And with them, stranger
still, were great hippopotamuses; who came, perhaps, northward in summer
time along the sea-shore and down the rivers, having spread hither all
the way from Africa; for in those days, you must understand, Sicily, and
Italy, and Malta--look at your map--were joined to the coast of Africa:
and so it may be was the rock of Gibraltar itself; and over the sea where
the Straits of Gibraltar now flow was firm dry land, over which hyaenas
and leopards, elephants and rhinoceroses ranged into Spain; for their
bones are found at this day in the Gibraltar caves. And this is the
first chapter of my fairy tale.
Now while all this was going on, and perhaps before this began, the
climate was getting colder year by year--we do not know how; and, what is
more, the land was sinking; and it sank so deep that at last nothing was
left out of the water but the tops of the mountains in Ireland, and
Scotland, and Wales. It sank so deep that it left beds of shells
belonging to the Arctic regions nearly two thousand feet high upon the
mountain side. And so
"It grew wondrous cold,
And ice mast-high came floating by,
As green as emerald."
But there were no masts then to measure the icebergs by, nor any ship nor
human being there. All we know is that the icebergs brought with them
vast quantities of mud, which sank to the bottom, and covered up that
pleasant old forest-land in what is called boulder-clay; clay full of
bits of broken rock, and of blocks of stone so enormous, that nothing but
an iceberg could have carried them.
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