There is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso runs may
read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be impeached, that
the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry
land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game the
spoils of which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in
that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time brought its
revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and
teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the
gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the
bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift and
boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the
extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost
twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know
not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened
into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and
the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant; and at length what we
call the history of England dawned.