What is the use of learning Latin and Greek, and a dozen things more which you have to learn?  You don’t know yet:  but wiser people than you tell you that they will be of use some day.  And I can tell you, that if you would only study that gar-fish long enough, and compare him with another fish something like him, who has a long beak to his lower jaw, and none to his upper—­and how he eats I cannot guess,—­and both of them again with certain fishes like them, which M. Agassiz has found lately, not in the sea, but in the river Amazon; and then think carefully enough over their bones and teeth, and their history from the time they are hatched—­why, you would find out, I believe, a story about the river Amazon itself, more wonderful than all the fairy tales you ever read.

Now there is luncheon ready.  Come down below, and don’t tumble down the companion-stairs; and by the time you have eaten your dinner we shall be very near the shore.

* * * * *

So?  Here is my little man on deck, after a good night’s rest.  And he has not been the least sick, I hear.

Not a bit:  but the cabin was so stuffy and hot, I asked leave to come on deck.  What a huge steamer!  But I do not like it as well as the yacht.  It smells of oil and steam, and—­

And pigs and bullocks too, I am sorry to say.  Don’t go forward above them, but stay here with me, and look round.

Where are we now?  What are those high hills, far away to the left, above the lowlands and woods?

Those are the shore of the Old World—­the Welsh mountains.

And in front of us I can see nothing but flat land.  Where is that?

That is the mouth of the Severn and Avon; where we shall be in half an hour more.

And there, on the right, over the low hills, I can see higher ones, blue and hazy.

Those are an island of the Old World, called now the Mendip Hills; and we are steaming along the great strait between the Mendips and the Welsh mountains, which once was coral reef, and is now the Severn sea; and by the time you have eaten your breakfast we shall steam in through a crack in that coral-reef; and you will see what you missed seeing when you went to Ireland, because you went on board at night.

* * * * *

Oh!  Where have we got to now?  Where is the wide Severn Sea?

Two or three miles beyond us; and here we are in narrow little Avon.

Narrow indeed.  I wonder that the steamer does not run against those rocks.  But how beautiful they are, and how the trees hang down over the water, and are all reflected in it!

Yes.  The gorge of the Avon is always lovely.  I saw it first when I was a little boy like you; and I have seen it many a time since, in sunshine and in storm, and thought it more lovely every time.  Look! there is something curious.

What?  Those great rusty rings fixed into the rock?