I know. But how are you going to get through the chalk hills? Is there a tunnel as there is at Box and at Micheldever?
No. Something much prettier than a tunnel and something which took a great many years longer in making. We shall soon meet with a very remarkable and famous old gentleman, who is a great adept at digging, and at landscape gardening likewise; and he has dug out a path for himself through the chalk, which we shall take the liberty of using also. And his name, if you wish to know it, is Father Thames.
I see him. What a great river!
Yes. Here he comes, gleaming and winding down from Oxford, over the lowlands, past Wallingford; but where he is going to it is not so easy to see.
Ah, here is chalk in the cutting at last. And what a high bridge.
And the river far under our feet. Why we are crossing him again!
Yes; he winds more sharply than a railroad can. But is not this prettier than a tunnel?
Oh, what hanging-woods, and churches; and such great houses, and pretty cottages and gardens--all in this narrow crack of a valley!
Ay. Old Father Thames is a good landscape gardener, as I said.
There is Basildon--and Hurley--and Pangbourne, with its roaring lasher. Father Thames has had to work hard for many an age before he could cut this trench right through the chalk, and drain the water out of the flat vale behind us. But I suspect the sea helped him somewhat, or perhaps a great deal, just where we are now.