, a few miles to ourleft; and there lads go to learn to farm as no men in the world, saveEnglish and Scotch, know how to farm.

But what rock are we on now?

On rock that is much softer than that on the other side of the oolitehills: much softer, because it is much newer. We have got offthe oolites on to what is called the Oxford clay; and then, I believe,on to the Coral rag, and on that again lies what we are coming to now.Do you see the red sand in that field?

Then that is the lowest layer of a fresh world, so to speak; a worldstill younger than the oolites—the chalk world.

But that is not chalk, or anything like it.

No, that is what is called Greensand.

But it is not green, it is red.

I know: but years ago it got the name from one green vein in it,in which the “Coprolites,” as you learnt to call them atCambridge, are found; and that, and a little layer of blue clay, calledgault, between the upper Greensand and lower Greensand, runs along everywhereat the foot of the chalk hills.

I see the hills now. Are they chalk?

Yes, chalk they are: so we may begin to feel near home now.See how they range away to the south toward Devizes, and Westbury, andWarminster, a goodly land and large. At their feet, everywhere,run the rich pastures on which the Wiltshire cheese is made; and hereand there, as at Westbury, there is good iron-ore in the greensand,which is being smelted now, as it used to be in the Weald of Surreyand Kent ages since. I must tell you about that some other time.

But are there Coprolites here?

I believe there are: I know there are some at Swindon; and I do notsee why they should not be found, here and there, all the way alongthe foot of the downs, from here to Cambridge.

But do these downs go to Cambridge?

Of course they do. We are now in the great valley which runsright across England from south-west to north-east, from Axminster inDevonshire to Hunstanton in Norfolk, with the chalk always on your righthand, and the oolite hills on your left, till it ends by sinking intothe sea, among the fens of Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

But what made that great valley?

I am not learned enough to tell. Only this I think we can say—thatonce on a time these chalk downs on our right reached high over ourheads here, and far to the north; and that Madam How pared them away,whether by icebergs, or by sea-waves, or merely by rain, I cannot tell.

Well, those downs do look very like sea-cliffs.

So they do, very like an old shore-line. Be that as it may,after the chalk was eaten away, Madam How began digging into the soilsbelow the chalk, on which we are now; and because they were mostly softclays, she cut them out very easily, till she came down, or nearly down,to the harder freestone rocks which run along on our left hand, milesaway; and so she scooped out this great vale, which we call here theVale of White Horse; and further on, the Vale of Aylesbury; and thenthe Bedford Level; and then the dear ugly old Fens.

Is this the Vale of White Horse? Oh, I know about it; I haveread The Scouring of the White Horse.

Of course you have; and when you are older you will read a jollierbook still,—Tom Brown’s School Days—and whenwe have passed Swindon, we shall see some of the very places describedin it, close on our right.

* * * * *

There is the White Horse Hill.

The White Horse Hill? But where is the horse? I can seea bit of him: but he does not look like a horse from here, or indeedfrom any other place; he is a very old horse indeed, and a thousandyears of wind and rain have spoilt his anatomy a good deal on the topof that wild down.

And is that really where Alfred fought the Danes?

As certainly, boy, I believe, as that Waterloo is where the Dukefought Napoleon. Yes: you may well stare at it with all your eyes,the noble down. It is one of the most sacred spots on Englishsoil.

Ah, it is gone now. The train runs so fast.

So it does; too fast to let you look long at one thing: but in return,it lets you see so many more things in a given time than the slow oldcoaches and posters did.—Well? what is it?

I wanted to ask you a question, but you won’t listen to me.

Won’t I? I suppose I was dreaming with my eyes open.You see, I have been so often along this line—and through thiscountry, too, long before the line was made—that I cannot passit without its seeming full of memories—perhaps of ghosts.

Of real ghosts?

As real ghosts, I suspect, as any one on earth ever saw; faces andscenes which have printed themselves so deeply on one’s brain,that when one passes the same place, long years after, they start upagain, out of fields and roadsides, as if they were alive once more,and need sound sense to send them back again into their place as thingswhich are past for ever, for good and ill. But what did you wantto know?

Why, I am so tired of looking out of the window. It is allthe same: fields and hedges, hedges and fields; and I want to talk.

Fields and hedges, hedges and fields? Peace and plenty, plentyand peace. However, it may seem dull, now that the grass is cut;but you would not have said so two months ago, when the fields wereall golden-green with buttercups, and the whitethorn hedges like crestedwaves of snow. I should like to take a foreigner down the Valeof Berkshire in the end of May, and ask him what he thought of old England.But what shall we talk about?

I want to know about Coprolites, if they dig them here, as they doat Cambridge.

I don’t think they do. But I suspect they will some day.

But why do people dig them?

Because they are rational men, and want manure for their fields.

But what are Coprolites?

Well, they were called Coprolites at first because some folk fanciedthey were the leavings of fossil animals, such as you may really findin the lias at Lynn in Dorsetshire. But they are not that; andall we can say is, that a long time ago, before the chalk began to bemade, there was a shallow sea in England, the shore of which was socovered with dead animals, that the bone-earth (the phosphate of lime)out of them crusted itself round every bone, and shell, and dead sea-beaston the shore, and got covered up with fresh sand, and buried for agesas a mine of wealth.

But how many millions of dead creatures, there must have been!What killed them?

We do not know. No more do we know how it comes to pass thatthis thin band (often only a few inches thick) of dead creatures shouldstretch all the way from Dorsetshire to Norfolk, and, I believe, upthrough Lincolnshire. And what is stranger still, this same bone-earthbed crops out on the south side of the chalk at Farnham, and stretchesalong the foot of those downs, right into Kent, making the richest hoplands in England, through Surrey, and away to Tunbridge. So thatit seems as if the bed lay under the chalk everywhere, if once we couldget down to it.

But how does it make the hop lands so rich?

Because hops, like tobacco and vines, take more phosphorus out ofthe soil than any other plants which we grow in England; and it is thewashings of this bone-earth bed which make the lower lands in Farnhamso unusually rich, that in some of them—the garden, for instance,under the Bishop’s castle—have grown hops without resting,I believe, for three hundred years.

But who found out all this about the Coprolites?

Ah—I will tell you; and show you how scientific men, whom ignorantpeople sometimes laugh at as dreamers, and mere pickers up of uselessweeds and old stones, may do real service to their country and theircountrymen, as I hope you will some day.

There was a clergyman named Henslow, now with God, honoured by allscientific men, a kind friend and teacher of mine, loved by every littlechild in his parish. His calling was botany: but he knew somethingof geology. And some of these Coprolites were brought him as curiosities,because they had fossils in them. But he (so the tale goes) hadthe wit to see that they were not, like other fossils, carbonate oflime, but phosphate of lime—bone earth. Whereon he toldthe neighbouring farmers that they had a mine of wealth opened to them,if they would but use them for manure. And after a while he waslistened to. Then others began to find them in the Eastern counties;and then another man, as learned and wise as he was good and noble—JohnPaine of Farnham, also now with God—found them on his own estate,and made much use and much money of them: and now tens of thousandsof pounds’ worth of valuable manure are made out of them everyyear, in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, by digging them out of landwhich was till lately only used for common farmers’ crops.

But how do they turn Coprolites into manure? I used to seethem in the railway trucks at Cambridge, and they were all like whatI have at home—hard pebbles.

They grind them first in a mill. Then they mix them with sulphuricacid and water, and that melts them down, and parts them into two things.One is sulphate of lime (gypsum, as it is commonly called), and whichwill not dissolve in water, and is of little use. But the otheris what is called superphosphate of lime, which will dissolve in water;so that the roots of the plants can suck it up: and that is one of therichest of manures.

Oh, I know: you put superphosphate on the grass last year.

Yes. But not that kind; a better one still. The superphosphatefrom the Copiolites is good; but the superphosphate from fresh bonesis better still, and therefore dearer, because it has in it the fibrineof the bones, which is full of nitrogen, like gristle or meat; and allthat has been washed out of the bone-earth bed ages and ages ago.But you must learn some chemistry to understand that.

I should like to be a scientific man, if one can find out such reallyuseful things by science.

Child, there is no saying what you might find out, or of what useyou may be to your fellow-men. A man working at science, howeverdull and dirty his work may seem at times, is like one of those “chiffoniers,”as they call them in Paris—people who spend their lives in gatheringrags and sifting refuse, but who may put their hands at any moment uponsome precious jewel. And not only may you be able to help yourneighbours to find out what will give them health and wealth: but youmay, if you can only get them to listen to you, save them from manya foolish experiment, which ends in losing money just for want of science.I have heard of a man who, for want of science, was going to throw awaygreat sums (I believe he, luckily for him, never could raise the money)in boring for coal in our Bagshot sands at home. The man thoughtthat because there was coal under the heather moors in the North, theremust needs be coal here likewise, when a geologist could have told himthe contrary. There was another man at Hennequin’s Lodge,near the Wellington College, who thought he would make the poor sandsfertile by manuring them with whale oil, of all things in the world.So he not only lost all the cost of his whale oil, but made the landutterly barren, as it is unto this day; and all for want of science.

And I knew a manufacturer, too, who went to bore an Artesian wellfor water, and hired a regular well-borer to do it. But, meanwhilehe was wise enough to ask a geologist of those parts how far he thoughtit was down to the water. The geologist made his calculations,and said:

“You will go through so many feet of Bagshot sand; and so manyfeet of London clay; and so many feet of the Thanet beds between themand the chalk: and then you will win water, at about 412 feet; but not,I think, till then.”

The well-sinker laughed at that, and said, “He had no opinionof geologists, and such-like. He never found any clay in Englandbut what he could get through in 150 feet.”

So he began to bore—150 feet, 200, 300: and then he began tolook rather silly; at last, at 405—only seven feet short of whatthe geologist had foretold—up came the water in a regular spout.But, lo and behold, not expecting to have to bore so deep, he had madehis bore much too small; and the sand out of the Thanet beds “blewup” into the bore, and closed it. The poor manufacturerspent hundreds of pounds more in trying to get the sand out, but invain; and he had at last to make a fresh and much larger well by theside of the old one, bewailing the day when he listened to the well-sinkerand not to the geologist, and so threw away more than a thousand pounds.And there is an answer to what you asked on board the yacht—Whatuse was there in learning little matters of natural history and science,which seemed of no use at all? And now, look out again.Do you see any change in the country?

What?

Why, there to the left.

There are high hills there now, as well as to the right. Whatare they?

Chalk hills too. The chalk is on both sides of us now.These are the Chilterns, all away to Ipsden and Nettlebed, and so onacross Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and into Hertfordshire; andon again to Royston and Cambridge, while below them lies the Vale ofAylesbury; you can just see the beginning of it on their left.A pleasant land are those hills, and wealthy; full of noble houses buriedin the deep beech-woods, which once were a great forest, stretchingin a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wildbulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the oldlegend of Thomas à Becket’s father and the fair Saracen,which you have often heard.

I know. But how are you going to get through the chalk hills?Is there a tunnel as there is at Box and at Micheldever?

No. Something much prettier than a tunnel and something whichtook a great many years longer in making. We shall soon meet witha very remarkable and famous old gentleman, who is a great adept atdigging, and at landscape gardening likewise; and he has dug out a pathfor himself through the chalk, which we shall take the liberty of usingalso. And his name, if you wish to know it, is Father Thames.

I see him. What a great river!

Yes. Here he comes, gleaming and winding down from Oxford,over the lowlands, past Wallingford; but where he is going to it isnot so easy to see.

Ah, here is chalk in the cutting at last. And what a high bridge.And the river far under our feet. Why we are crossing him again!

Yes; he winds more sharply than a railroad can. But is notthis prettier than a tunnel?

Oh, what hanging-woods, and churches; and such great houses, andpretty cottages and gardens—all in this narrow crack of a valley!

Ay. Old Father Thames is a good landscape gardener, as I said.There is Basildon—and Hurley—and Pangbourne, with its roaringlasher. Father Thames has had to work hard for many an age beforehe could cut this trench right through the chalk, and drain the waterout of the flat vale behind us. But I suspect the sea helped himsomewhat, or perhaps a great deal, just where we are now.

The sea?

Yes. The sea was once—and that not so very long ago—rightup here, beyond Reading. This is the uppermost end of the greatThames valley, which must have been an estuary—a tide flat, likethe mouth of the Severn, with the sea eating along at the foot of allthe hills. And if the land sunk only some fifty feet,—whichis a very little indeed, child, in this huge, ever-changing world,—thenthe tide would come up to Reading again, and the greater part of Londonand the county of Middlesex be drowned in salt water.

How dreadful that would be!

Dreadful indeed. God grant that it may never happen.More terrible changes of land and water have happened, and are happeningstill in the world: but none, I think, could happen which would destroyso much civilisation and be such a loss to mankind, as that the Thamesvalley should become again what it was, geologically speaking, onlythe other day, when these gravel banks, over which we are running toReading, were being washed out of the chalk cliffs up above at everytide, and rolled on a beach, as you have seen them rolling still atRamsgate.

Now here we are at Reading. There is the carriage waiting,and away we are off home; and when we get home, and have seen everybodyand everything, we will look over our section once more.

But remember, that when you ran through the chalk hills to Reading,you passed from the bottom of the chalk to the top of it, on to theThames gravels, which lie there on the chalk, and on to the London clay,which lies on the chalk also, with the Thames gravels always over it.So that, you see, the newest layers, the London clay and the gravels,are lower in height than the limestone cliffs at Bristol, and much lowerthan the old mountain ranges of Devonshire and Wales, though in geologicalorder they are far higher; and there are whole worlds of strata, rocksand clays, one on the other, between the Thames gravels and the Devonshirehills.

But how about our moors? They are newer still, you said, thanthe London clay, because they lie upon it: and yet they are much higherthan we are here at Reading.

Very well said: so they are, two or three hundred feet higher.But our part of them was left behind, standing up in banks, while thevalley of the Thames was being cut out by the sea. Once they spreadall over where we stand now, and away behind us beyond Newbury in Berkshire,and away in front of us, all over where London now stands.

How can you tell that?

Because there are little caps—little patches—of themleft on the tops of many hills to the north of London; just remnantswhich the sea, and the Thames, and the rain have not eaten down.Probably they once stretched right out to sea, sloping slowly underthe waves, where the mouth of the Thames is now. You know thesand-cliffs at Bournemouth?

Of course.

Then those are of the same age as the Bagshot sands, and lie on theLondon clay, and slope down off the New Forest into the sea, which eatsthem up, as you know, year by year and day by day. And here wereonce perhaps cliffs just like them, where London Bridge now stands.

* * * * *

There, we are rumbling away home at last, over the dear old heather-moors.How far we have travelled—in our fancy at least—since webegan to talk about all these things, upon the foggy November day, andfirst saw Madam How digging at the sand-banks with her water-spade.How many countries we have talked of; and what wonderful questions wehave got answered, which all grew out of the first question, How werethe heather-moors made? And yet we have not talked about a hundredthpart of the things about which these very heather-moors ought to setus thinking. But so it is, child. Those who wish honestlyto learn the laws of Madam How, which we call Nature, by looking honestlyat what she does, which we call Fact, have only to begin by lookingat the very smallest thing, pin’s head or pebble, at their feet,and it may lead them—whither, they cannot tell. To answerany one question, you find you must answer another; and to answer thatyou must answer a third, and then a fourth; and so on for ever and ever.

For ever and ever?

Of course. If we thought and searched over the Universe—ay,I believe, only over this one little planet called earth—for millionson millions of years, we should not get to the end of our searching.The more we learnt, the more we should find there was left to learn.All things, we should find, are constituted according to a Divine andWonderful Order, which links each thing to every other thing; so thatwe cannot fully comprehend any one thing without comprehending all things:and who can do that, save He who made all things? Therefore ourtrue wisdom is never to fancy that we do comprehend: never to make systemsand theories of the Universe (as they are called) as if we had stoodby and looked on when time and space began to be; but to remember thatthose who say they understand, show, simply by so saying, that theyunderstand nothing at all; that those who say they see, are sure tobe blind; while those who confess that they are blind, are sure someday to see. All we can do is, to keep up the childlike heart,humble and teachable, though we grew as wise as Newton or as Humboldt;and to follow, as good Socrates bids us, Reason whithersoever it leadsus, sure that it will never lead us wrong, unless we have darkened itby hasty and conceited fancies of our own, and so have become like thosefoolish men of old, of whom it was said that the very light within themwas darkness. But if we love and reverence and trust Fact andNature, which are the will, not merely of Madam How, or even of LadyWhy, but of Almighty God Himself, then we shall be really loving, andreverencing, and trusting God; and we shall have our reward by discoveringcontinually fresh wonders and fresh benefits to man; and find it astrue of science, as it is of this life and of the life to come—thateye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heartof man to conceive, what God has prepared for those who love Him.

FOOTNOTES

{1} I couldnot resist the temptation of quoting this splendid generalisation fromDr. Carpenter’s Preliminary Report of the Dredging Operationsof H.M.S. “Lightening,” 1868. He attributes it, generously,to his colleague, Dr. Wyville Thomson. Be it whose it may, itwill mark (as will probably the whole Report when completed) a new erain Bio-Geology.