slender rivulet. At
first, the smallest pebble is sufficient to arrest the course of this
thread of water; but it turns upon itself, gathers strength, finally
surmounts the obstacle, dashes over it, unites itself with other
rivulets, reaches the plain, scoops out a bed, and goes on, as you
say, for ever emptying its waters into the sea."

"Yes; but it is the source of these sources that I want to know the
origin of. You speak of hills, whilst we know that water naturally, by
reason of its weight and fluidity; seeks to secrete itself in the
lowest beds of the earth."

"It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that water may come down
a hill, although it never goes up. Rain, snow, dew, and generally all
the vapors that fall from the atmosphere, furnish the enormous masses
of water that are constantly flowing into the sea. The vapor alone
that is absorbed in the air from the sea is more than sufficient to
feed all the rivers on the face of the earth. Mountains, by their
formation, arrest these vapors, collect them in a hole here and in a
cavern there, and permit them to filter by a million of threads from
rock to rock, fertilizing the land and nourishing the rivers that
intersect it. If, therefore, you were to suppress the Alps that rise
between France and Italy, you would, at the same time, extinguish the
Rhone and the Po."

"It would be a pity to do that," said Jack; "there was a time though
when there were no Pyrenees."

"That must have been, then, at a period prior to the formation of
granite, which is esteemed the oldest of rocks."

"No such thing," insisted Jack; "it was so late as 1713, when, by the
peace of Utrecht, the crown of Spain was secured to the Duke of Anjou,
grandson of Louis XIV."

"Howsomever," remarked Willis, "all the mariners in the French fleet
could not convince me that the Pyrenean mountains are only a hundred
years old."

"My brother is only speaking metaphorically," said Fritz; "when the
crown of Spain was assigned to the Duke of Anjou, his grandfather
said--_Qu il n'y avait plus de Pyrenees_. He meant by that simply,
that France and Spain being governed by the same prince, the moral
barrier between them existed no longer. The formidable mountains still
stood for all that, and he who removes them would certainly be
possessed of extraordinary power."

"I am always putting my foot in it," said Willis, "when the yarn is
about the land; let us talk of the sea for a bit. Who built the fi