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.