CHAPTER XI 

 1857-1858 



Throughout this period his health was greatly tried 

 by the strain of his work and life in town. Headache! 

 headache! is his repeated note in the early part of 1857, 

 and in 1858 we find such entries as: — "Feb. 11. — Used 

 np. Hypochondrical and bedevilled." " Ditto 12." " 13. 

 ^Not good for much." " 21. — Toothache, incapable all 

 day." And again: — "March 30. — Voiceless." "31. — 

 Missed lecture." And, " April i. — Unable to go out." He 

 would come in thoroughly used up after lecturing twice on 

 the same day, as frequently happened, and lie wearily on 

 one sofa ; while his wife, whose health was wretched, matched 

 him on the other. Yet he would go down to a lecture feel- 

 ing utterly unable to deliver it, and, once started, would 

 carry it through successfully — at what cost of nervous en- 

 ergy was known only to those two at home. 



But there was another branch of work, that for the 

 Geological Survey, which occasionally took him out of 

 London, and the open-air occupation and tramping from 

 place to place did him no little good. Thus, through the 

 greater part of September and October 1856 he ranged the 

 coasts of the Bristol Channel from Weston to Clovelly, and 

 from Tenby to Swansea, preparing a " Report on the Recent 

 Changes of Level in the Bristol Channel." " You can't 

 think," he writes from Braunton on October 3, " how well 

 I am, so long as I walk eight or ten miles a day and don't 

 work too much, but I find fifteen or sixteen miles my limit 

 for comfort." 



For many years after this his favourite mode of recruit- 

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