That would be too steep a climb, for even such a great engine as this.
Then there is a crack which we can get through?
Look and see.
Why, we are coming to a regular wall of hill, and-- And going right through it in the dark.

We are in the Box Tunnel.
* * * * * There is the light again: and now I suppose you will find your tongue.
How long it seemed before we came out! Yes, because you were waiting and watching, with nothing to look at: but the tunnel is only a mile and a quarter long after all, I believe.

If you had been looking at fields and hedgerows all the while, you would have thought no time at all had passed.
What curious sandy rocks on each side of the cutting, in lines and layers.
Those are the freestone still: and full of fossils they are.

But do you see that they dip away from us?
Remember that.

All the rocks are sloping eastward, the way we are going; and each new rock or soil we come to lies on the top of the one before it.