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These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs.
In this smother of water we stood knee-deep, receiving its buffets upon our waists and the spray upon our faces, and watched for the fish that were carried upon its crests. With spears couched, we waited the flying chance to arrest them upon the points, a hazardous game, for often they were powerful creatures, and were hurled against us with threatening impact.
Into the scant half mile between shore and shore was forced the escaping flood of the mighty Superior, and such was the compression that, midway, the torrent heaped itself up into a low ridge of broken plunging crests. Just over the ridge he could see the opposite shore line. It did not occur to him, as it would to many, how puny were the greatest efforts of man beside this prodigious mass.
Still in profound contemplation he surveyed the rapids' gigantic sweep, the proud and tossing billows shot through with sunlight and vibrant with speed. He made out those smooth and glistening emerald cellars into which the flashing river pitched to rise again in tossing crests.
The travellers disputed for some time on the origin of these strange radii, but could hardly be said to have arrived at any conclusion more satisfactory than that already reached by some terrestrial observers. To M'Nicholl's question: "Why can't these streaks be simply prolonged mountain crests reflecting the sun's rays more vividly by their superior altitude and comparative smoothness?"
But when her deck is all soot and nastiness, when she has quartered her vermin on her passengers, and goes gurgling along, as if she had an Empyema under her pleura costalis; when she pitches into the waves, as if to punish them, and tramples on their crests, as if to crush them under her keel, why all the brass you want is "ÆS TRIPLEX;" and there is no varnish in the world that will enable you to put a good face on it.
No one saw the result, but the sailors shouted the tidings, and each individual caught up the words and bore them exultantly on the hurricane drove the sea into the mouth of the Meuse, forcing back the waves of the river by its fierce assault, driving them over its banks through the gaps opened in the dykes, and the gates of the sluices, and bearing forward on their towering crests the vessels bringing deliverance.
The waters cover about three-fourths of the face of the earth, and if we deduct the frozen zones, the peaks and crests of lofty mountains and their craggy slopes, the Sahara and other great African and Asiatic deserts, and all such other portions of the solid surface as are permanently unfit for the growth of wood, we shall find that probably not one-tenth of the total superficies of our planet was ever, at any one time in the present geological period, covered with forests.
And, indeed, when the lady obtained the first commanding view of the Castle, with its stately towers rising from within a long, sweeping line of outward walls, ornamented with battlements and turrets and platforms at every point of defence, with many a banner streaming from its walls, and such a bustle of gay crests and waving plumes disposed on the terraces and battlements, and all the gay and gorgeous scene, her heart, unaccustomed to such splendour, sank as if it died within her, and for a moment she asked herself what she had offered up to Leicester to deserve to become the partner of this princely splendour.
Should any man question that this is accomplished by superhuman force, let him look up at the tops of certain mountains and say, if he knows how, what man hath carried such immense boulders up to their crests.
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