r seven years into
Fairyland, till you awoke again in the same place, to find all changed
around you, and yourself grown thin and old.

These are all dreams and fancies--untrue, not because they are too
strange and wonderful, but because they are not strange and wonderful
enough: for more wonderful sure than any fairy tale it is, that Madam How
should make a rich and pleasant land by the brute force of ice.

And were there any men and women in that old age of ice? That is a long
story, and a dark one too; we will talk of it next time.

CHAPTER VI--THE TRUE FAIRY TALE

You asked if there were men in England when the country was covered with
ice and snow. Look at this, and judge for yourself.

What is it? a piece of old mortar? Yes. But mortar which was made Madam
How herself, and not by any man. And what is in it? A piece of flint
and some bits of bone. But look at that piece of flint. It is narrow,
thin, sharp-edged: quite different in shape from any bit of flint which
you or I ever saw among the hundreds of thousands of broken bits of
gravel which we tread on here all day long; and here are some more bits
like it, which came from the same place--all very much the same shape,
like rough knives or razor blades; and here is a core of flint, the
remaining part of a large flint, from which, as you may see, blades like
those have been split off. Those flakes of flint, my child, were split
off by men; even your young eyes ought to be able to see that. And here
are other pieces of flint--pear-shaped, but flattened, sharp at one end
and left rounded at the other, which look like spear-heads, or
arrow-heads, or pointed axes, or pointed hatchets--even your young eyes
can see that these must have been made by man. And they are, I may tell
you, just like the tools of flint, or of obsidian, which is volcanic
glass, and which savages use still where they have not iron. There is a
great obsidian knife, you know, in a house in this very parish, which
came from Mexico; and your eye can tell you how like it is to these flint
ones. But these flint tools are very old. If you crack a fresh flint,
you will see that its surface is gray, and somewhat rough, so that it
sticks to your tongue. These tools are smooth and shiny: and the edges
of some of them are a little rubbed from being washed about in gravel;
while the iron in the gravel has stained them reddish, which it would
take hundreds and perhaps thousands of ye