This huge bird occupied so much of our visit, that I scarcely recollect any thing else that I saw.
13th.—My aunt has been reading to us several interesting particulars of the Hottentots, from Latrobe’s Journal of his visit to South Africa.
There is a striking difference, he remarks, in the conduct of the uncivilized, and of the Christian Hottentots. All those who have been converted by the Moravian missionaries, have learned some useful trade, and, when they like their employment, work very industriously. They are naturally kind-hearted and obliging; and Christianity has had such a happy effect on them, that they live at the settlement of Gnadenthal united as brethren amongst themselves, and very grateful to their teachers.
The Hottentots have fine voices; they are fond of music, and are easily taught to sing. “One morning,” Latrobe says, “at four o’clock, I was awakened by the sweet sound of Hottentot voices singing a hymn in the hall before my chamber door. They had learned from some of the missionaries, that it was my birth-day, and I was struck and affected by this mark of their regard; nor was their mode of expressing it confined to a morning song. They had dressed out my chair at the common table, with branches of oak and laurel; and even the school-children, in order not to be behind in these kind offices, having begged of their mistress to mark on a large white muslin handkerchief some English words expressive of their good will towards me, they managed to embroider them with a species of creeper called cat’s thorn, and fastened the muslin in front of a table, covered with a white cloth and decorated with festoons of field flowers. This table, on which stood five large bouquets, I found in my room, on returning from my walk. The whole arrangement did credit to their taste. The words were, ‘May success crown every action.’”
14th.—I asked my uncle yesterday, whether a considerable change has not been produced in the level of the ocean, by the vast quantity of materials, which he had told us were carried into it by the rivers, and washed away from the coast by the waves.
He replied, that it was a very natural question, and shewed that we reflected on what we had learned. “But,” said he, “though the quantity of materials which has for ages been accumulating in the sea must be vast, yet when compared with the capacity of the whole ocean, its disparity is so obvious, that it probably can have had no visible effect in elevating the general level of the water. I say the general level, because it is possible, that in the mouths of large rivers, and in narrow seas, it may have had some effect in raising the level of the flood tide; for the actual volume of water rolled in from the sea continues the same as it was formerly, but the space over which it has to diffuse itself being less deep and less broad, it must, therefore, force itself to a higher level. Other causes, however, may lead to the permanent rise of the sea in certain places; for instance, it is possible that the current which unceasingly rushes into the Mediterranean, may in the course of centuries have gradually widened the entrance; and consequently a greater quantity of water now pours in. This, combined with the deposits from the Rhone, the Po, the Nile, and other rivers, may, perhaps, account for the well known fact of the eastern end of that sea being now higher than it was formerly; many foundations of houses and other vestiges of buildings being visible there several feet under water.
“But none of these causes will account for the extensive submarine forests which have been discovered on several parts of the English coast, for example, in Lancashire, and in the Bristol Channel, near Bridgewater. In excavating the West India docks, in the Isle of Dogs, near London, a complete stratum of decayed hazel trees was found: the wood and bark were quite soft and decayed, but the nuts were in tolerable preservation. Your aunt, I believe, has some specimens of them, which she will readily shew you. The remains of the submarine forests of Lincolnshire were examined not very long ago, by a gentleman who has published a paper on the subject in the Philosophical Transactions, and if Caroline will fetch the volume for 1799, she and you may read his account.”
I shall make a few extracts from it here for Marianne’s benefit.
This gentleman, having learned that there were several sunken islets along the coast where the remains of trees could be seen, took the opportunity of a very low tide, to land on one of them, near the village of Sutton; and he found that it was a mass of roots, trunks, branches, and leaves of trees, intermixed with aquatic plants. An immense number of the stumps were still standing on their roots, which, as well as the bark of the branches, appeared almost as fresh as if they had been just cut; and in the bark of the birch, even the thin silvery membranes of the outer skin were discernible. The wood, on the contrary, was decomposed and soft: but he understood that the people of the country had often found very sound pieces of birch and oak of which they could make use. He remarked, that the trunks and thick branches were flattened, as if they had lain under the pressure of a heavy weight; which is observable also in the surturbrand or fossil wood of Iceland, and of the Feroe Islands. Above the matted branches, he found a thick bed of decayed leaves, which were scarcely distinguishable at first; but after soaking a little in water, the leaves of holly and of other indigenous trees were easily separated.
In a well that was digging in the neighbouring village of Sutton, a similar stratum of decayed wood and leaves had been cut through at the depth of sixteen feet, and, therefore, very nearly at the same level with that of the islets: it extends through all the eastern parts of Lincolnshire, and has been traced as far as Peterborough, more than fifty miles to the south-west of Sutton. The fisherman informed him that islets of the same kind are found as far north as Grimsby, on the Humber; so that this great subterraneous forest was nearly eighty miles in length; and as there can be little doubt of the woody islets along the coast having been a continuation of it, the breadth must also have been considerable.