Now I think that I had better give you a little science. I believe
that a book which children are to read, always ought to teach
something, so I mean to teach you as much as I can. You must know,
then, that gold is one of the heaviest things in the world. Now you
know that the earth is always whirling round and round, so that the
things that it is made of naturally get shaken up more or less.
Besides that, it was once a good deal softer than it is now, so that
the things that it is made of could move about more than they can now.
And so the most of the gold, being, as I said, one of the heaviest
things, got sifted down toward the bottom--that is, toward the centre
of the earth. Only a little of it was left near the top, compared with
what went to the bottom. It would not be at all surprising if the
middle of the earth were a solid lump of gold, a thousand miles thick.
But we poor men cannot dig down very deep into the earth. We can only
scratch a little dirt off the top, and if we happen to grub up a few
pounds of gold we think that we are rich, and the rest of the world
thinks so too.
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