"Richard Jefferies - After London" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jefferies Richard)

their turn, and the two, overflowing, covered the country around; for the rivers brought down trees and
branches, timbers floated from the shore, and all kinds of similar materials, which grounded in the
shallows or caught against snags, and formed huge piles where there had been weirs.

Sometimes, after great rains, these piles swept away the timbers of the weir, driven by the irresistible
power of the water, and then in its course the flood, carrying the balks before it like battering rams,
cracked and split the bridges of solid stone which the ancients had built. These and the iron bridges
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likewise were overthrown, and presently quite disappeared, for the very foundations were covered with
the sand and gravel silted up.

Thus, too, the sites of many villages and towns that anciently existed along the rivers, or on the lower
lands adjoining, were concealed by the water and the mud it brought with it. The sedges and reeds that
arose completed the work and left nothing visible, so that the mighty buildings of olden days were by
these means utterly buried. And, as has been proved by those who have dug for treasures, in our time the
very foundations ate deep beneath the earth, and not to be got at for the water that oozes into the shafts
that they have tried to sink through the sand and mud banks.

From an elevation, therefore, there was nothing visible but endless forest and marsh. On the level ground
and plains the view was limited to a short distance, because of the thickets and the saplings which had
now become young trees. The downs only were still partially open, yet it was not convenient to walk
upon them except in the tracks of animals, because of the long grass which, being no more regularly
grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case, grew thick and tangled. Furze, too, and heath covered the
slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. There had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree
covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn extended around them.

By degrees the trees of the vale seemed as it were to invade and march up the hills, and, as we see in
our time, in many places the downs are hidden altogether with a stunted kind of forest. But all the above
happened in the time of the first generation. Besides these things a great physical change took place; but
before I speak of that, it will be best to relate what effects were produced upon animals and men.

In the first years after the fields were left to themselves, the fallen and over-ripe corn crops became the
resort of innumerable mice. They swarmed to an incredible degree, not only devouring the grain upon the
straw than had never been cut, but clearing out every single ear in the wheat-ricks that were standing
about the country. Nothing remained in these ricks but straw, pierced with tunnels and runs, the home
and breeding-place of mice, which thence poured forth into the fields. Such grain as had been left in
barns and granaries, in mills, and in warehouses of the deserted towns, disappeared in the same manner.

When men tried to raise crops in small gardens and enclosures for their sustenance, these legions of mice
rushed in and destroyed the produce of their labour. Nothing could keep them out, and if a score were
killed, a hundred more supplied their place. These mice were preyed upon by kestrel hawks, owls, and
weasels; but at first they made little or no appreciable difference. In a few years, however, the weasels,
having such a superabundance of food, trebled in numbers, and in the same way the hawks, owls, and
foxes increased. There was then some relief, but even now at intervals districts are invaded, and the
granaries and the standing corn suffer from these depredations.