“Strange! There it runs and runs, all the time—all day, and all night; all summer, and all winter; all this year, and all last year, and every year. Where can all the water come from?”
Then he thought that he should like to follow the brook up, and find where it came from; but he concluded that it must be a great way to go, through bushes, and rocks, and marshes; and he saw at once that the expedition was out of the question for him.
Just then he heard another gurgling in the water near him, and, looking down, he saw more bubbles coming up to the surface, very near where they had come up before. Rollo thought he would get a stick, and see if he could not poke up the mud, and find out what there was down there, to make such a bubbling. He thought that perhaps it might be some sort of animal blowing.
He went off of the bridge, therefore, and began to look about for a stick. He had just found one, when all at once he heard a noise in the bushes. He looked up suddenly, not knowing what was coming, but in a moment saw Jonas walking along towards him.
“Ah, Jonas,” said Rollo, “are you going home?”
“Yes,” said Jonas, “unless you will go for me.”
“Well,” said Rollo, “what do you want me to get?”
“I want some fire, to burn up some brush. You can bring out the lantern.”
“Very well,” said Rollo, “I will go; only I wish you would tell me where these bubbles come from out of the bottom of the brook.”
“What bubbles?” said Jonas.
So Rollo took his stick, and pushed the end of it down into the mud, and that made more bubbles come up.
“They are bubbles of air,” said Jonas.
“But how comes the air down there,” said Rollo, “under the water?”
“I don’t know,” said Jonas; “and besides I must not stay and talk here; I must go back to my work. I will talk to you about it when you come back.” So Jonas returned to his work, and Rollo went to the house again after the lantern.
When he came back to the brook, he found that he could not make any more bubbles come up; but instead of that, his attention was attracted by some curiously colored pebbles near the shore. He put his hand down into the water, and took up two or three of them. He thought they were beautiful. Then he took his dipper, which had, all this time, been lying forgotten by the side of a log, on the shore, and walked along—the dipper full of raspberries in one hand, the lantern in the other, and his bright and beautiful pebbles in his pocket.
Rollo followed the path along the banks of the brook under the trees, until at length he came out to the open ground where Jonas was at work. There was a broad meadow, or rather marsh, which extended back to some distance from the brook, and beyond it the land rose to a hill. Just at the foot of this high land, at the side of the marsh farthest from the brook, was a pool of water, which had been standing there all summer, and was half full of green slime. Jonas had been at work, cutting a canal, or drain, from the bank of the brook back to this pool, in order to let the water off. The last time that Rollo had seen the marsh, it had been very wet, so wet that it was impossible for him to walk over it; it was then full of green moss, and sedgy grass, and black mire, with tufts of flags, brakes, and cranberry-bushes, here and there all over it. If any person stepped upon it, he would immediately sink in, except in some places, where the surface was firm enough to bear one up, and there the ground quivered and fluctuated under the tread, for some distance around, showing that it was all soft below.
When Rollo came out in view of the marsh, he saw Jonas at work away off in the middle of it, not very far from the pool. So he called out to him in a very loud voice,
“Jo—nas!–hal—lo!”*
Jonas, who had been stooping down at his work, rose up at hearing this call, and replied to Rollo.
Rollo asked him how he should get across to him.
“O, walk right along,” said Jonas; “the ground is pretty dry now. Go up a little farther, and you will find my canal, and then you can follow it directly along.”
So Rollo walked on a little farther, and found the canal where it opened into the brook. He then began slowly and cautiously to walk along the side of the canal, into the marsh; and he was surprised to find how firm and dry the land was. He thought it was owing to Jonas’s canal.
“Jonas,” said he, as he came up to where Jonas was at work, “this is an excellent canal; it has made the land almost dry already.”
“O, no,” said Jonas, “my canal has not done any good yet.”
“What makes the bog so dry, then?” said Rollo.
“O, it has been drying all summer, and draining off into the brook.”
“Draining off into the brook?” repeated Rollo.
“Yes,” said Jonas.
“But there is not any drain,” said Rollo; “at least there has not been, until you began to make your canal.”
“But the water soaks off slowly through the ground, and oozes out under the banks of the brook.”
“Does it?” said Rollo.
“Yes,” said Jonas; “and the only use of my canal is to make it run off faster.”
“Ah! now I know,” said Rollo, half talking to himself.
“Know what?” asked Jonas.
“Why, where all the water of the brook comes from; at least, where some of it comes from.”
“How?” said Jonas. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why, I could not think where all the water came from, to keep the brook running so fast all the time. But now I know that some of it has been coming all the time from this bog. Does it all come from bogs?”
“Yes, from bogs, and hills, and springs, and from the soakings of all the land it comes through, from where it first begins.”
“Where does it first begin?” said Rollo.
“O, it begins in some bog or other, perhaps; just a little dribbling stream oozing out from among roots and mire, and it continually grows as it runs.”
“Is that the way?” said Rollo.
“Yes,” said Jonas, “that is the way.”
During all this time Rollo had been standing with his lantern and his dipper in his hands, while Jonas had continued his digging. Rollo now put the lantern down, and handed the dipper to Jonas, telling him that he had brought him some raspberries.
Jonas seemed quite pleased with his raspberries. While he was eating them, Rollo asked him if a raspberry was a seed.
“No,” said Jonas. “The whole raspberry is not, the seeds are in the raspberry. They are very small. When you eat a raspberry, you can feel the little seeds, by biting them with your teeth.”
Rollo determined to pick some seeds out, and see how they looked; but Jonas told him that the way to get them out was to wash them out in water.
“Take some of these raspberries,” said he, “in the dipper to the brook, and pour in some water over them. Then take a stick and jam the raspberries all up, and stir them about, and then pour off the water, but keep the seeds in. Next, pour in some more water, and wash the seeds over again, and so on, until the seeds are all separated from the pulp, and left clean.”
“Is that the way they get raspberry seeds?” said Rollo.
“Yes,” said Jonas, “I believe so. I never tried it myself; but I have heard them say that that is the way they do with raspberries, and strawberries, and all such fruits.”
Rollo