. . . of how Jacquetta Hawkes’ country was formed
Chapter I. Two Themes:
a) the author describes her little hemmed-in London garden. b) she speculates about how the world was formed and how it depends totally on the sun. “Writing in 1949 I say that night and day were formed. It is, I know, foolish to use words for a time before consciousness had grown in men and had formed the image of night and day as the spinning globe sent them from sunlight under the cone of shadow and again at dawn.”
Chapter II. Creation:
“I was born into a world which, at least in my part of it, had long made itself aware that it was not a plate but a sphere, and that it was the servant and not the master of the sun. I was not born too late to absorb some misconceptions from my nurse. Indeed I had an unquestioning belief in one of these until the other day, and I am therefore probably right to assume that many of my fellows believe in it still. . .
“But life began with granite and basalt that gouted when the hard skin cracked. It is curious to think that these, with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and CO2, the water and early atmosphere of earth, have made all the material paraphernalia with which man surrounds himself, the skyscraper, the wine-glass, the vacuum cleaner, jewels the mirror into which I look. And the woman who looks? Where did it come from, this being behind the eyes, this thing that asks? How has this been gleaned from a landscape of harsh rocks and empty seas?”
III Recollection
IV An Aside on Consciousness
V Creation of the Mountain country
VI Creation of the Lowlands VII Digression on Rocks, Soils, and Men
VIII Land and People, see extracts below
IX Land and Machines
X Prospect of Britain
Appendices: timescales & maps
A Land is available, new or used from Amazon.co.uk and amazon.com
a wayfarer’s notes 