252 THE SWAN AND HER CREW. 



the waggonette, and they started. The rain had ceased, and a 

 cold, white sun shone out of a white space in the leaden sky. 



The town of Cromer is the easternmost part of England, and 

 it is built on the summit of a gravel-hill, which the sidelong 

 sweeping tides eat away little by little and year by year. It is 

 said that the church of old Cromer lies buried under the 

 sea half a mile from the present shore. Immediately in front 

 of the village the cliff is plated and faced with flints and 

 protected by breakwaters, but on either side the soft earth is 

 loosened by the frosts and rains, and undermined by the tidal 

 currents, which, running nearly north and south, "sweep the 

 debris away instead of piling it at the foot of the cliff. 



Putting the horses up at the principal inn, they walked to the 

 cliff below the lighthouse, where a portion of the high cliff had 

 slid into the sea. In one place a recent storm had swept the 

 fallen mass of gravel away and exposed at the bottom a portion 

 of the " forest bed." Here three or four gentlemen,' presumably 

 geologists, were freely engaged in poking aud digging. One 

 man was tugging hard at a huge bone which projected out of 

 the cliff ; another was carefully unveiling the stump of a fossil 

 tree. Here and there were the stumps of trees oaks and firs, 

 and others, with their spreading roots intact, just as ages ago 

 they had stood and flourished ; and between these ancient 

 stumps were the bones and the teeth of elephant, hippopo- 

 tamus, and rhinoceros, deer of ten different sorts, bears, tigers, 

 and many another animal, the like, or the prototype of which, 

 are now found in tropical regions alone. The boys were very 

 much struck with the sight of these remains of the animals 

 which lived before the Flood, and as they wandered about, 

 finding here a tooth and there a bone, and then the stem of a 

 strange tree, they amused themselves by reconstructing in 

 imagination the luxuriant woods teeming with savage monsters 

 which once stood on a level with the shore, and speculating upon 

 the causes which led to the piling up of the gravel strata which 

 now cover them to such a depth. 



"Are these animal deposits peculiar to Cromer, Mr. Mere- 

 dith? "asked Dick. 



" No. You can scarcely dig anywhere in Norfolk in similar 

 deposits without coming upon these remains ; this is the case 

 in Holland and Belgium also, so that there is positive evidence 

 that the German Ocean is of comparatively recent origin, the 



