An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 309 



instead of the fifteenth or the tenth. This simple patri- 

 archal existence will not, however, endure very much 

 longer ; the light of modernism is breaking in upon it 

 already here and there, through chinks in its ancient 

 walls. It is difficult to find a place which is forty miles 

 from a railway, and the railway brings its influences wiU 

 it. A youth leaves the parental cottage for some distant 

 place, and when he comes back gives his parents some 

 rude notions of geography. The region through which 

 flows ' the Unknown River ' is so near to the Alps that 

 their white crests may be seen occasionally from the 

 summits of these hills ; yet the peasants are not aware 

 that the Alps exist. Once, however, a young man went 

 to work at Grenoble, and he came back and told the 

 people in his village that there were high mountains on 

 which the snow never melted, even in the heats of sum- 

 mer. This is the way a little knowledge comes to them ; 

 it comes personally, by oral communication, not by 

 books. A soldier comes back from Mexico, and tells 

 them that Mexico is beyond the sea. I was greatly 

 astonished at the little hamlet, here faithfully repre- 

 sented, to hear a man of saddened aspect speak of 

 Boston. 'What Boston?.' I asked, wondering how he 

 should know of any Boston unless there were such a 

 place quite near to him in France. * It is of Boston 

 in the United States of America, that I am speaking, 

 sir/ answered the man of the sad countenance, aston- 

 ishing me more and more, for what French peasant 

 knows that the United States exist, or the Atlantic 

 Ocean either ? So then he told me his tale, and as it 



