266 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



their pots in line on the bush path from the neighbouring 

 village whither they carry back with them the wayfarers' 

 tales ; perhaps there is also a halting caravan, the drivers 

 watering their tired and thirsty beasts, which are for the time 

 freed of their loads. Truth is said to lie at the bottom of 

 a well, and surely beauty is always found at its surface. 

 There is a happy mating of meaning in the very word. 

 Here Earth bares her breasts to all her children, and trees 

 and beasts and men alike drink of her strength. In our 

 childhood's stories what significance lay in the name of a 

 well ! In the sweetest fairy tales how often has imagina- 

 tion drunk its fill at the Magic Well ! And in the Book 

 of Life itself, history has paused at the well-side to tell 

 some of her most beautiful stories. It was at a desert well 

 that Hagar brought life to her little boy, and at a well Jacob 

 saw Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept for very tender- 

 ness of love. Out of a well came a ruler over Egypt, and a 

 woman once stood beside one in Samaria and listened to 

 the wisdom of Heaven. 



Even in green England the village pump crowns the 

 market square, and here are always to be seen the 

 prettiest groups ; the children playing on the steps, the 

 wayfarer drinking, and the girls balancing their buckets as 

 they descend with moments of poise so beautiful, that it 

 would almost make Niobe weep because they are not turned, 

 to stone. Yet, here in England more than half the romance 

 that once lingered round a well, has been stolen by the too 

 frequent roadside inn. So, imagine what significance attaches 

 to it, in a country of fierce heat where wind-storms drive 

 the sand across the miles of scorched plain, and travellers 



