GLACIAL MAN. — SKERTCHLY. 133 



iiighest point south of Bab-el-Mandeb. It was a glorious 

 confirmation of Lyell's views, Avhich led to Darwin's theory 

 and confirmed its general truth. My letters to Darwin on this 

 quite new evidence gratified liim and led to a long friendship. 

 Retuniing to Cairo Sir Sanniel Baker asked me to take 

 a branch of his Soudan expedition (via Sowakim) to Berber 

 across the desert, as I was acquainted with some of the way 

 -and the natives knew me. This was a thing after my own heart, 

 but family matters called me home, and my friend Higgin- 

 bottom, an engineer, gladly accepted the post and, alas, died 

 en route. I left Egypt with profound regret, but carried with 

 me the memory of two grand sections, the Great Rift Valle\-. 

 and the Suez Canal, then being dug, and along much of whose 

 bed I have walked. 



Returning to England I at once joined the Geological 

 Survey, and to Ramsay's joy selected the Fenland for my 

 field of work, as it was the most extensive area of newer rocks 

 in the Idngdom, and being supposed to be a compost of gravel, 

 bog, £ind ague, no one had volunteered to survey it, nor had 

 our good chief the temerity to order any of his men into its 

 (reputed) wastes. Here I spent four happy years at mv 

 favourite study of recent geology, gaining a thorough acquaint- 

 ance with what might be called the neolithic series. In the 

 fens I met my first master in working flint. It was that 

 unmitigated scamp Flint Jack, an expert Avhose forgeries are 

 in every museum and well-nigh every private collcGtion from 

 John o'Groats to Land's End. I last saw him in Piccadilly 

 garbed in a rusty brown coat as appropriately as a hedgehog 

 in lace. He told me with tears how in liis old age he had 

 repented him of the evil that he had done, and was going to 

 an honoured grave as an honest man in constant employment — 

 making Egyptian antiquities for the trade. He was an irre- 

 claimable rascal, but oh ! he was an expert in flint. 



By this time surely I was peculiarly fitted for the task 

 that all unknown lay before me. The two Tylors and Lyell 

 had trained and moulded my strange taste for Post-Tertiary 

 geology ; travel had widened my outlook ; four years steady 

 Avork in the fens had given me experience, and I was now 

 ready for what I may perhaps not immodestly term my great 

 work. Certainly no hving being had my special training, 

 and the difficulty of interpreting the evidence is shown by 

 the fact that it has taken forty years for geologists and 



