20 



or a cup-like basin containing a handful of earth, a sapling tree ; and 

 there, an island not much larger, covered with trees to the water's edge, 

 and there, larger islands, or the main land, with high rising hills 

 clothed with wood and forests beyond. Again and again I felt that 

 day as if I were alone with God, or rather with His work, as His 

 work is described by Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs: "When there 

 were no depths, I was brought forth ; when there were no fountains 

 abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the 

 hills was I brought forth : while as yet He had not made the earth, 

 nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When 

 He prepared the heavens : when He set a compass upon the face of 

 the depth : when He established the clouds above : when He 

 strengthened the fountains of the deep : when He gave to the sea 

 His decree, that the waters would not pass His commandment : when 

 He appointed the foundations of the earth." 



The effect was heightened by the general absence of animal life, 

 excepting at the towns and villages. Once or twice a cow was seen, 

 once or twice a bird on the wing, and once a realization of Kingsley's 

 picture of the sea-gull on the All-alone stone far out at sea ! This was 

 as we left the islands shortly after noon. There were four gulls 

 struggling to maintain their footing on a little projecting rock far out 

 at sea, washed over by a wave produced by our passing vessel. And 

 here and there a solitary house, neat, painted, and clean, might be seen, 

 or an island where road there was none but the highway of the sea, as 

 if man were only beginning to appear upon the earth. 



From Christiania I took a trip towards Drammen, and saw what 

 Norway is under cultivation ; and my journey towards Aarnaes and 

 Charlottenburg gave me, in the first part of that journey, an opportunity 

 of seeing under cloud and rain, Norway in a condition similar to that of 

 our moorland districts in Britain. As if the former trip had shown what 

 the earth was when the earth was young inhabited by man and 

 cultivated, but young this seemed to show what appearance the earth 

 puts on in old age; and in journeying from Aarnaes towards Charlotten- 

 burg I found yet another aspect presented. 



There are extensive districts in the vicinity of Glasgow, of New- 

 castle, and of Durham, where it appears to be coal, coal, coal, and 

 iron and coal, but chiefly coal, which constitutes the one article of 

 transport there and product of the locality. 



In America, again, in travelling through the so-called oil district 

 lying between Pittsburg and the eastern shores of Lake Ontario, it is 

 oil, oil, oil, oil everywhere, what seem interminable trains of 

 waggons, but oil cisterns all of them, and pipes like large water-pipes 

 or drain pipes all conveying oil. 



