Ah, thereby hangs a strange tale. We will go and look at it after breakfast, and then you shall see with your own eyes one of the wonders which I have been telling you of. And what is that shining between the trees? Water. Is it a lake? Not a lake, though there are plenty round here; that is salt water, not fresh. Look away to the right, and you see it through the opening of the woods again and again: and now look above the woods. You see a faint blue line, and gray and purple lumps like clouds, which rest upon it far away. That, child, is the great Atlantic Ocean, and those are islands in the far west. The water which washes the bottom of the lawn was but a few months ago pouring out of the Gulf of Mexico, between the Bahamas and Florida, and swept away here as the great ocean river of warm water which we call the Gulf Stream, bringing with it out of the open ocean the shoals of mackerel, and the porpoises and whales which feed upon them. Some fine afternoon we will run down the bay and catch strange fishes, such as you never saw before, and very likely see a living whale. What? such a whale as they get whalebone from, and which eats sea-moths? No, they live far north, in the Arctic circle; these are grampuses, and bottle-noses, which feed on fish; not so big as the right whales, but quite big enough to astonish you, if one comes up and blows close to the boat. Get yourself dressed and come down, and then we will go out; we shall have plenty to see and talk of at every step. Now, you have finished your breakfast at last, so come along, and we shall see what we shall see. First run out across the gravel, and scramble up that bank of lawn, and you will see what you fancied was an empty flower-bed. Why, it is all hard rock. Ah, you are come into the land of rocks now: out of the land of sand and gravel; out of a soft young corner of the world into a very hard, old, weather-beaten corner; and you will see rocks enough, and too many for the poor farmers, before you go home again. But how beautifully smooth and flat the rock is: and yet it is all rounded. What is it like? Like--like the half of a shell. Not badly said, but think again. Like--like--I know what it is like. Like the back of some great monster peeping up through the turf. You have got it. Such rocks as these are called in Switzerland "roches moutonnees," because they are, people fancy, like sheep's backs. Now look at the cracks and layers in it. They run across the stone; they have nothing to do with the shape of it. You see that? Yes: but here are cracks running across them, all along the stone, till the turf hides them. Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the stone. I see. They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stem at home, where the cats sharpen their claws. But it would take a big cat to make them.