"
Hemmingway looked around him. The "higher ground" where they stood was
in reality only a mound-like elevation above the dead level of the flat,
and the few trees were merely recent young willows and alders. The area
of actual depression was much greater than he had imagined, and its
resemblance to the bed of some prehistoric inland sea struck him
forcibly. A previous larger inundation than Jules' brief experience had
ever known had been by no means improbable. His cheek reddened at his
previous hasty indictment of the settlers' ignorance and shiftlessness,
and the thought that he had probably committed his employers to his
own rash confidence and superiority of judgment. However, there was no
evidence that this diluvial record was not of the remote past. He smiled
again with greater security as he thought of the geological changes that
had since tempered these cataclysms, and the amelioration brought by
settlement and cultivation. Nevertheless, he would make a thorough
examination to-morrow.
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