Part 1

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BERTHA’S

VISIT TO HER UNCLE

IN

ENGLAND.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

MDCCCXXX.

LONDON: Printed by W. CLOWES, Stamford-Street.

BERTHA’S VISIT.

_April 1st._--The little buds of pear blossoms, which I told you had enlarged so much, have this day blown out completely. They are, I do think, a curiosity. They have been now about two months in water, but they had lain dry so long before, that one might have thought no life remained in them. The horse-chesnut leaves, which first came out, begin to droop; but on one of the twigs there is a nice young shoot, at least two inches long, which looks bright and fresh.

The lilac buds, I am sorry to say, have withered; but some of the ash leaves have opened out finely: three of them, however, were curiously twisted, and filled up with a cottony substance, which on examination was found to contain a little greenish insect. Mary thinks it is the aphis fraxina. What a long time the eggs must have remained there, for I do not think an aphis could have found out this branch in my room.

_2d, Sunday._--Deuteronomy, the title of the fifth book of the Pentateuch, is derived, I find, from two Greek words, which signify the second law, or rather the repetition of the law. Mishnah, the name the Jews give it, has nearly the same meaning. “Moses, in this book,” said my uncle, “not only recapitulates the laws he had already ordained, but makes several explanatory additions, and enforces the whole by the most earnest and impressive appeals to the gratitude, the hopes, and the fears of the people. To them it is principally addressed, as most of what particularly related to the priests is omitted; and as it was drawn up in the last year of their abode in the wilderness, we may suppose that it was intended as a compendium for the benefit of the new generation, who had not been present at the first promulgation of the law.

“It is remarkable that, in the preceding books, Moses speaks of himself in the third person; but in Deuteronomy he drops the assumed character of an historian, and addresses himself to the nation in the animated language of a prophet, and with the authority of their chieftain and lawgiver. He begins by reminding them of the many circumstances since their departure from Horeb, in which they had experienced the Divine favour; and then contrasts the success and the victories that had marked their progress, with the disobedience and ingratitude that had provoked the Divine wrath. He frequently alludes to his own guilty conduct, and to the inexorable decree by which he was debarred from accompanying them to that land of promise, for which he had so zealously toiled. He dwells on every circumstance that could improve their hearts, and earnestly enjoins the succeeding judges of Israel to do strict justice, and to inculcate the principles of obedience and piety. He rehearses the commandments which he had delivered to the people direct from God; and exhorts them by every possible argument to fulfil the terms of that covenant, which the Lord had made with them. While he affectionately urges their future obedience, and severely reproaches their past misconduct, he loses no opportunity of unfolding the glorious attributes of Jehovah, and dwells on His mercy and compassion, and on His promised blessings. He then enters into a new covenant with the people; which includes that previously made at Horeb, and ratifies all the assurances long before given to Abraham and his descendants.

“The historical part of Deuteronomy contains a period of only two months; and concludes the life of Moses that truly great man and faithful servant of the Most High. His parting words to the people whom he had so long and so anxiously governed, were expressed in a hymn that is pre-eminent for the beauty and strength of its composition. It briefly but pathetically reiterates his warning exhortations, and ends with a repetition of the particular blessings promised to each tribe. His race being now run, we are told by the writer who finished this book, that Moses retired to the top of Mount Nebo, from whence he was permitted to behold the land which the Lord had declared the seed of Abraham should inherit; and he there died in the 120th year of his age, and in the year 2552 of the world.”

The coming of Messiah is more explicitly foretold in Deuteronomy, my uncle says, than in any other book of the Pentateuch; and the prophecies of that great event, as well as of many other circumstances in the history of the Jews, have been so fully and minutely realized, that they completely demonstrate the divine inspiration of Moses.

_3d._--Besides the rocks which compose our five grand formations, there is another series, the _trap_ formation, or _overlying_ rocks; so called, because they are found in various places lying on almost every rock, from granite even to chalk. They sometimes traverse the other rocks in _veins_ or _dykes_, and are sometimes found in immense shapeless masses, but never regularly stratified. It is evident from these facts, my uncle says, that their origin must be more recent than those rocks on which they repose; yet they are quite free from all organic remains--none, either animal or vegetable, having yet been found in any rock of this class in England, nor, he believes, in any part of the world.

These circumstances have given rise to much discussion as to the original formation of these trap rocks, whether by fire or by water; but that is a subject on which my uncle will not yet allow us to touch. Some species of this family have the appearance of crystallization; green-stone trap, for instance, has large distinct crystals of felspar; in others, every trace of distinct crystals vanishes, and the whole assumes a dull earthy appearance.

The famous basaltic rocks, of which there are such singular specimens in Scotland and Ireland, belong to this family; but I shall be able to tell you much more about them in a few months, my dear mamma, for my uncle says it will be necessary for him to visit Ireland, and he proposes to take us all with him to see the Giants’ Causeway. You will be surprised at this; but pray do not be alarmed; I assure you there is no danger now from the wild Irish. My uncle has been there already, and from what he says, I think some parts of that country must be very interesting. I am so full of the idea of our Irish travels that I can write no more to-day.

_5th._--I have had another long walk to-day with Miss Perceval, and, therefore, another charming conversation. The infinite variety in the vegetable kingdom was our chief subject.

“Plants,” she said, “have not been thrown at random over the surface of the globe; in every region, we find those which are best adapted to each particular situation. Every climate, and every soil, has some peculiarity which influences its plants; and every plant seems to be subservient to some great and important object. From the brilliant profusion of vegetation in some countries, down to the stunted lichen, which just colours the rocks in others, every change points out the beneficence of the Creator; and those who endeavour to comprehend this beautiful order, and who trace these arrangements to the general system of Providence, can alone enjoy the study of botany in its full extent.”

She then told me a great deal about this distribution of plants, and mentioned many of the circumstances which appear either to fit them for the different regions of the earth, or to render them useful in supplying the local wants of the inhabitants. She began with the low plants whose small, close-set leaves resist the intense cold of high latitudes, or of stormy mountains; and tracing the gradual increase in the size as well as in the number of native plants through all the intermediate climates, she ended with the great stems, gigantic leaves, and splendid flowers of the torrid zone.

“A similar change,” she added, “may be observed in those adjective races of plants which depend upon others for support and protection. Instead of the dwarf mosses and lichens which clothe the bark of trees in colder countries, the luxuriant parasites between the tropics may be almost said to animate their trunks. Delicate flowers spring from the roots of the chocolate and calabash trees; and amidst the abundance of flowers and fruits, and the confusion of parasites and climbing plants, the traveller is at a loss to determine to what stem the leaves and blossoms belong. Humboldt describes a species of _aristolochia_, whose flowers are four feet in circumference; but Sir Stamford Raffles discovered a flower belonging to a parasite plant in the island of Sumatra, that was nearly ten feet in circumference. He brought home an exact model of it, which is now in the apartments of the Horticultural Society, and which your uncle told me he saw and measured when he was last in London. It has five petals of a deep red colour, and of a very solid fleshy substance, from a quarter of an inch in thickness at their outer lip to almost an inch at their base; and he understood that when the flower was first cut, it weighed fifteen pounds. The nectarium is so large and deep that he thinks it would hold eight pints of water; and the whole diameter of this giant flower he found three feet and two inches.”

I interrupted her to ask the name of this wonderful plant.

“It has been justly called, after its lamented discoverer, the _Rafflesia_. A model was an excellent method of making us acquainted with its appearance; for the northern nations can have but a faint idea of the majestic forms of tropical vegetation from mere drawings and descriptions; and still less can they judge of them from the sickly plants in our stoves and greenhouses.”

This is just what I have myself thought a hundred times, mamma. I then asked her about the _Cactus_ tribe, of which we have so many singular-looking species in Brazil.

“It is, indeed,” she replied, “a most grotesque family; some with their round backs and spines resembling a hedgehog, while others appear like the pipes of an organ rising into long channelled columns. They are almost entirely confined to the New World, one species only being a native of the south of Europe. This is the _C. opuntia_, or prickly pear, which bears on the edge of its leaf an agreeably flavoured fruit. The _melo-cactus_ has been named by St. Pierre the Vegetable Spring of the Desert: its shape is spherical, and though half concealed in the sand of the parched plains in South America, the animals, who are always tormented by thirst, discover it at a great distance, and notwithstanding its formidable prickles, greedily suck the refreshing juice with which it abounds.”

From the rich vegetation of America, we went to New Holland, and she told me that though but little of the interior has been yet explored, numbers of vegetables totally different from those of America, though in the same degrees of latitude, have been found there. “They seem to have quite a separate character; and those that are suited to the nourishment of man, are as rare in that country as they are common in America. The forests of New Holland, where the axe has never been heard, and where vegetation extends itself without restraint, are described as having a very singular appearance; the trees crumbling with age, and covered with mosses and lichens.--Among their most beautiful productions are the _mimosæ_, the superb _metrosideros_, and the whole tribe of _eucalyptus_; many of which are from one hundred and sixty feet to one hundred and eighty feet in height.”

I asked Miss Perceval whether South America or India had the greatest number of plants. “India, I believe,” said she; “its inhabitants have been so long in some degree civilized that, in addition to its native vegetation, many plants must have been naturalized, and many varieties produced by culture; and India exclusively boasts of the perfume of the most precious spices.

“But there is another part of the world which we must not forget,” continued Miss Perceval, “where nature seems to delight in multiplying the species belonging to each genus. I allude to the Cape of Good Hope, where the silvery lustre of the innumerable families of the _proteaceæ_ gives to the woods an appearance quite unlike those of either Europe or America. The heaths are almost infinite in variety; the geraniums are scarcely less so, and the gladiolus, the ixia, and the whole order of _irideæ_, decorate the fields and thickets of the Cape, with an exuberance unknown in any other country.

“To form a just view of vegetable nature, we must observe it in those countries where the ground has not been turned by the hand of man. Few such spots are now to be found in Europe, except on the summits of the Alps and Pyrenees. There mountains piled on mountains, rising above the clouds, form so many gardens, furnished with a vegetation of their own, and the character of which changes with the temperature at each degree of elevation. The same gradation takes place on all other lofty mountains; and in Frazer’s account of the Himālā chain, which separates Thibet from India, there is a long list of English plants that he found there, at the altitude which corresponds with our temperate climate; such as horse-chesnut, birch and apricot, strawberries, raspberries, lily of the valley, and many others; and still higher up, he even saw the famous Iceland lichen.”

_6th._--Yesterday Mr. Lumley and Mr. Maude dined here; and in conversing about the new books which Mr. Maude has just brought from London, he spoke very highly of Sir John Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia.” He mentioned several interesting anecdotes which he found there; and to entertain Wentworth, he related some of the exploits of Roostem and his wonderful horse Reksh; of which you shall have the following as a specimen.

“All countries have their fabulous heroes, and Persia had her Hercules in the renowned Roostem. He undertook the deliverance of his sovereign who was a prisoner in Hyrcania, and set out alone on his good horse Reksh. Fatigued by his first day’s journey, he lay down to sleep, having turned his horse into a neighbouring meadow. There Reksh was attacked by a furious lion: but after a short contest, he struck his antagonist to the ground with a blow from his fore-hoof, and completed the victory by seizing the lion’s throat with his teeth. When Roostem awoke, he was more enraged than surprised that Reksh, unaided, should have risked such an encounter. ‘Hadst thou been slain,’ said he, ‘how should I have accomplished my enterprise?’”

This story produced a grand discussion--some doubted the power of the horse to strike such a creature as a lion to the earth. Wentworth quoted different books of travels to prove that horses always trembled with instinctive dread at the sight of a lion; and even Mr. Maude, highly as he estimated the courage of a horse, did not seem to think him capable of such a noble effort. I thought to myself that it was perfectly suited to the other fabulous adventures of Roostem.

My uncle waited to hear everybody’s opinion, and then said, “I will tell you a singular circumstance which an old friend of mine witnessed, when he was at the King of Sardinia’s court, at Turin, about forty years ago. Perhaps it may convince some of my young sceptics, not of the truth of Roostem’s exploits, but at least of the strength and spirit of horses. The king had a remarkably fine charger, but so untameably vicious, that, after having killed two grooms, he was ordered by his majesty to be shot. It was suggested, however, that as he was to die, it would be a good opportunity of putting to the test the bravery and vigour of a horse whose spirits had not been subdued by being domesticated; and the king readily consented that he should be turned loose into a well-secured arena, along with a ferocious lion that belonged to the royal menagerie. Arrangements were soon made; and both these animals were allowed to enter at the same moment through opposite doors. They approached a few steps--then stopped as if to take a survey of each other--and again they advanced, but very slowly, till almost close. There was now a pause for a moment, after which the lion stooped a little as if meditating an upward spring, in order to fix his dreadful claws in the neck of his adversary; but the horse seized the opportunity, and making a slight but deliberate plunge with one leg in advance, he struck the lion on the head, and with such fatal force as to lay him dead at his feet.”

“The remarkable pause,” said Mr. Lumley, “which was made by those two noble creatures is, I believe, the practice of all combative animals when going to make their onset. I cannot give you better authority than that of our highly valued friend, Major R., who you know was not less remarkable in India for his scientific knowledge and military talent, than for his intrepidity. In the course of service he had frequently been sent with a detachment, to drive away from the wheat-fields and jungles the tigers that often prowl about the camps or even enter the villages; and he bears terrible marks to this day of the danger of such an employment. He has lately told me, that more than once he has owed his safety to that _moment_ of observation, when the animal seemed as if collecting his force; for, as it always took place at a very short distance, he seized that favourable pause, while his foe was stationary and steady, to take a deliberate aim at a mortal spot.”

_7th._--In describing the changes that have been produced by the action of the deluge, my uncle has often dwelt on the vast force of large bodies of water, when moving with rapidity. He supposes that most of the vallies have been scooped out by those means, and he divides them into two classes: _longitudinal_ vallies, or those which lie parallel to the chains of hills; and the _transverse_ vallies, which intersect the chains. Caroline and I frequently talk over what he tells us, and we agreed to ask him in our walk this morning, why the violence that tore out the vallies did not disturb the hills at the same time.

“Those mighty currents,” he replied, “naturally made their first impression on some weak part;--the fragments that were thus detached assisted in excavating a channel as they rushed forward; and the more the water was confined to a channel, the more powerful was its action. But the hills have also been disturbed more or less; for the upper strata appear to have been swept off from extensive ranges that they once covered. This is proved by the separated hills, which geologists call _outliers_; and which, having the lower strata exactly continuous with those of the adjacent range of mountains, but wanting the superior strata, shew that the same convulsion which broke through and carried away the connecting parts, must also have torn off their summits. Another proof is the great quantity of their _debris_, or broken fragments, which are found scattered over parts of the country far distant from their original positions. In the gravel beds near London, I have found pieces of basalt, though that species of rock is not known to exist within a hundred miles of the county of Middlesex.

“These fragments,” he continued, “must, therefore, have been transported by some agent that was equal to tearing up and carrying away the parent rock; and when it is considered that all gravel must have had its edges and angles rounded by the rubbing of stone against stone, you will perceive that this could only have been effected by the violent and long-continued action of currents of water; in short, by the tremendous surge and confused motion which accompanied a general deluge. That this deluge has been comparatively recent is clear from the fact, that fragments of primitive and secondary rocks are often found promiscuously mixed in the same bed of gravel. In one large bed, near Lichfield, may be found fragments of almost every rock in England, from chalk to granite; and many of the pebbles contain organic remains.”

We spent a couple of hours wandering up and down some of the vallies in the neighbourhood; and though a cultivated country is not the best theatre for a geological lecture, my uncle contrived to shew us so many corresponding circumstances on the opposite sides of one of the transverse vallies, that it was quite evident to both of us that the ridge had been formerly uninterrupted. We saw also many examples of the gravel he had mentioned, all more or less rounded and smoothed, and containing specimens of very different series. This was a delightful walk; for though one may acquire very fine ideas at home of the operations of nature, there is nothing like seeing them in their proper places.

As we returned home, my uncle told us that this water-worn _debris_, which covers many parts of the earth, is named _diluvium_, from that great and universal catastrophe by which it appears to have been formed. This name is meant to distinguish it from the more modern debris daily produced by rivers and torrents, to which the name of _alluvium_ is given.

“Diluvial gravel is highly interesting,” he said, “not only as it assists in explaining the causes of the present state of the globe, but as it even indicates the direction of the great currents of the deluge. For instance--when, within a few miles of the neighbouring town of Gloucester, we see rounded pebbles derived from rocks, which are found only in the mountains of the north-west of the island, we may be sure that a branch of that current must have rushed to the southward. It has, therefore, been a favourite object of some geologists to trace these travelled fragments to their native masses; and to discover the apertures in the mountain barriers through which they had been swept.

“When the intervening country is nearly flat, there is no difficulty in ascribing the removal of the debris to the currents of which we have been speaking. But it is frequently found in situations that are separated by deep vallies from the parent hills from which it appears to have been torn. For instance, fragments of the primitive rocks that compose the Alps are found scattered on the sides of the Jura mountains, though, between those two ranges, the valley that contains the lake of Geneva is interposed. On the low hills, near Bath, we find the flints belonging to the chalk formation, though several deep vallies intervene. Many other examples might be given; and the way in which geologists obviate the difficulty is, by supposing that one set of currents tore off and transported these fragments, and that a _subsequent_ rush of the waters excavated the vallies.”

My uncle ended by saying, that when the weather was more settled he would shew us a part of the country at no great distance from Fernhurst, which would make us more clearly comprehend this interesting subject.

_8th._--The wonderful way in which the use of tobacco has spread into every country of the world, in less than three centuries since its first discovery in America, happened to be mentioned in conversation the day Mr. Maude spent here; and we were all amused by his account of the mode of smoking in Turkey. The sumptuous pipes in fashion there are so unlike the little cigars in everybody’s mouth in Brazil, that perhaps his description of them may entertain both you and Marianne.