The Thaw.--Cromer.--Prehistoric Remains.
The thaw was accompanied by torrents of rain for more than a week. At
the end of that time the boys were sitting in the boat-house making up
their Note-book, when Mr. Meredith entered and said to them,--
"Will you drive with me to Cromer? I hear that a large portion of the
cliff has fallen away and exposed a bed containing the bones and remains
of prehistoric elephants and other mammalia, and all the geologists of
the country are going there. I thought we might as well see these
wonderful relics of the past. What do you say?"
"We should like it above all things," said Frank for the others; and Mr.
Merivale's horses were forthwith harnessed to the waggonette, and they
started. The rain had ceased, and a cold, white sun shone out of a white
space in the leaden sky.
The town of Cromer is the easternmost part of England, and it is built
on the summit of a gravel-hill, which the sidelong sweeping tides eat
away little by little and year by year. It is said that the church of
old Cromer lies buried under the sea half a mile from the present shore.
Immediately in front of the village the cliff is plated and faced with
flints and protected by breakwaters, but on either side the soft earth
is loosened by the frosts and rains, and undermined by the tidal
currents, which, running nearly north and south, sweep the débris away
instead of piling it at the foot of the cliff.
Putting the horses up at the principal inn, they walked to the cliff
below the lighthouse, where a portion of the high cliff had slid into
the sea. In one place a recent storm had swept the fallen mass of gravel
away and exposed at the bottom a portion of the "forest bed." Here three
or four gentlemen, presumably geologists, were freely engaged in poking
and digging. One man was tugging hard at a huge bone which projected out
of the cliff; another was carefully unveiling the stump of a fossil
tree. Here and there were the stumps of trees--oaks and firs, and
others, with their spreading roots intact, just as ages ago they had
stood and flourished; and between these ancient stumps were the bones
and the teeth of elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros, deer of ten
different sorts, bears, tigers, and many another animal, the like, or
the prototype of which, are now found in tropical regions alone. The
boys were very much struck with the sight of these remains of the
animals which lived before the Flood, and as they wandered about,
finding here a tooth and there a bone, and then the stem of a strange
tree, they amused themselves by reconstructing in imagination the
luxuriant woods teeming with savage monsters which once stood on a level
with the shore, and speculating upon the causes which led to the piling
up of the gravel strata which now cover them to such a depth.
"Are these animal deposits peculiar to Cromer, Mr. Meredith?" asked
Dick.
"No. You can scarcely dig anywhere in Norfolk in similar deposits
without coming upon these remains; this is the case in Holland and
Belgium also, so that there is positive evidence that the German Ocean
is of comparatively recent origin, the two countries having once been
connected by a great plain, a portion of which is now covered with
water. From the bottom of the sea the fishermen often dredge up bones
and fragments of trees similar to those in the base of this cliff."
The short winter day soon drew on to dusk, and they strolled on to the
pier to see the sun set in the sea on this the east coast of England.
The land so juts out, and to the northward the water so bites into the
land, that not only does the sun rise from the sea, but it also sets in
it.
The surf-crested waves which broke heavily against the black breakwater
were red and lurid with the sunset light, and in fantastic masses,
flooded with red and orange, the clouds gathering about the descending
sun. And then, as the strange glare faded away and the grey dusk settled
over the chafing sea, a white light shot out from the lighthouse tower,
and traced a gleaming pathway over sea, pier, houses, and woods, as it
revolved with steady purpose.