So he began to bore--150 feet, 200, 300: and then he began to look rather silly; at last, at 405--only seven feet short of what the geologist had foretold--up came the water in a regular spout. But, lo and behold, not expecting to have to bore so deep, he had made his bore much too small; and the sand out of the Thanet beds "blew up" into the bore, and closed it. The poor manufacturer spent hundreds of pounds more in trying to get the sand out, but in vain; and he had at last to make a fresh and much larger well by the side of the old one, bewailing the day when he listened to the well-sinker and not to the geologist, and so threw away more than a thousand pounds. And there is an answer to what you asked on board the yacht--What use was there in learning little matters of natural history and science, which seemed of no use at all? And now, look out again. Do you see any change in the country? What? Why, there to the left. There are high hills there now, as well as to the right. What are they? Chalk hills too. The chalk is on both sides of us now. These are the Chilterns, all away to Ipsden and Nettlebed, and so on across Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and into Hertfordshire; and on again to Royston and Cambridge, while below them lies the Vale of Aylesbury; you can just see the beginning of it on their left. A pleasant land are those hills, and wealthy; full of noble houses buried in the deep beech-woods, which once were a great forest, stretching in a ring round the north of London, full of deer and boar, and of wild bulls too, even as late as the twelfth century, according to the old legend of Thomas a Becket's father and the fair Saracen, which you have often heard. 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!