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LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY
AND OTHER ESSAYS
[Illustration: Logo]
LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY
AND OTHER ESSAYS
By
SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE
D.C.L., F.R.S.
London
Macmillan and Co., Limited
New York: The Macmillan Company
1905
Glasgow: Printed at the University Press
by Robert Maclehose and Co. Ltd.
PREFACE
The present volume consists of a collection of Essays and Addresses
which have appeared at intervals since the publication of my
_Geological Essays at Home and Abroad_. Half of them deal with
Scenery in its geological relations and in its influence on human
progress--a subject which for many years has engrossed much of my
thought. Others discuss the problem of the Age of the Earth, while two
are biographical, and one deals with the place of Science in modern
education.
I have to thank the editors of the _Fortnightly_, _Contemporary_,
and _International Quarterly_ Reviews for their courtesy in readily
according me permission to reprint the essays which have appeared in
these publications.
_15th January, 1905._
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY, 1
II
LANDSCAPE AND THE IMAGINATION, 28
III
LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE, 76
IV
THE ORIGIN OF THE SCENERY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS, 130
V
THE CENTENARY OF HUTTON'S 'THEORY OF THE EARTH,' 158
VI
GEOLOGICAL TIME, 198
VII
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN, 234
VIII
HUGH MILLER: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE, 257
IX
SCIENCE IN EDUCATION, 282
X
THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA, 308
I
Landscape in History[1]
Among the obscure problems in the history of mankind a foremost
place must be given to the question of the origin and distribution
of the various races of men. Undoubtedly two main factors in the
differentiation of these races have been climate and geography. These
same physical conditions still perpetuate, if they did not actually
originate, the racial distinctions. Even where we may hesitate to adopt
a theory as to the initial start of any one of the great branches of
mankind, we can hardly fail to recognise that the several nations or
tribes comprised within one of these branches are marked off from
each other by more or less definite peculiarities, of which some
at least may probably be referred to the influence of environment.
The landscapes of a country, the form, height, and trend of its
mountain-ranges, the position and extent of its plains and valleys,
the size and direction of its rivers, the varying nature of its soils
and climate, the presence or absence of useful minerals, nearness to
or distance from the sea, the shape of the coast-line whether rocky or
precipitous, or indented with creeks and harbours--all these and other
aspects of the scenery of the land have contributed their share to the
moulding of national history and character. For illustrations of this
external influence we need go no further than the British Isles, and
contrast the aspect and history of central England with those of the
Scottish Highlands.[2]
Some of these dominant elements in our surroundings remain permanently
with little or no appreciable change. The mountains and the plains
are now essentially what they were in the infancy of man, though
their mantle of vegetation may have been greatly altered. In other
cases, geological processes are continually at work, effecting changes
which, though individually of small account, become important in the
course of centuries by constant repetition. Thus on some parts of our
coast-line there has been a great destruction of land, in others the
land has gained on the sea. But man himself has become a geological
agent, and has in that capacity greatly modified the surface of many
of the countries which he has inhabited. The progress of agriculture
has led to the draining of mosses, the felling of forests and the
transformation of heaths and wastes into arable land. The increase of
sheep and cattle has been the means of clothing the hills with pasture,
in place of their former rough herbage and copsewood. And man himself
becomes involved in the consequences of the changes which he sets in
motion. This subject may obviously be discussed independently either
from the scientific or from the historical side. Any investigation
which deals with the changes that have taken place in the outward
aspect of a country since man first set foot upon its surface, and
with the sources of information regarding them, must obviously appeal
strongly to the lover of science, inasmuch as it brings before him the
evidence for various kinds of geological process, the actual operation
and rate of progress of which he may thereby be enabled to watch and
determine. It may thus be made to throw light upon one of the vexed
problems of science--the value of time in geological inquiry. But it is
of the relations of such an investigation to human history that I would
first more particularly speak. Such inquiries seem to me eminently
calculated to engage the sympathies and even the active co-operation of
literary students. There can be no doubt that the advancement of our
knowledge of the mutations of the land since the beginning of history
must depend largely upon help from the study of historical documents.
No long series of years has passed since the truth was recognised that
man is in large measure the creature of his environment; that his
material progress and mental development have been guided and modified
by the natural conditions in which he has been placed. The full extent
and application of this truth, however, are perhaps not even yet
comprehended. If the surrounding and limiting conditions have been
such potent factors in human development, we may well believe that any
serious change or modification in them cannot but have reacted upon
man. If nature alters her aspect to him, either spontaneously on her
own part or as the result of human interference with her ways, he too
will in some measure be affected thereby, and his relations to her will
be influenced. What then have been the kind and amount of the mutations
in the face of nature since man first appeared? Although the answer to
this question will here be sought in the evidence furnished by Great
Britain alone, it will be understood that the principles laid down
for the conduct of the inquiry with regard to this country must be of
general application to other regions of the globe.
Let me remark at the outset that considerable progress has been made
in the investigation of this question, both from its scientific and
its historical side. Lyell, and Prestwich, with the geologists who
have followed them, laid a solid foundation of knowledge regarding the
later mutations in the physical geography of Britain. Guest, Pearson,
Freeman, Green, and others, have shown in how many ways the historical
development of the people has been influenced by the topographical
features of the country. Yet in spite of all that has been done, I
do not hesitate to say that we are still only a little way beyond
the threshold of this wide subject. No one has realised more vividly
at once the importance of the inquiry and the imperfection of the
available data than the late Mr. J. R. Green. He would fain have been
able to reconstruct the successive phases through which our landscapes
have passed since the dawn of history; and he did more in this respect
with his materials than perhaps any other living man could have done.
But the detailed evidence was wanting to him; and it has still in
large measure to be gathered before the ideal of the historian can
be reached. Now, I am desirous of insisting upon the fact that this
detailed evidence does not lie shut up from the reach of all but the
practised man of science and the mature historian. Much of it, whether
in the literary or scientific domain, may be gleaned by any young
undergraduate who will bring to the task quickness of observation and
accuracy of judgment. As the harvest is abundant but the labourers few,
I would fain enlist the sympathy and co-operation of any who may be
able and willing to help.
There are four obvious sources of information regarding former
conditions of the land. First comes the testimony of historical
documents, then that of place-names, next that of tradition, and
lastly, that of geological evidence.
(1) One might suppose that for what has taken place during the
historical period, the documentary records would be all sufficient.
But as it is only recently that the subject has been determined to be
worthy of the historian's serious attention, we cannot look for much
light to be thrown upon it in the pages of the ordinary histories.
Still less need we expect to meet with any full measure of information
regarding it in the original documents from which such histories have
been mostly compiled. In truth, the facts of which we are in search
must be gleaned from brief allusions and implications rather than from
actual descriptions. It was no part of the duty of an old chronicler
purposely to record any natural fact, short of some terrific earthquake
or storm that destroyed human life and damaged human property. But in
describing historical events he could hardly avoid reference to woods,
lakes, marshes, and other natural features which served as boundaries
to the theatre of these events. By comparing, therefore, his local
topography with the present aspect of the same localities, we may
glean some interesting particulars as to changes of landscape in the
course of centuries. Such a comparison, however, to be effective and
trustworthy, involves two special qualifications. The inquirer must be
master of the language and style of the author he is studying, and he
must be completely familiar with the present condition of the ground to
which allusion is made. The want of this combination of knowledge has
led to some curious blunders on the part of able scholars.
It is evident, then, that an ample domain of research is here opened
out to the student. In a general sense, every kind of historical
document may be available for the purposes of the inquiry. England
fortunately possesses in Domesday Book the results of a minute
examination of the greater part of the country in the latter half
of the eleventh century. For other portions of our islands much
information may be gleaned in quarters that might be thought the most
unlikely. Besides the narratives of the old Chronicles, which might
be expected to contain at least occasional incidental reference to
physical features, Charters and other legal documents, in dealing with
the holding and transference of land, not infrequently throw light on
the former aspect of the ground with which they are connected. The
Cartularies of some of our ancient abbeys, besides affording glimpses
into the inner life of these establishments, which do not seem to have
been always abodes of peace and studious retirement, give indications
of the former areas of forest, woods and mosses, or the positions
of lakes now reduced in size or effaced. Old Acts of Parliament,
looked at from our present point of view, are by no means always
repulsive reading. They have one great advantage over their modern
representatives in that they are often commendably brief; and in their
occasional quaint local colouring, they afford material for interesting
comparison with existing topography.
Among historical documents I include poems of all kinds and ages. Our
earliest English literature is poetical; and from the days of Caedmon
down to our own time, the typical characters of landscape have found
reflection in our national poetry. It is not merely from what are
called descriptive poems that information of the kind required is to
be gathered. The wild border-ballad, full of the rough warfare of the
time, has a background of bare moorland, treacherous moss-hags, and
desolate hills, which can be compared with the aspect of the same
region to-day. The gentler lyrics of a later time take their local
colouring from the glades and dells, the burns and pastures where
their scenes are laid. In the stately cadence of the _Faery Queen_,
among the visionary splendours of another world, the rivers of England
and Ireland are pictured, each with its characters touched off as
they appeared in the days of Elizabeth. And in Drayton's quaint, but
somewhat tiresome _Polyolbion_, abundant material is supplied for a
comparison between the topography of England at the beginning of the
seventeenth century and that of our own time.[3]
But these comparisons have still to be worked out. As an example of
the kind of use that may be made of them, and of the light which our
poetry may cast, not only upon physical changes, but upon historical
facts, I would refer to the passages in Barbour's poem of _The Bruce_
descriptive of the Battle of Bannockburn.[4] I do not contend for the
complete historical veracity of the Archdeacon of Aberdeen, though I
think he hardly deserves the sweeping and contemptuous condemnation
meted out to him by J. R. Green. As he was born only some two years
after the battle, as he had travelled a good deal, and as the field of
Bannockburn lay across the land-route from the north to the south of
Scotland, we may believe him to have made himself personally acquainted
with the ground. At least, he could easily obtain information from
many who had been themselves actors in the fight. He had no object
to gain by drawing on his imagination for the local topography, more
especially as his little bits of local description were not in any way
required for the glorification of his hero. I think, therefore, that
when Barbour describes a piece of ground, we may take his description
as a fairly accurate representation of the topography, at least in his
own day; and the scene could hardly have changed much in the generation
that had passed since the time of Bruce. Now, many persons who have
visited the site of the Battle of Bannockburn have felt some difficulty
in understanding why the English army did not easily outflank the left
wing of the Scots. At present, a wide fertile plain stretches for
miles north and south on the east side of the low plateau on which
Bruce's forces were drawn up.[5] A small body of the English cavalry
did, indeed, make its way across this plain until overtaken and cut to
pieces by Randolph. But why was this force so easily dispersed, and why
was no more formidable and persistent effort made to turn that left
flank? It is very clear that, had the topography been then what it is
now, the Battle of Bannockburn must have had a far other ending.
The true explanation of the difficulty seems to me to be supplied by
some almost casual references in Barbour's account of the operations.
He makes Bruce, in addressing his followers, allude to the advantage
they would gain should the enemy attempt to pass by the morass beneath
them. The poet further narrates how the Carse, that is, the low flat
land on the left, was dotted with pools of water: how the English, in
order to effect a passage, broke down houses, and tried to bridge over
these pools with doors, windows, and thatch from the cottage roofs;
and how, with the assistance of their compatriots in Stirling Castle,
they were so far successful that Clifford's troop of horse, and,
possibly, some more of the English army, got safely over to the hard
ground beyond. We thus learn that Bruce's famous device of the 'pots'
was only an extension of the kind of defence that nature had already
provided for him. The ground on his left, now so dry and so richly
cultivated, was then covered with impassable bogs and sheets of water;
and the huge army of Edward was consequently compelled to crowd its
attack into the narrow space between these bogs and the higher grounds
on Bruce's right.
(2) Another wide field of inquiry for information touching changes in
the aspect of the country is supplied by the etymology of place-names.
These names, at least those of them that date from old times, possess a
peculiar value and interest as abiding records of the people who gave
them, and also, in many cases, of the circumstances in which they were
given. We are at present concerned only with those that embody some
physical fact in the topography. Many of these are as appropriate now
as they were at first; for the features to which they were applied have
remained unaltered. Ben Dearg shows the same red slopes that struck
the earliest Celtic tribes who looked up to it from the bays and glens
of Skye. The big stones on the summit of Penmaenmawr still stand as
memorials of the British people who erected them and gave their name to
the hill.
But in innumerable instances the appositeness of the designation
has been lost. The name has, in fact, been more permanent than the
feature to which it is applied. The one has survived in daily speech
from generation to generation: the other has wholly passed away. By
comparing the descriptive epithet in the name with the present aspect
of the locality, some indication, or even, perhaps, some measure of
the nature and amount of the changes in the topography, may still be
recovered.
Now in researches of this kind the liability to blunder is so great,
and many able writers have blundered so egregiously, that the inquiry
ought not to be entered upon without due preparation, and should not
be continued without constant exercise of the most scrupulous caution.
The great danger of being betrayed into error by the plausibilities of
phonetic etymology should never for a moment be lost sight of. Where
possible, the earliest form of the name should be recovered, for in the
course of time local names are apt to be so corrupted as to lose all
obvious trace of their original orthography.
The Celtic place-names[6] are as a whole singularly descriptive. The
Celtic tribes, indeed, have manifested, in that respect, a keener
appreciation of landscape and a more poetical eye for nature than their
Saxon successors. Who that has ever stood beneath the sombre shadow of
the cloud that so often rests on the shoulder of the Grampians will
fail to recognise the peculiar fitness of the Gaelic name for the
highest summit of the chain--Ben-na-muig-dubh, 'the mountain of dark
gloom'? Or who has ever watched the Atlantic billows bursting into
white foam against the cliffs of Ardnamurchan and did not acknowledge
that only a poetic race could have named the place 'the headland of
the great ocean.' The colours of mountain and river have been seized
upon by these people as descriptive characters that have suggested
local names. Swiftness and sluggishness of flow have furnished
discriminating epithets for streams. Moors, forests, woodlands, copses,
groups of trees, solitary bushes, lakes, mosses, cliffs, gullies, even
single boulders, have received names which record features in the
landscape that struck the imagination of the old Celt, and which are
still in use, even when the features that suggested them have long
vanished out of sight. From this source glimpses may be had of the
character of the vegetation and of the wild animals in prehistoric
times. Thus we learn that the desolate, treeless tract of Ross-shire
known as the Dirriemore (great wood) must once have been clothed with
forest. How numerous wild boars were in the country is shown by the
frequent occurrence of the name of the animal (Torc, turk) in local
topography. The former haunts of the wolf are indicated by its Gaelic
appellation (madah, maddie) in Highland place-names. Many descriptive
names which have never found a place on any map are well known to the
Welsh and Gaelic-speaking inhabitants, who in the more mountainous and
trackless regions have often a wonderful acquaintance with the details
of the topography.
Here, then, in our Celtic place-names lies a wide and as yet, for
large districts, but little worked field for exploration. Civilisation
has advanced less rapidly and ruthlessly in the Celtic-speaking parts
of the country, where, too, there are fewer historical records of
progress and change. But the topographical names when carefully worked
out supply a good deal of information regarding former conditions of
surface whereof every other memorial has perished.
Our Saxon progenitors, also, gave appropriate local names; but with a
sturdy self-assertion, and prosaic regard for plain fact, they chose to
couple their own _cognomina_ with them. If a settler fenced in his own
inclosure he called it his 'ton' or his 'ham.' If he felled the trees
of the primeval woodlands and made his own clearance, it became his
'fold.' If he built himself a mud cottage, it was his 'cote,' or if he
attained to the dignity of a farm, he called it his 'stead.' As he and
his brethren increased their holdings and drew their houses together
for companionship and protection, the village kept their family name.
But besides these patronymic epithets, which are of such value in
tracing out the early settlement of the country, the English gave
more or less descriptive local names. In their 'holts' and 'hursts,'
'wealds' and 'shaws,' we can still tell where their woods lay. In their
'leighs,' 'fields,' and 'royds,' we can yet trace the open clearings in
these woods. But for the broad landmarks, rivers, and larger natural
features of the country, the Saxons were generally content to adopt, in
some more or less corrupted form, the names already given by the Celtic
tribes who had preceded them.
(3) As another but less reliable source of information regarding
alterations in the surface of the country, I would make brief allusion
to the subject of local tradition. In these days of education and
locomotion, we can hardly perhaps realise how tenacious, and on the
whole faithful, the human memory may be in spite of the absence of
written or printed documents. Even yet we see the unbroken and exact
record of the true boundaries of a parish or township handed down in
the annual beating of the bounds or riding of the marches. And even
where no such ceremony has tended to perpetuate the remembrance of
topographical details, tradition, though it may vary as to historical
facts, is often singularly true to locality. I am tempted to give what
seems to me a good example of this fidelity of tradition. Many years
ago among the uplands of Lammermuir I made the acquaintance of an old
maiden lady, Miss Darling of Priestlaw, who with her bachelor brothers
tenanted a farm which their family had held for many generations. In
the course of her observant and reflective life she had gathered up
and treasured in her recollection the traditions and legends of these
pastoral solitudes. I well remember, among the tales she delighted to
pour into the ear of a sympathetic listener, one that went back to the
time of the Battle of Dunbar. We know from his own letters in what
straits Cromwell felt himself to be when he found his only practicable
line of retreat through the hills barred by the Covenanting army, and
how he wrote urgently to the English commander at Newcastle for help in
the enemy's rear. It has usually been supposed that his communications
with England were kept up only by sea. But the weather was boisterous
at the time, and a vessel bound for Berwick or Newcastle might have
been driven away from land. There is therefore every probability that
Cromwell would try to send a communication by land also. Now the
tradition of Lammermuir maintains that he did so. The story is told
that he sent two soldiers disguised as natives of the district to push
their way through the hills and over the border. The men had got as
far as the valley of the Whiteadder, and were riding past the mouth
of one of the narrow glens, when a gust of wind, sweeping out of the
hollow, lifted up their hodden-grey cloaks and showed their military
garb beneath. They had been watched, and were now overtaken and shot.
Miss Darling told me that tradition had always pointed to some old
whin-bushes at the opening of the cleugh as the spot where they were
buried. At her instigation the ground was dug up there, and among some
mouldering bones were found a few decayed buttons with a coin of the
time of Charles the First.
Tradition is no doubt often entirely erroneous; but it ought not, I
think, to be summarily dismissed without at least critical examination.
There are doubtless instances where it might come in to corroborate
conclusions deducible from other and usually more reliable kinds of
evidence.
(4) But of all the sources of information regarding bygone mutations
of the surface of the land, undoubtedly the most important is that
supplied by the testimony of geology. Early human chronicles are
not only imperfect, but may be erroneous. The chronicle, however,
which Nature has compiled of her past vicissitudes, though it may be
fragmentary, is, at least, accurate. In interpreting it the geologist
is liable, indeed, to make mistakes; but these can be corrected by
subsequent investigation, while the natural chronicle itself remains
unaffected by them. Moreover, it embraces a vast period of time.
Historical evidence in this country is comprised within the limits of
nineteen centuries. The testimony from Celtic topographical names may
possibly go back some hundreds of years further. But the geological
record of the human period carries us enormously beyond these dates.
Hence, in so vast a lapse of time, scope has been afforded for a whole
series of important geological revolutions. On every side of us we may
see manifest proofs of these changes. The general aspect of the country
has been altered, not once only, but many times. The agencies that
brought about these changes have, in not a few instances, preserved
tolerably complete memorials of them. We are thus enabled to trace
the history of lakes and rivers, of forests and mosses: we can follow
the succession of animals that have wandered over the land, and many
of which had died out ere the days of history began: we can dimly
perceive the conditions of life amidst the earliest human population
of the country: we can recover abundant evidence of the extraordinary
vicissitudes of climate which, since these ancient times, have affected
not this land only, but the whole northern hemisphere.
The evidence from which these reconstructions of the former aspect of
the country and its inhabitants can be deduced lies easily accessible
around us. From the numerous caves in the limestone districts,
abundant remains have been disinterred of the land-animals that
were contemporary with aboriginal man, and among them relics of
human workmanship have likewise been obtained. Our bogs have yielded
skeletons of the Irish elk and other denizens of the primeval glades
and woodlands, together with the canoes and stone-implements of the
hunters of these animals. Our river-terraces reveal a long history of
climatal changes onward from the later phases of the Ice-Age, during
which the country witnessed successive migrations of northern and
southern mammals accompanied by Palaeolithic and Neolithic men. The
raised beaches and sunk forests contain relics of contemporary human
workmanship which prove that man had already become an inhabitant of
Britain before the land had settled into its present level above the
sea.
It may be of advantage to consider here, from the various sources of
information above enumerated, what appears to have been the condition
of the surface of Britain at the dawn of authentic history and what
have been the nature and origin of the changes which this surface has
undergone within historic time. When the light of human testimony first
begins to fall upon Britain at the advent of the Romans, the general
aspect of the country must have presented in many respects a contrast
to that which is now to be seen; and notably in the wide spread of
its forests, in the abundance of its bogs and fens, and (through the
northern districts) in the vast number of its lakes.
At the first coming of the Romans by far the larger part of the
country was probably covered with wood. During the centuries of Roman
occupation some of the less dense parts of the woodland were cleared.
In driving their magnificent straight highways through the country, the
Roman legionaries felled the trees for seventy yards on each side of a
road, in order to secure themselves from the arrows of a lurking foe.
So stupendous was the labour thus involved, that they gladly avoided
forests where that was possible, and sometimes even swung their roads
to right or left to keep clear of these formidable obstacles. For many
hundreds of years after the departure of the legions, vast tracts of
primeval forest continued to be impassable barriers between different
tribes. In these natural fastnesses the wolf, brown bear, and wild boar
still found a secure retreat. Even as late as the twelfth century the
woods to the north of London swarmed with wild boars and wild oxen.
Everywhere, too, the broken men of the community betook themselves to
these impenetrable retreats, where they lived by the chase, and whence
they issued for plunder and bloodshed. The forests were thus from time
immemorial a singularly important element in the topography. They have
now almost entirely disappeared, and their former sites have as yet
only been partially determined, though much may doubtless still be done
in making our knowledge of them more complete.
In connection with this subject it should be remembered that, in many
instances, the areas of wood and open land have in the course of
generations completely changed places. The wide belts of clay-soil that
sweep across the island, being specially adapted for the growth of
trees, were originally densely timbered. But the process of clearance
led to the recognition of the fact that these clay-soils were also
eminently fitted for the purposes of agriculture. Hence, by degrees,
the sites of the ancient forests were turned into corn-fields and
meadows. On the other hand, the open tracts of lighter soil, where the
earlier settlers established themselves, were gradually abandoned, and
lapsed into wastes of scrub and copsewood.
The fens and bogs of Britain played likewise a large part in the
attack and defence of the country in Roman and later times. They were
of two kinds. One series lay on the coast, especially of sheltered
inlets, and were liable to inundation by high tides. The most notable
of these was the wide tract of low, swampy land at the head of the
Wash, our Fenland--an area where, secure in their amphibious retreats,
descendants of the Celtic population preserved their independence not
only through Roman but through Saxon times, if indeed, as Mr. Freeman
conjectures, outlying settlements of them may not have lingered on till
the coming of the Normans. The other sort of fens were those formed
in the interior of the country by the gradual encroachment of marshy
vegetation over tracts previously occupied by shallow sheets of fresh
water, and over flat land. It was in these swamps that the Caledonians,
according to the exaggerated statement of Xiphiline, concealed
themselves for many days at a time, with only their heads projecting
above the mire. At a far later period the peat-bogs of the debateable
land between England and Scotland formed an important line of advance
and retreat to the freebooters of the border, who could pick their way
through sloughs that to less practised eyes and feet were impassable.
One of the distinguishing features among the topographical changes of
the last few hundred years has been the disappearance of a vast number
of these fens and bogs. In some cases they have been gradually silted
up by natural processes; but a good many of them have no doubt been
artificially drained. Their sites are still preserved in such Saxon
names as Bogside, Bogend, Mossflats; and where other human record
is gone, the black peaty soil remains to mark where they once lay.
It would not be impossible with the help of such pieces of evidence
and a study of the present contours of the ground to map out in many
districts, now well drained and cultivated, the swamps that hemmed in
the progress of our ancestors.
No one looking at the present maps of the north of England and Scotland
would be led to suspect what a large number of lakes must have been
scattered over the surface of these northern regions when the Romans
set foot in the country. Yet if he turns to old maps, such as those of
Timothy Pont, published some three hundred years ago, he will notice
many sheets of water represented there which are now much reduced in
size or entirely replaced by cultivated fields. If, farther, he scans
the topographical names of the different counties, he will be able to
detect the sites of other and sometimes still older lakes; while, if
he sets to work upon the geological evidence by actual examination
of the ground itself, he will be astonished to find how abundant at
comparatively recent times were the tarns and lakes of which little or
no human record may have survived, and often how much larger were once
the areas of lakes that still exist. Owing to some peculiar geological
operations that characterised the passage of the Ice-Age in the
northern hemisphere, the land from which the snow-fields and glaciers
retreated was left abundantly dotted over with lakes. The diminution
and disappearance of these sheets of water are mainly traceable to
the inevitable process of obliteration which sooner or later befalls
all lakes great and small. Detritus is swept into them by rain and
wind from the surrounding slopes and shores. Every brook that enters
them is engaged in filling them up. The marsh-loving vegetation which
grows along their shallow margins likewise aids in diminishing them.
Man, too, lends his help in the same task. In early times he built his
pile-dwellings in the lakes, and for many generations continued to
cast his refuse into their waters. In later days he has taken the more
rapid and effectual methods of drainage, and has turned the desiccated
bottoms into arable land.
In connection with the geological changes that have affected the
general surface of the country since the beginning of history,
reference may here be made to those which have taken place on the
coast-line. Standing as it does amid stormy seas and rapid tidal
currents, Britain has for ages suffered much from the attacks of the
ocean. More especially has the loss of land fallen along our eastern
shores. Ever since the submergence of the North Sea and the cutting
through of the Strait of Dover, the soft rocks that form our sea-board
facing the mainland of Europe have been a prey to the restless waves.
Within the last few centuries whole parishes, with their manors,
farms, hamlets, villages, and churches have been washed away; and the
fisherman now casts his nets and baits his lines where his forefathers
ploughed their fields and delved their gardens. And the destruction
still goes on. In some places a breadth of as much as five yards is
washed away in a single year. Holderness, once a wide and populous
district, is losing a strip of ground about two and a quarter yards
broad, or in all about thirty-four acres annually. Its coast-line is
computed to have receded between two and three miles since the time of
the Romans--a notable amount of change, if we would try to picture what
were the area and form of the coast-line of eastern Yorkshire at the
beginning of the historic period.
But though the general result of the action of the sea along our
eastern border has been destructive, it has not been so everywhere. In
sheltered bays and creeks some of the material, washed away from more
exposed tracts, is cast ashore again. In this way part of the mud and
sand swept from off the cliffs of Holderness is carried southward into
the Wash, and is laid down in that wide recess which it is gradually
filling up. Along the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, inlets which in
Roman and later times were navigable channels, and which allowed the
ships of the Danish Vikings to penetrate far into the interior of the
country, are now effaced. On the shores of Kent, also, wide tracts of
low land have been gained from the sea. Islands, between which and the
shore Roman galleys and Saxon war-boats made their way, are now, like
the Isle of Thanet, joined to the mainland. Harbours and towns, such
as Sandwich, Richborough, Winchelsea, Pevensey, and Porchester, which
once stood at the edge of the sea, are now, in some cases, three miles
inland. There appears also to have been some gain of land on parts of
the south coast of Sussex, whereby the physical geography of that
district has been considerably altered. The valleys by which the downs
are there trenched were formerly filled with tidal waters, so that the
ancient camps, perched so conspicuously on the crest of the heights,
could not communicate directly with each other except by boat. Instead
of being a connected chain of fortifications, as was once supposed,
they must have been independent strongholds, surrounded by water on
three sides, and on the north by dense forest and impassable morasses.
The subterranean forces which throughout geological time have been so
potent in the area of the British Isles, appear to have on the whole
remained nearly quiescent during the centuries of authentic history.
Volcanic energy, which played so notable a part throughout most of the
geological past of our region, has never awakened here since the remote
Tertiary ages, but has shifted its site northwards to Iceland, where
it continued its activity even during the Ice-Age and has remained
vigorous down to the present time. But two forms of underground
movement have affected Britain since man appeared here. In the first
place, there have been important changes in the relative levels of sea
and land, and in the second place, the islands have frequently been
shaken more or less perceptibly by earthquakes.
In southern Scotland, the north of England and of Ireland, the land
has been upraised some twenty feet or more. As a consequence of this
elevation a selvage of flat alluvial land has been added to a number
of the estuaries, particularly to those of the Forth, Tay and Clyde.
Canoes and other remains of human workmanship, found imbedded in the
sands and silts of this marine terrace, show that the upheaval has
taken place since some part of Neolithic time. The addition of these
strips of level ground to the margin of the land has had an important
influence on the human population of these districts, for it has
provided many hundreds of square miles of arable ground, comprising
admirable sites for dozens of villages and towns as well as for
excellent coast-roads.
On the other hand, a long tract of land, extending from Cork across the
Bristol Channel and the southern counties to the coast of Yorkshire,
has sunk fifty feet or more since the Neolithic period. The result of
this depression has been to allow the sea to ascend far up many of the
estuaries which had previously been river-valleys, and thus to create,
or at least to deepen and widen, the numerous natural harbours which
indent the south coasts of England, Wales and Ireland. Not improbably
the downward movement, by helping to lower the narrow isthmus which in
the earlier ages of the human period connected Kent with the north-west
of France, contributed not a little to the insulation of England from
the continent.
Earthquake-shocks, though generally feeble, have been of severity
enough to damage public buildings. The cathedral of St. David's in its
uneven floor and dislocated walls, still bears witness to the shock
which six hundred years ago did so much injury to the churches of the
west of England. But though a formidable catalogue has been drawn up
of the earthquakes experienced within the limits of these islands, it
is not to that kind of underground disturbance that much permanent
alteration of the surface of the country is to be attributed.
In fine, there can be no doubt that the larger features of the
landscape of Britain have mainly determined the distribution of the
several tribes of mankind out of which the present population of our
islands has grown. It is hardly less obvious that the same features
have continued during the times of history to influence the development
and progress of these tribes. The Gael who long ages ago was pushed
by the Briton into the mountain fastnesses of the north was left
there to maintain, until only a few generations ago, his primitive
habits as hunter and warrior, cattle-dealer and freebooter. While he
remained comparatively unprogressive, the Norsemen, Danes and Saxons,
who took possession of the lowlands that lay between his glens and
the sea, were able to advance in agriculture upon richer soil and
in a less inhospitable climate, and to crowd the land with their
homesteads, farms, villages, towns and seaports. So too the Welshman,
pushed in turn into his hills by successive Teutonic swarms from the
other side of the North Sea, has preserved his pristine language, and
with it much of that individuality of character which has kept him
from cordially amalgamating with the invaders. And thus while the
original Celtic people, restricted to less ample territories and less
fertile land, have to a large extent retained the holdings and habits
of their ancestors, building comparatively few towns, and engaging
in few crafts, save farming and stock-raising, the Teutonic tribes,
possessing themselves of the broad cultivable lowlands and the great
repositories of coal and iron, have thrown across the islands a network
of thoroughfares, have scattered everywhere villages and towns, have
built many great cities, have developed the industrial resources of the
land and have mainly contributed to the commercial supremacy of the
Empire.
While the leading elements of the topography have remained for many
long ages essentially the same, there have arisen since the beginnings
of history, many important minor changes in the landscape, mainly due
to human interference, whereby the progress of the population has been
more or less affected. Prominent among these changes has been the
clearing of the dense woodlands that once covered so large a proportion
of the surface. Innumerable bogs and fens have been drained and
converted into arable land; lakes have been silted up by natural causes
or have been emptied by artificial drainage. War has been waged against
the wild animals which once abounded all over the islands. The bear,
wolf and wild boar have been extirpated. Only a few of the smaller
beasts of prey have been allowed to survive in diminished numbers. The
various species of deer would long ago have been exterminated had they
not been preserved as game.
But man's influence on the landscape has not consisted wholly in
removing what he found to be obnoxious. He has introduced many forms of
vegetation among those indigenous to the country. He has thus converted
thousands of square miles of scrub, moor and woodland into gardens,
parks, meadows and corn-fields. He has replaced some parts of the
primeval forest by plantations of a different type, wherein the native
hardwood trees are mingled now with larch, silver-fir and other trees
which seem to have had no place in the original flora.
But the minor modifications of the landscape within historic time
have not been merely those due to human interference. Nature has been
ceaselessly at work in slowly, and for the most part imperceptibly,
changing the forms of the ground. The streams have dug their channels
deeper into the flanks of the hills and have spread their alluvial
soil further and wider over the valleys and lake-floors. The frosts
of winter have been splintering the crags, the springs have been
sapping the cliffs, and from time to time landslips have been launched
into the stream-channels below. The sea has cut away large slices of
land from some parts of the coast-line, while to others it has added
strips of alluvial ground and mounds of shingle. We have seen too that
underground movements have contributed to modify the landscape in some
parts of the country, certain tracts having been upraised so as to
expose broad spaces of flat ground, while others have been submerged
beneath the sea which now ascends into what were formerly open valleys.
This sinking of the land in southern England, inasmuch as it helped
to separate Britain from the continent, must be regarded as probably
the most far-reaching change that has affected the landscape of this
country since the days of Neolithic man.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The substance of this Essay formed an address to the Oxford
University Scientific Club, in 1887.
[2] This illustration of the subject is discussed in my _Geological
Essays at Home and Abroad_, p. 253.
[3] This part of the subject is more fully treated in the two following
essays.
[4] A portion of this passage has been inserted in my _Scenery of
Scotland_.
[5] This plain is one of the upraised marine platforms referred to in a
later part of this Essay.
[6] Dr. Joyce's excellent _Irish Names of Places_ is the best authority
on this subject.
II
Landscape and the Imagination[7]
The more marked features on the surface of the land have from early
times awakened the curiosity and stimulated the imagination of men.
Mountainous regions with their peaks and crests, where cloud and
tempest find a home, their rugged scarps of cliff and crag, whence
landslips sweep down into the valleys, their snows and frosts, their
floods and avalanches, their oft-repeated and too frequently disastrous
shocks of earthquake, supply the most striking illustrations of this
relation of the external world. Yet while it is from these elevated
parts of the earth's surface, where the activities of nature seem to
beat with a more rapid pulse, that the human imagination has been
more especially stimulated, even among the comparatively featureless
lowlands the influence of outer things, though less potent, may
be distinctly traced. Wherever, for instance, the monotony of a
lowland landscape is broken by an occasional oddly-shaped hill, by
a conspicuous grassy mound, by a group of prominent boulders, by a
cauldron-shaped hollow, or by a river chasm, we may expect to find
that these diversities of scenery have from time immemorial arrested
attention.
Whatever departs from ordinary usage and experience prompts, even among
the rudest people, a desire for explanation. The more striking elements
of topography accordingly aroused the curiosity of the earliest races
who came to dwell among them, and to whom, in the infancy of the world,
the forces of nature were more or less mysterious. These forces were
then looked upon as visible manifestations of the agency of superior
beings, whose conflicts or co-operation were held to account for the
changes of external nature. Thus, by a system of personification that
varied from clime to clime, primeval mankind surrounded itself with
invisible deities, to each of whom some special function in the general
government and progress of the world was assigned.
Hence the problems presented by the more impressive details of the
scenery of the earth's surface were in truth among the earliest with
which the human race began to deal. If we try to discover how they
were first approached, and how their treatment varied, not only with
peculiarities of race and national temperament, but with conditions
of climate and variations of topography, we are led backward into the
study of some of the most venerable efforts of the human imagination,
which, though now in large measure faded or vanished, may yet be
in some slight degree recovered from the oldest mythologies and
superstitions. In many of the earlier myths we may recognise primitive
attempts to account for some of the more prominent features of
landscape or of climate. And as we trace the variations of these
legends from country to country, we learn how much their changes of
dress have arisen from local peculiarities of environment.