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wandering child reached one of these culminating points and stopped on
it, hoping that a larger space might reveal further indications. He
tried to see around him. Before him, in place of a horizon, was a vast
livid opacity. He looked at this attentively, and under the fixedness of
his glance it became less indistinct. At the base of a distant fold of
land towards the east, in the depths of that opaque lividity (a moving
and wan sort of precipice, which resembled a cliff of the night), crept
and floated some vague black rents, some dim shreds of vapour. The pale
opacity was fog, the black shreds were smoke. Where there is smoke there
are men. The child turned his steps in that direction.
He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the descent,
among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by the mist, what seemed
to be either a sandbank or a tongue of land, joining probably to the
plains of the horizon the tableland he had just crossed. It was evident
he must pass that way.
He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a diluvian alluvium
which is called Chess Hill.
He began to descend the side of the plateau.
The descent was difficult and rough. It was (with less of ruggedness,
however) the reverse of the ascent he had made on leaving the creek.
Every ascent is balanced by a decline. After having clambered up he
crawled down.
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