If the hunters, about to pitch their camp for the night, should stumble
on so much as a crumbling brick or a fragment of hewn stone, they at
once remove at least a bowshot away.

The eastward flow of the Thames being at first checked, and finally
almost or quite stopped by the formation of these banks, the water
turned backwards as it were, and began to cover hitherto dry land. And
this, with the other lesser rivers and brooks that no longer had any
ultimate outlet, accounts for the Lake, so far as this side of the
country is concerned.

At the western extremity the waters also contract between the steep
cliffs called the Red Rocks, near to which once existed the city of
Bristol. Now the Welsh say, and the tradition of those who dwell in that
part of the country bears them out, that in the time of the old world
the River Severn flowed past the same spot, but not between these
cliffs. The great river Severn coming down from the north, with England
on one bank and Wales upon the other, entered the sea, widening out as
it did so. Just before it reached the sea, another lesser river, called
the Avon, the upper part of which is still there, joined it passing
through this cleft in the rocks.

But when the days of the old world ended in the twilight of the
ancients, as the salt ocean fell back and its level became lower, vast
sandbanks were disclosed, which presently extended across the most part
of the Severn river. Others, indeed, think that the salt ocean did not
sink, but that the land instead was lifted higher. Then they say that
the waves threw up an immense quantity of shingle and sand, and that
thus these banks were formed. All that we know with certainty, however,
is, that across the estuary of the Severn there rose a broad barrier of