THE WASTE. 3 



might presently be regaled with a sound as of a 

 heavy-laden cart dragging over a newly-gravelled 

 road, and after turning up a variety of conglome- 

 rates, as compacted as the bed of an old Roman 

 causeway, and as many-coloured as Harlequin's coat, 

 the stress of the pull would suddenly be eased, and 

 the plough be heard swimming whisperingly through 

 a bed of wet sand ; and just as the filler-horse was 

 congratulating himself that it was all plain sailing 

 now, bang goes a trace or a spreader, and the plough 

 comes to a standstill, just revealing, at the share- 

 point, the bruised side of a quartz pebble as big as 

 a foot-ball grinning at you from its tight nook in the 

 bed of the furrow. 



Have I described enough ? or shall I add, to this 

 subsoil sketch, a faint and feeble idea of the surface, 

 some time about the month of February (surnamed 

 * fill-dyke ' not without reason) ; and endeavour to 

 paint the hopeless, currentless, resourceless, and 

 pitiable condition of water, whose unhappy fate has 

 fallen, or melted, upon fields as flat as a billiard- 

 table, and without even a * pocket ' to run into for 

 escape or concealment ? There it would stand, day 

 after day, and week after week, and month after 

 month, shining along the serpentine furrows, as if it 



B 2 



