Why, it is all hard rock.

Ah, you are come into the land of rocks now:  out of the land of sand and gravel; out of a soft young corner of the world into a very hard, old, weather-beaten corner; and you will see rocks enough, and too many for the poor farmers, before you go home again.

But how beautifully smooth and flat the rock is:  and yet it is all rounded.

What is it like?

Like—­like the half of a shell.

Not badly said, but think again.

Like—­like—­I know what it is like.  Like the back of some great monster peeping up through the turf.

You have got it.  Such rocks as these are called in Switzerland “roches moutonnees,” because they are, people fancy, like sheep’s backs.  Now look at the cracks and layers in it.  They run across the stone; they have nothing to do with the shape of it.  You see that?

Yes:  but here are cracks running across them, all along the stone, till the turf hides them.

Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the stone.

I see.  They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stem at home, where the cats sharpen their claws.  But it would take a big cat to make them.

Do you recollect what I told you of Madam How’s hand, more flexible than any hand of man, and yet strong enough to grind the mountains into paste?

I know.  Ice! ice! ice!  But are these really ice-marks?

Child, on the place where we now stand, over rich lawns, and warm woods, and shining lochs, lay once on a time hundreds, it may be thousands, of feet of solid ice, crawling off yonder mountain-tops into the ocean there outside; and this is one of its tracks.  See how the scratches all point straight down the valley, and straight out to sea.  Those mountains are 2000 feet high:  but they were much higher once; for the ice has planed the tops off them.  Then, it seems to me, the ice sank, and left the mountains standing out of it about half their height, and at that level it stayed, till it had planed down all those lower moors of smooth bare rock between us and the Western ocean; and then it sank again, and dwindled back, leaving moraines (that is, heaps of dirt and stones) all up these valleys here and there, till at the last it melted all away, and poor old Ireland became fit to live in again.  We will go down the bay some day and look at those moraines, some of them quite hills of earth, and then you will see for yourself how mighty a chisel the ice-chisel was, and what vast heaps of chips it has left behind.  Now then, down over the lawn towards the bridge.  Listen to the river, louder and louder every step we take.

What a roar!  Is there a waterfall there?

No.  It is only the flood.  And underneath the roar of that flood, do you not hear a deeper note—­a dull rumbling, as if from underground?

Yes.  What is it?

The rolling of great stones under water, which are being polished against each other, as they hurry toward the sea.  Now, up on the parapet of the bridge.  I will hold you tight.  Look and see Madam How’s rain-spade at work.  Look at the terrible yellow torrent below us, almost filling up the arches of the bridge, and leaping high in waves and crests of foam.