154 THE EARTH MADE READY FOR MAN 



as level as possible. So they cut down the rising 

 ground and fill up the hollow places and then the 

 houses are built to stand in long even rows. 



It is so when people make a city. We know, for 

 example, something about what Boston looked like 

 long ago before it became a city. When the Puri- 

 tans came, there were three high hills so prominent 

 that the first settlers called the place Tri-mountain, 

 meaning ''Three Hills." 



Where are those three hills now? Two of them 

 have been cut down so low that you could scarcely 

 guess that they had ever been there. Beacon Hill, 

 which is left, is very much lower than it was, and 

 the Common, which was a valley sloping quickly 

 down to the water's edge, has been filled in until 

 the whole slope is very much less steep than it was. 

 This is what men do to their cities because it is 

 easier to live and work where the ground is fairly 

 level. 



But how about the world itself? Did you think 

 that the open country, the fields, the hills and the 

 brooks, have always looked as they do now? No, 

 indeed! There was not always a meadow where 

 the brook now winds its way, nor has the water in 

 the brook always meandered as it does to-day. The 

 broad, open fields have not always looked as they 

 do now, nor has the hillside always been gently 

 sloping. For nature herself has been doing to the 

 whole surface of the earth, ever since the world 

 began, just what men have been trying to do to 

 those places where they build their cities. 



Nature, — that means everything in the world 



