Madam How and Lady Why [32]
it had been, and really has been, broken off by a hammer. But when 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 floors with a Bath brick, and you will guess at first that this was polished so: 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 which rubbed it must have been somewhat round. And it is covered, too, with very fine and smooth scratches or grooves, all running over the whole in the same line. Now what could have done that?
Of course a man could have done it, if he had taken a large round stone in his hand, and worked the large channellings with that, and then had taken fine sand and gravel upon the points of his fingers, and worked the small scratches with that. But this stone came from a place where man had, perhaps, never stood before,--ay, which, perhaps, had never seen the light of day before since the world was made; 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's which may have made them.
And now I think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you the answer to the riddle. Those marks were made by a hand which is strong 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's its own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as large as this whole room to the finest grain of sand. And that is ICE.
That piece of stone came from the side of the Rosenlaui glacier in Switzerland, and it was polished by the glacier ice. The glacier melted and shrank this last hot summer farther back than it had done for many years, and left bare sheets of rock, which it had been scraping at for ages, with all the marks fresh upon them. And that bit was broken off and brought to me, who never saw a glacier myself, to show me how the marks which the ice makes in Switzerland are exactly the 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 a sign that Madam How's ways do not change nor her laws become broken; that, as that great philosopher Sir Charles Lyell will tell you, when you read his books, Madam How is making and unmaking the surface of the earth now, by exactly the same means as she was making and unmaking ages and ages since; and that what is going on slowly and surely in the Alps in Switzerland was going on once here where we stand.
It is very difficult, I know, for a little boy like you to understand how ice, and much more how soft snow, should have such strength that it can grind this little stone, much more such strength as to grind whole mountains into plains. You have never seen ice and snow do harm. You cannot even recollect the Crimean Winter, as it was called then; and well for you you cannot, considering all the misery it brought at home and abroad. You cannot, I say, recollect the Crimean Winter, when the Thames was frozen over above the bridges, and the ice piled in little bergs ten to fifteen feet high, which lay, some of 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 break up with the tide, and saw the great slabs and blocks leaping and piling upon each other's backs, and felt the bridge tremble with their shocks, and listened to their horrible grind and roar, till one got some little picture in one's mind of what must be the breaking up of an ice-floe in the Arctic regions, and what must be the danger of a ship nipped in the ice and lifted up on high, like those in the pictures of
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 floors with a Bath brick, and you will guess at first that this was polished so: 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 which rubbed it must have been somewhat round. And it is covered, too, with very fine and smooth scratches or grooves, all running over the whole in the same line. Now what could have done that?
Of course a man could have done it, if he had taken a large round stone in his hand, and worked the large channellings with that, and then had taken fine sand and gravel upon the points of his fingers, and worked the small scratches with that. But this stone came from a place where man had, perhaps, never stood before,--ay, which, perhaps, had never seen the light of day before since the world was made; 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's which may have made them.
And now I think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you the answer to the riddle. Those marks were made by a hand which is strong 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's its own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as large as this whole room to the finest grain of sand. And that is ICE.
That piece of stone came from the side of the Rosenlaui glacier in Switzerland, and it was polished by the glacier ice. The glacier melted and shrank this last hot summer farther back than it had done for many years, and left bare sheets of rock, which it had been scraping at for ages, with all the marks fresh upon them. And that bit was broken off and brought to me, who never saw a glacier myself, to show me how the marks which the ice makes in Switzerland are exactly the 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 a sign that Madam How's ways do not change nor her laws become broken; that, as that great philosopher Sir Charles Lyell will tell you, when you read his books, Madam How is making and unmaking the surface of the earth now, by exactly the same means as she was making and unmaking ages and ages since; and that what is going on slowly and surely in the Alps in Switzerland was going on once here where we stand.
It is very difficult, I know, for a little boy like you to understand how ice, and much more how soft snow, should have such strength that it can grind this little stone, much more such strength as to grind whole mountains into plains. You have never seen ice and snow do harm. You cannot even recollect the Crimean Winter, as it was called then; and well for you you cannot, considering all the misery it brought at home and abroad. You cannot, I say, recollect the Crimean Winter, when the Thames was frozen over above the bridges, and the ice piled in little bergs ten to fifteen feet high, which lay, some of 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 break up with the tide, and saw the great slabs and blocks leaping and piling upon each other's backs, and felt the bridge tremble with their shocks, and listened to their horrible grind and roar, till one got some little picture in one's mind of what must be the breaking up of an ice-floe in the Arctic regions, and what must be the danger of a ship nipped in the ice and lifted up on high, like those in the pictures of