er by giant oxen, and giant stags likewise, and perhaps by the mammoth
himself, the great woolly elephant whose teeth the fishermen dredge up in
the sea outside? You recollect that? Then remember that as that Norfolk
shore has changed, so slowly but surely is the whole world changing
around us. Hartford Bridge Flat here, for instance, how has it changed!
Ages ago it was the gravelly bottom of a sea. Then the steam-power
underground raised it up slowly, through long ages, till it became dry
land. And ages hence, perhaps, it will have become a sea-bottom once
more. Washed slowly by the rain, or sunk by the dying out of the steam-
power underground, it will go down again to the place from whence it
came. Seas will roll where we stand now, and new lands will rise where
seas now roll. For all things on this earth, from the tiniest flower to
the tallest mountain, change and change all day long. Every atom of
matter moves perpetually; and nothing "continues in one stay." The solid-
seeming earth on which you stand is but a heaving bubble, bursting ever
and anon in this place and in that. Only above all, and through all, and
with all, is One who does not move nor change, but is the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. And on Him, my child, and not on this bubble of an
earth, do you and I, and all mankind, depend.

But I have not yet told you why the Peruvians ought to have expected an
earthquake. True. I will tell you another time.

CHAPTER III--VOLCANOS

You want to know why the Spaniards in Peru and Ecuador should have
expected an earthquake.

Because they had had so many already. The shaking of the ground in their
country had gone on perpetually, till they had almost ceased to care
about it, always hoping that no very heavy shock would come; and being,
now and then, terribly mistaken.

For instance, in the province of Quito, in the year 1797, from thirty to
forty thousand people were killed at once by an earthquake. One would
have thought that warning enough: but the warning was not taken: and now,
this very year, thousands more have been killed in the very same country,
in the very same way.

They might have expected as much. For their towns are built, most of
them, close to volcanos--some of the highest and most terrible in the
world. And wherever there are volcanos there will be earthquakes. You
may have earthquakes without volcanos, now and then; but volcanos without
earthquakes, seldom