"A small steam engine would help the difficulty, would it not?" I asked.
"Yes; but you see water is cheaper than steam. But the profits never came in fast enough, so he killed the goose for the sake of the golden egg. All that understood the matter advised him not to clear off all the wood at once, but to leave enough to protect the undergrowth from the winds that blow too strong up there on the height. Now nothing will grow on the bare soil thoroughly dried by the wind, as you probably noticed if you came over the ridge from the castle. No, no; you can't treat nature as you please: she is not so patient as men."
The foreman was a small man with a shrewd thoughtful face. He was born, as he told me, on another part of the island, and knew the country and the people well, but had not long been in this region. I introduced myself to him as the person who was to set up the new machinery in the chalk-quarry, and asked him his opinion of this undertaking.
"It will not turn out much better than this," he replied, "though for another reason. The quarry has always been a tolerably productive one, but the commerzienrath took the notion that he had only to quarry deeper and it would yield more abundantly. It has yielded in great abundance--water, which will ruin the whole quarry if your machinery cannot get the upper hand of it."
"That is an ugly state of things," I said, seriously disturbed by what he told me.
"It is indeed," he answered.
"And the kilns," I asked again, "can you give no better report of them?"
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"There are several things to be said on that subject. The arrangements are good enough, but immensely too expensive, and the transportation is too heavy in winter upon our frightful roads. And even during the summer they sometimes come to a stand-still, because all along the coast here our communication with the sea is so bad; although the commerzienrath has had a great breakwater built with the stones of the old tower. You can see it from here--there where that line of surf is. But we might get along if the commerzienrath knew how to make himself liked among the people."
"How so?" I asked.