370 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



Erratically winding as our summer river was, its 

 orderly habits had none the less impressed upon it 

 the appearance of a civilised being. Even though 

 its banks were not straight, they were parallel. The 

 steady rains of a month deepened and deepened its 

 flow, added millions of tons to its daily burden, only 

 quickening its march along the groove that centuries 

 of well-doing had worn for it. But, at the bursting 

 of its bounds, it flings all order to the winds, and 

 indulges in all the fantasy of outline that characterises 

 the prehistoric. In these uncharted wastes of water 

 we expect to see the plesiosaurus craning its unsettled 

 neck and flapping the paddles of early biological 

 experiment. We are astonished at the equanimity 

 of a horse grazing at the little bit of grass that is left 

 him in a field that has gone under water all round 

 him. The water, which is still rising, must be shining 

 in his eyes from among the grass-blades, and wetting 

 his lips as he nibbles them off, but he grazes on at 

 his Sargasso sea as though it were the veriest dry 

 land ever seen. 



The sheep in a neighbouring field are better off, 

 though the level stands scarcely higher. The grass 

 waves as rankly dry as ever it did, and the hypo- 

 critical gravel on which it grows seems to cry that 

 it knows nothing about any such thing as floods. It 

 will run dry as quickly as it runs wet, and take the 

 same part in the flooding of lower clays that other 

 gravel up the river has done. If man is not demented 

 by the cataclysm, why should the sheep be that are 

 in his care ? They bleat for their fodder, and it comes 

 to them, not in a cart, but in a weird machine made 

 by wrapping a wagon-box in a rick-cloth, so as to 



