



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




World's End
A Story in Three Books
By Richard Jefferies
Published by Tinsley Brothers, London.
This edition dated 1877.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

BOOK ONE: FACTS.

It is not generally known that the mighty city of Stirmingham owes its
existence to a water-rat.  Stirmingham has a population of half a
million, and is the workshop of the earth.  It is a proud city, and its
press-men have traced its origin back into the dim vista of the past,
far before Alfred the Great's time, somewhere in the days of those
monarchs who came from Troy, and whose deeds Holinshed so minutely
chronicles.

But this is all trash and nonsense, and is a cunning device of the able
editors aforesaid, who confound--for their own purposes--the city proper
with the tiny hamlet of Wolf's Glow.  This little village or cluster of
houses, which now forms a part, and the dirtiest part, of the city, can
indeed be traced through Hundred Rolls, Domesday Book, and Saxon
Charters, almost down to the time of the Romans.  But Stirmingham, the
prosperous and proud Stirmingham, which thinks that the world could not
exist without its watches and guns, its plated goods, its monster
factories and mills, which sends cargoes to Timbuctoo, and supplies Java
and Malabar with idols--this vast place, whose nickname is a by-word for
cheating, for fair outward show and no real solidity, owes its existence
to a water-rat.  This is a fact.  And it happened in this way.

Once upon a time there was a wide expanse of utterly useless land, flat
as this sheet of paper, without a trace of subsoil or any kind of earth
in which so much as a blade of grass could grow.  It was utterly dry and
sterile--not a tree nor a shrub to shelter a cow or a horse, and all men
avoided it as a waste and desolate place.  It was the very abomination
of desolation, and no one would have been surprised to have seen satyrs
and other strange creatures diverting themselves thereon.  Around one
edge of this plain there flowed a brook, so small that one could hardly
call it by that name.  A dainty lady from Belgravia could have easily
stepped across it without soiling the sole of her boot.

At one spot beside this brook there grew a willow tree.  This tree was a
picture in itself, and would have made the fortune of any artist who
would have condescended to make a loving study of it.  The trunk had
been of very large size, but now resembled a canoe standing upon end,
for nearly one half had decayed, and the crumbling wood had disappeared,
leaving a hollow stem.  The stem was itself dead and decaying, except
one thin streak of green, up which the golden sap of life still ran, and
invigorated the ancient head of the tree to send forth yellow buds and
pointed leaves.  Up one side of the hollow trunk an ivy creeper had
climbed to the top, and was fast hanging festoons from bough to bough.

In the vast mass of decaying wood at the top or head of the tree a briar
had taken root--its seed no doubt dropped by some thrush--and its
prickly shoots hung over and drooped to the ground in luxuriance of
growth.  The hardy fern had also found a lodging here, and its dull
green leaves, which they say grow most by moonlight, formed a species of
crown to the dying tree.

This willow was the paradise of such birds as live upon insects, for
they abounded in the decaying wood; and at the top a wild pigeon had
built its nest.  As years went by, the willow bent more and more over
the brook.  The water washing the soil out from between its roots formed
a hollow space, where a slight eddy scooped out a deeper hole, in which
the vermillion--throated stickleback or minnow disported and watched the
mouth of its nest.  This eddy also weakened the tree by underlining it
at its foundation.  The ivy grew thicker till it formed a perfect bush
upon the top, and this in the winter afforded a hold for the wind to
shake the tree by.  The wind would have passed harmlessly through the
slender branches, but the ivy, even in winter, the season of storms,
left something against which it could rage with effect.  Finally came
the water-rat.

If Stirmingham objects to owe its origin to a water-rat, it may at least
congratulate itself upon the fact that it was a good old English rat--
