to be killed and buried, by tens of thousands; and how misery and
ruin fell on hundreds of honest men and women over many of the
richest counties of England: but how we in this vale had no
cattle-plague; and how there was none--as far as I recollect--in
the uplands of Devon and Cornwall, nor of Wales, nor of the Scotch
Highlands? Now, do you know why that was? Simply because we
here, like those other up-landers, are in such a country as
Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber,
and so destroyed their own rainfall--a 'land of brooks of water,
of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.'
There is hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running
brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were drinking
their health and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in
the Cambridgeshire fens--which were drained utterly dry--the poor
things drank no water, too often, save that of the very same
putrid ponds in which they had been standing all day long, to cool
themselves, and to keep off the flies. I do not say, of course,
that bad water caused the cattle-plague. It came by infection
from the East of Europe. But I say that bad water made the cattle
ready to take it, and made it spread over the country; and when
you are old enough I will give you plenty of proof--some from the
herds of your own kinsmen--that what I say is true."

"And as for pure water being life to human beings: why have we
never fever here, and scarcely ever diseases like fever--zymotics,
as the doctors call them? Or, if a case comes into our parish
from outside, why does the fever never spread? For the very same
reason that we had no cattle-plague. Because we have more pure
water close to every cottage than we need. And this I tell you:
that the only two outbreaks of deadly disease which we have had