(JUNE)
The rivers laugh in the valley,
Hills dreaming of their past,
And all things silently opening--
Opening into the Vast.
* * * * *
That pebble is older than Adam,
Secrets it hath to tell.
These rocks--they cry out history,
Could I but listen well.
--_William C. Gannet_: "_Sunday on the Hill-Top_."
THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS
I. In the Bad Land Library
It has been said[17] that crystals are dreaming of life, they act
so like living things. We may imagine the crystals in the granite
rocks which first came into being with the cooling of the fire globe,
dreaming out the long procession of life and change that followed them.
[Footnote 17: John Burroughs: "The Breath of Life."]
But what nightmares they must have had when they foresaw such creatures
as the one on page 23, that grotesque, that unbelievable combination of
bird and beast, the cerotosaurus! The bones of such monsters are one of
the most astonishing secrets of the hills.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOUNTAINS
[Illustration: HOW THE BAD LANDS GOT THEIR NAME
"The Bad Lands are so called because they are bad for
travelling--that is, if you're in anything of a hurry!"
]
The Bad Lands of South Dakota, in which, as in other parts of our great
West, so many bones of the ancients have been found, got their name
because they are so bad for travelling; that is to say, if you are in
anything of a hurry. But if you are just looking around--during your
vacation, in June, say--they are anything but bad lands. They are full
of interesting secrets. This secret of the ancient bones is only one
of them. Another thing they lead us into is the secret history of the
hills themselves; and as this particular book is mainly about the face
of the earth, the story back of the landscape, as it appears to the
traveller, we shall give the rest of this chapter to the origin of the
Hill family, using the word "hill" in its broadest sense. If you have
looked it up in the dictionary you have found that what people call a
"hill" depends a good deal on where they are. The Bad Lands are really
hills; but in South Dakota, where these particular bad lands are, they
also have what they call the Black Hills, which are really mountains,
because they "mounted" to get where they are.[18] They wrinkled up,
just as the continents themselves did, when they came out of the sea.
Most of the great mountain systems of the world were made in this way,
but table-lands may be so cut up by streams in course of time that they
look like mountains.
[Footnote 18: Mr. Pebble did not mean to say, I am sure, that the
word "mountain" comes from "mount," used in the sense of rising. The
original of the word mountain comes from the language of the People of
the Seven Hills, the Romans, and means a great mass of rock or earth
that sticks up.--_Translator._]
[Illustration: _Painted by Dewitt Parshall. In the possession of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art_
THE CATSKILLS IN A MIST
]
The Catskill Mountains are of this type, while real mountains may be
so worn down that you would take them for plains. You see, with the
Hills and the Mountains, as with other royal families, it isn't the
importance of the individual that counts, but the ancestry.
Another kind of real mountain, beside the folded-up kind, is the
mountain that is made where a rocky plain is split up into great stone
blocks by the movements of the earth crust, as it settles around the
shrinking centre. In the settling and crushing together of the rock
cover around the shrinking ball within, some of the blocks drop down,
and the blocks that are left sticking up make cliffs. Mountain ranges
so made have long, gentle slopes on the side opposite the cliffs. Then
there are volcanic mountains. Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan,
is one of these.
Mountains are also formed where the molten rock on the inside of the
earth is forced up under layers of rock nearer the surface. This lifts
these rock layers into domes. In the course of time the rivers and the
weather wear away the overlying rocks, leaving the hard central core
standing out. Harder layers of the overlying rock, wearing down less
rapidly than the other layers, often stand out as circular ridges with
valleys in between, so that the central core looks like some old ring
master at a circus. The Bear Paw Mountains and the Little Snowies of
Montana are mountains of this type.
WHERE MOUNTAINS GET THEIR PEAKS
Most mountain peaks, except those of the volcanoes, are remnants of
hard rock which have been left standing while the rivers and the
weather cut away the softer rock around them.
[Illustration: IN THE HIMALAYAS THEY MIGHT CALL THESE "HILLS"
High as these mountains are--we are right on the roof of the
Rockies--if they were in the Himalayas they might be called "hills,"
because there the scenery grows so much taller. What does the sharpness
of the peaks say as to the age of these mountains? Compared with the
Appalachians, for example?]
In regions of gently rolling country even small hummocks are sometimes
called "mountains," while out West, where scenery grows so tall,
the Black Hills seem to the people only stepping-stones to the big
Rockies. So they call them "hills." In the region of the Himalaya
Mountains--mountains that don't think anything, you remember, of
climbing up 16,000 to 30,000 feet in the air--a peak of 10,000 feet is
often called a "hill."
II. Hills That Were Moved In
Nearly every region has hills, because every region has or has had
running streams and the streams have carved out the hills. But there
are kinds of hills that aren't home-made; they were made elsewhere and
moved in. I believe this is the biggest hill secret of all, speaking of
hills proper and not of mountains.
[Illustration: _From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of
Ginn and Company_
KAME SCENERY IN NEW YORK STATE]
Almost all over the northern part of North America, as well as much of
Europe and Asia, there are mounds, heaps, and hills of various shapes
and sizes made up of a mixture of pebbles, sand, and clay. In the
United States these heaps make a big line of hills, like a procession
of ancient Indian chiefs, with bowed heads and stooped shoulders,
plodding back to the land of their fathers. And, sure enough, there
they go from down East clear across country to the far West and then
up North, where, as we know, these hill-moving giants, the glaciers,
came from.[19] For, beginning with Perth Amboy, N. J., say, you will
find them marching on through Elmira, N. Y., skirting the suburbs of
Cincinnati, winding their way through Indiana and Iowa up through
Wisconsin to the Dakotas and Montana, and so back into Canada.
[Footnote 19: Did you suspect the giants of this chapter were our old
friends the glaciers of the Ice Age, when I first began talking about
them?]
When the geologists first began digging into these hills they not only
found them as full of pebbles as a Christmas pudding is full of plums,
but the pebbles were of all kinds--sandstone, limestone, slate, granite.
JACK FROST DIDN'T DO IT!
"These different pieces of stone didn't come from the breaking up by
frost of the rock beds on which we now find them," said Some Wise Man,
"for then they would all have been of the same kind of rock."
"And besides," said Some Wise Man No. 2, "they would not have been
shaped into pebbles with the edges rounded off, as all pebbles are by
the waves of lakes or the sea or the water of flowing streams. So these
pebbles must have come from somewhere else."
"Yes, and a long way off," remarked Some Wise Man No. 3; "for look,
there aren't any rock beds anywhere around here from which some of
these pebbles could have been made."
"True enough," said Wise Man No. 4, "and I know what brought these
little foreigners. It was a great flood; for water moves not only
pebbles and clay, but, in times of flood, good-sized cobblestones."
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE "DRIFT" THEORY
So, for a long time, it was believed that the material in these hills
was drifted in by the waters. This was called the "drift" theory, and,
although it is now known that this theory was not the true one, such
heaps of clay and stones are still called "drift."
But the learned men kept on digging into the question and into the
hills, and finally more things were observed.
"Did you notice this?" said one. "The material is not separated into
layers and divided up into coarse, finer, finest as the sediment of
pebbles, sand, and mud is separated and divided when it settles along
shores. These pebbles, this sand and clay, are all mixed up."
"Look at this, will you?" (Here imagine a Learned Somebody picking
up a pebble with a scratched face like mine.) "Water never scratched
anything like that. Here are a lot more of these pebbles, all with
their faces scratched."
"And just see how all these scratched pebbles have flat faces," cried
another of these famous grown-up boys in these great field excursions.
"It looks to me as if they had been ground against something
hard--another rock, say; and for a long time."
HOW THE QUESTION WAS FINALLY SETTLED
Well, to make a long story short, they found that the glaciers of
the Ice Age, those great bodies of flowing ice, were the only things
that could have brought all this material together from such widely
separated regions (as shown by the different kinds of pebbles), and
left them all mixed up as they were; and the faces of many pebbles
scratched and flattened where they had been ground along.
And then, to put the question entirely beyond dispute, they find that
the glaciers are carrying down pebbles and stuff in just this way
to-day, and piling it up in hills in the valleys at the foot of the
mountains. Only the hills of to-day are much smaller, because the
glaciers themselves are so small compared with the giants of the past.
[Illustration: HOW THE OLD MEN MOVED THE HILL FURNITURE ABOUT
This picture of a glacier in Alaska shows you just how the Old Men
of the Mountain moved the hills about, that time. As indicated by
the white lines--which, of course, were added to the picture for the
purpose--the Alaska glacier melted back, leaving just such heaps of
pebbles, boulders, and soil as made certain types of hills. Then from
1910 to 1913 it advanced again, thus picking up the very hills it had
laid down and setting them farther along, just as the glaciers did in
the Ice Age.]
HOW THE HILL FURNITURE WAS MOVED ABOUT
During the Ice Age, when glaciers were all the fashion, they flowed
down, and then, as we have seen, melted back a certain distance; then
they flowed down again. Sometimes in later visits they flowed further
than before, and in so doing, you see, picked up some of the very
hills they had previously laid down and set them along somewhere else.
Sometimes we find different rows of hills, one right alongside the
other. This shows where the glacier melted away toward the mountains,
paused, then melted again and so on, each time leaving a group of hills
and not coming back there and disturbing them any more.
Such hills as we have been speaking of may be steep or gentle, and from
a few feet to more than 1,000 feet high, although they are seldom as
high as 1,000 feet.
And there are other kinds of hills made by the glaciers. One of the
most curious of these remind you of the serpent mounds left by the
mound builders in Ohio. These hills are the deposits left by the
streams, the veins inside the glacier's great body. The soil in them
is also apt to be in layers like the deposits of other rivers. These
hills wind along like serpents, because they reproduce the bends in the
streams inside the glacier. Such hills are called "eskers." They are
seldom more than a few rods wide and 10 feet or so in height. They run
for 10, 20, 40, 50, and sometimes 100 miles.
Around Boston, and all along Cape Cod and in parts of New York and
Wisconsin, you will see other hills called "drumlins"; and you will see
plenty of them, too. It is estimated that there are 6,000 in western
New York and 5,000 in southern Wisconsin, and they are all around
Boston. Bunker Hill is a drumlin. You wouldn't have to tell an Irish
boy what "drumlin" means, as they have these hills in Ireland, too, and
from Ireland came the name. The word means "little hill."
But while Mr. Glacier made the drumlins of the stuff he brought with
him, he enjoyed himself (at least let us hope so) tobogganing on hills
he found ready made. These hills are real mountains; usually the
granite heart of the mountain, because only a very strong rock could
stand having one of these playful giants riding over him and live to
tell the tale. Such glacier "slides" are referred to as "domes" or
"round tops" or "bald mountains."
Mr. Agassiz, the great scientist who spent so many years studying the
motion of glaciers, could tell from the height of one of these bald and
rounded hills how high the glacier was that rode over it. For instance,
the glaciers rode over what is known as Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania,
which is 1,500 feet high. "Then," Mr. Agassiz would have said, "the
glaciers that did that must have been at least 2,000 feet thick; for a
glacier can only flow over a rocky mass when it is half as tall again
as the rock."
You see it is the mass of it, the pressure of its own weight, that
boosts the glacier up the slide. It seems almost like lifting oneself
by one's boot-straps, doesn't it?
III. The Ants and the Volcanoes
Beside all the hills we have mentioned there are several others, well
worth looking into; ant-hills, for example, not only because ants are
so interesting in themselves but because the ants helped to answer what
for a long time was one of the puzzles of science, "How are volcanoes
made?"
When your mother's mother went to school--or it may have been back in
your mother's mother's mother's time--a little girl, on being asked in
the geography class, "What is a volcano?" was expected to say something
like this:
"Please, teacher, it's a mountain with a hole in it."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_From a photograph. Copyright by W. P. Romans_
SACRED FUJIYAMA AND ITS COUNTERPART FOUR THOUSAND MILES AWAY
On the top is the famous Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan,
and on the bottom Mount Rainier in the State of Washington. Although
they are more than four thousand miles apart, the two volcanoes
look as if they had been cast in the same mould, owing to the
uniform system by which volcanoes are built up.
THE WISE MEN AND THE ANT CRATERS
It does look it, doesn't it? But, what is still more striking, it
_isn't_ a mountain with a hole in it at all, if you mean, as the
little girl in the geography class meant, that it was once an ordinary
mountain and then had a hole put through it. For a long time it was
thought that volcanoes were simply mountains through which fire and
lava from the interior had forced its way. Finally, however, some
scientist thought perhaps of his Proverbs 6:6. In any event wise as he
must have been--how else could he have been a scientist?--he went to
the ant, learned her ways and became wiser. It was by noticing how the
ants build their little craters with the sand and clay they carry from
their underground homes that men got the idea that volcanoes may be
built up in much the same way. So they set to observing Mr. Volcano's
habits more closely, and sure enough, the ant had told the answer! The
stones, lava, cinders, and the stone dust called "volcanic ash" are
shot out by the explosion, and coming down in showers pile around the
opening, as the ant piles the pellets around the entrance to her nest.
As the explosions keep on the crater is piled higher and higher, and
the stones, cinders, and things, rolling down the sides, spread the
pile out at the bottom, much as the ant drops pellets over the edge
of her growing pile, and so both the cone-like ant-hill and the big
volcanic cone are built up.
WHY THE VOLCANO DOES NOT SMOKE
But here is something about volcanoes that will surprise most people.
They throw mud, they throw stones, but they don't smoke. What we call
smoke is the steam that makes--or at least helps make--the explosion.
It often has the color of brown smoke because of the rock which has
been blown into dust. Neither do volcanoes make "ashes." What is called
"ash" is this rock powder, made when the rocks are blown into pieces by
the sudden expansion of the water in them into steam.
WHY VOLCANOES SEEM TO FLAME
Neither do volcanoes flame, although they are supposed to. Only rarely
does flame issue from a volcano, and then only to a moderate extent,
due to the burning of the hydrogen gas. What seem to be huge flames
are the lights from the molten lava in the crater shining back on the
steam clouds above; and these apparent flames rise and fall and vary in
brightness because of the rise and fall of the lava.
But the greatest of volcanic eruptions--that is, the welling up
of melted rock from within the earth--have not built cones. The
lava spread out into vast plains in India and Abyssinia and in our
northwestern coast States. Great cracks in the earth cross one
another. It is at the crossroads that the volcanoes are apt to form,
while out of the cracks leading up to these crossroads the lava spreads
in sheets. Mount Shasta began at one of these traffic centres. It is a
big brother of the landscape which it overlooks.
[Illustration: "BUT VOLCANOES DO NOT SMOKE!"
This is an eruption of Vesuvius. You would think it was throwing
out smoke like a gigantic locomotive, wouldn't you, if you hadn't
read the text? The darker masses, which look so much like mingled
smoke and steam, are shadows. It is probably eight to ten miles
high--that cloud.
]
Lava, before it cools and for some centuries afterward, is the last
thing you would think of farming on, perhaps, but leave it to the
little chemists of the water and the air and it will decay into the
richest land you ever saw. That is why they raise the finest wheat and
the best fruit in the world right in the parts of Washington and Oregon
that were once covered by the lava flood.
Not only do volcanoes help to supply us with food by making rich soil
of the eruptions of the past, but all life might disappear from the
earth if they didn't go on exploding.
[Illustration: HOW VOLCANOES BLOW BUBBLES
The surface of lava is apt to bubble like hot mush; and for a
similar reason, the expansion of the gases within it. (In the case
of the mush it is the mixture of gases we call "air.") When such
lava cools you have sponge-like masses such as this.
]
Plants must have carbon and they get it from the air, but the amount
of it in proportion to their needs is never large. Moreover, every bit
of coal that is formed--and coal is being made to-day just as it was
in the coal ages, although not in such quantities--takes carbon from
the air and locks it up. Every bit of limestone deposited on the floor
of the sea locks up more carbon. But, fortunately, immense quantities
of carbon are given back to the air through the gases thrown out by
volcanoes, thus offsetting these losses.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by the American Museum of Natural History_
ROCKS AND BOMBS THROWN BY MOUNT PELÉE
Look at these giant rocks thrown out by Mount Pelée in 1902.
Compare them with the man and you will realize how big they are.
The rounded rocks in the foreground are volcanic "bombs"--masses of
lava discharged by successive outbursts of volcanic gases and given
their shape by being whirled through the air.
]
[Illustration: WHEN IS A VOLCANO DEAD?
This is Mount Rainier with its shroud of snow, reflected in Mirror
Lake. To all appearances it is as dead as dead can be; but until
after a volcano goes off you never can be entirely sure whether it
is dead or not; and then, of course, you know it isn't!
]
WHEN IS A VOLCANO REALLY DEAD?
When is a volcano dead? You never can tell. A volcano goes off when it
wants to, quite regardless of the fact that it has had the reputation
for a thousand years of being dead. And the worst of it is volcanoes
are like guns--only more so. A gun doesn't shoot any harder because
it wasn't supposed to be loaded; but the volcano, if it breaks out
unexpectedly, is violent in proportion to the length of time it has
been apparently dead. This is the reason. The original vent becomes
plugged up with the cooled lava. This plug being harder than the rest
of the mountain, the next outbreak is forced to take a new course,
and the longer the forces of explosion are held back the greater the
accumulation of energy and the more violent the discharge.
But why do volcanoes go off at all? Why can't they be quiet and
well-behaved like other mountains? Nobody knows for sure. On one thing
all scientific men seem to be now agreed; namely, that while the rocks
inside the earth are hot enough to melt they are hard as steel, owing
to the tremendous pressure of the rocks above them, and one theory
about volcanic eruptions is that they are caused by the release of the
pressure on this rock in one place and a pressing down in another, as
the earth's crust settles and crumples around the centre. Some of this
rock--that on which the pressure is released--melts and rises under the
folds of rising rock, and so makes the granite hearts of the greater
mountains. Some of it wells up through the cracks in the rock and
spreads in lava fields, while some of it gushes up and explodes at the
points where cracks cross and so make volcanoes.
This is one theory, but there are others. The latest is so big that we
will have to take it into the mind in sections.
THE LATEST THEORY OF ERUPTIONS
1. Imagine the interior of the earth divided into three zones. The
central zone, of course, is the hottest. Between this central zone and
the zone reaching down forty miles or so from the surface is a middle
zone. (Think of a doughnut ball inside a doughnut ring, with space
between the ball and ring. That will give you the idea.)
2. From what is known of the laws of heat it is assumed that the flow
of heat from the central to the middle zone is greater than the loss of
heat from the central to the outer zone. Thus the heat income of the
middle zone would constantly exceed its outlay, and so it would get
hotter and hotter.
[Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS SHAFT OF MOUNT PELÉE
In 1902, after the first explosion, Mount Pelée continued its
eruptions for several months, and in the late stages there slowly
rose, through the crater, this strange shaft of red-hot lava,
like a great iron beam forged by giant hammers in Vulcan's famous
blacksmith-shop. As it rose it crumbled and finally fell to pieces.
It was forced up by the gases beneath and shaped by the crater
through which it came; but can you conceive of anything more weird
and awesome?
]
3. This middle zone is made up of different kinds of rock that require
different degrees of heat to melt them. So some parts of this zone
would melt and form pockets of liquid rock, while other parts were
still unmelted.
4. These masses of liquid rock would also tend to melt their own way
upward, especially when given a lift by gases; for gases would be given
off, also, in this heating and melting process, and tend to work their
way toward the surface, carrying with them the liquid rock.
5. Now the greater the pressure under which a thing is kept the more
difficult it becomes for it to flow; the less the pressure the more
easily it flows and the longer it remains in the fluid state. So as it
rose fluid rock would require less heat to keep it fluid and would have
more heat left over for melting its way up. Then, being joined by other
fluid travelers, the entire mass would finally come to a crack in the
earth. Finally, you see, it would be only a matter of five miles or so
of comparatively clear track up to the land of the fresh air and the
blue sky where the rest of us live and where the volcanologists (the
men who make a special study of volcanoes) would be waiting to give it
welcome!
THE VOLCANOES AND THE SEA
If you will locate with red ink the volcanoes on the world map you will
notice that volcanoes, like mountains, seem fond of the sea. Moreover,
while a large proportion of mountain chains are near sea water, and
some even dip their feet into it, volcanoes bob up right in the seas
themselves. Not only do the land volcanoes make a great circle of
fire 22,000 miles long around the rim of the Pacific, but within this
immense amphitheater are the islands of our story books "scattered in
pleiads" over the ocean. These islands are simply the tops of sea
volcanoes. Of all the active volcanoes, the great majority are on
islands or along the borders of continents.
[Illustration: ON THE FIRING-LINES OF THE VOLCANOES]
THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA
Last of all in this story of the secrets of the hills, let us speak of
the big brothers of the family--the mountains.
You remember in the story of how the continents came up out of the
sea about wise old Xenophanes of Colophon, who figured out that the
mountains must at one time have been under the sea and why he thought
so, don't you? (page 13). Now get your geography and come here a
moment; I want to show you something else. Turn to the map of North
America. Where are the great mountain chains? Nearly all along the
borders of the sea. Now look at the map of South America, and where
are the mountains? Along the borders of the sea. Then take Europe,
Asia, Africa, Australia, and you see the same thing. Usually the main
mountain chains are along the sea border or they stand near the borders
of what was once a sea; as in case of the Rocky Mountains.
[Illustration:
_From Norton's "Elements of Geology."
By permission of Ginn and Company_
A BABY MOUNTAIN THAT STOPPED TO REST
A mountain, as you can readily imagine, isn't made in a day. Here
is a little mountain near Hancock, Virginia, that started up ages
ago and then stopped to rest; one of the ripples in which the great
Appalachian waves died away. This baby mountain has no granite mass
in its centre, as big mountains have, because the wrinkling didn't
reach down far enough into the earth to release the pressure on the
molten rock.
]
Why should mountains show such a fancy for salt water? It seems
strange, doesn't it? I know why it is because I helped make a mountain
myself once--up on the Canada Coast it was--and I learned a good deal
of the mountains and their ways. I will tell you about the mountains
and the sea a little later; after I have told you some other things.
First of all, this is how the Granite family helped make mountains. As
the great stone sides of the mountain rise the enormous pressure on
the melted rock farther down in the earth is released, and is forced
up under the mountain as it rises. Then, cooling, it crystallizes into
granite, as explained on page 131.
[Illustration: MOUNTAINS MADE TO ORDER
Of course nobody ever watched a mountain crumpling up in the way
mountains are believed to crumple up, the process is so slow. Yet,
to try out the theory, geologists in the universities make layers
of different material, corresponding to the strata of different
kinds of stone, and then subject this composition to pressure at
both ends, as the earth crust is supposed to be pressed in the
crumpling process. The result is that these artificial strata take
similar forms to those we see in mountain rock. And that's the
answer!
Notice the similarity of the rock wrinkles in the baby mountain in
Virginia and these imitation mountains of the laboratory.
]
WHY MOUNTAINS RUN NORTH AND SOUTH
Look at your relief map once more. Which way do the mountains run in
North America? In South America? In Africa? They all run in a general
north and south direction, don't they? Do you see why? The fact that
they were made along the coasts of the oceans would make them run north
and south, too, wouldn't it? The same thing explains why the Alps do
not run north and south. They were made by the sinking of a sea that
runs east and west, and so they started out to run east and west, too;
then they got a wrench, the particulars of which we need not go into
here, and were much mixed up, as we find them to-day.
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE EARTH SLOWED UP
But there is another thing that may have helped to make many great
mountains run north and south. Bedtime and sunrise used to come a
good deal oftener than they do now, for then the earth turned faster
on its axis. It turned fastest of all at the equator, just as it does
to-day. So the lands in the equatorial belt were pulled up and the belt
enlarged. Then, as the speed of the globe slackened, the enlarged belt
began to wrinkle because there was not the same amount of centrifugal
or "fly-away-from-the-centre" force to make it stand out. So wrinkles
came at right angles to the belt, just as do the waist gathers in a
dress.
And now about the mystery of the mountains and the sea. When we visit
the rock mills of the sea along in October[20] we shall notice, among
other things, that the rock is made along the sea border, and that the
coarsest sediment settles nearest the land. As a result this part of
the deposit is built up faster than that farther off shore, and as it
gets heavier and heavier it sinks. The deposits farther away from the
shore sink, also, but more slowly because these deposits are not piled
up so fast. Now, if you come down on one end of a seesaw what happens
to the other end? It goes up, doesn't it? The effect of this sinking of
the rocks of the sea upon the rocks of the adjoining land is something
like that. The rocks that make the continents extend out under the sea,
and the weight of the newly laid stone on the sea margin end not only
tips the rock beds up, but, sinking in toward the continental mass,
wrinkles it up, as the pages of this book will wrinkle if you push them
from the front edge. So you get your mountains along the sea border.
And they are in parallel ranges, because the land is crumpled up into
several folds, like a table-cloth pushed from one side.
[Footnote 20: Chapter X, "The Autumn Winds and the Rock Mills of the
Sea."]
"But," you say, "how about the Rocky Mountains? And the Carpathian
Mountains in Europe, not to mention several others? _They_ are not on
the borders of the sea."
WHY SOME MOUNTAINS ARE FAR FROM THE SEA
That's no sign they weren't near a sea border at some time. Let me
just ask you. Suppose you found that most of the great mountain
chains are on the borders of seas, and suppose you had figured out
the reasons I have just been giving, then what would you do if you
found a few mountains far back from the sea? You would probably try to
find how they got moved back, wouldn't you? That's just what _other_
men of science did. A study of the rocks of the mountains themselves
and other things bearing on the question goes to show that since the
mountains were made the sea might have retired from regions where it
had previously advanced, as it did in the case of the Mississippi
Valley, or the land may have risen between these mountains and the
sea. Moreover, the down wash from the mountains themselves sometimes
builds wide lands, which, as they extend and shut back the sea, leave
the mountains farther and farther away. Much of the land extending
east from the base of the Rocky Mountains was made in this way. The
Mississippi Valley was for ages, you know (page 10) the Mediterranean
Sea of North America, lying in the downward fold of our continent
between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians.
[Illustration:
_From the painting by David James_
THE WAVE]
WHY SEA WAVES RISE TO GREET THE MOUNTAINS
One of the strangest, most poetic phases of the relation between the
great blue mountains and the great blue sea is that waves, as they
approach the shores of continents bordered by mountain ranges, rise
higher and higher; and the higher the mountains, the higher rise the
waves. These waves are not driven by wind or tide but seem drawn
forward by some strange power. This power, however, is no stranger
than the one that makes us fall and bump our noses when we stub our
toes--the power of gravitation, according to which all masses attract
each other. It is the mass in the mountains that exerts a pull on the
waves; and the greater the mountains the greater the pull, of course.
In the Indian Ocean, for example, around the head of the Arabian Sea,
the waves rise far above sea level, largely because there is beyond
them, on the land, one of the greatest mountain masses in the world.
Wouldn't it give you a queer feeling if you were, say, a sailor, and
for the first time saw waves act like that? Uncanny, almost, isn't it?
But do the mountains remember their old parent of the white flowing
rocks and beard, Father Neptune? They act as if they did; particularly
in the way in which they come to imitate, in time, the shape of the
waves of the sea.
Ruskin,[21] speaking to artists about drawing mountains, says:
"Good and intelligent mountain drawing recognizes a great harmony among
the summits and their tendency to throw themselves into waves, closely
resembling those of the sea itself; sometimes in free tossing toward
the sky, but more frequently in the form of breakers, concave and steep
on one side, convex and less steep on the other."
[Footnote 21: "Modern Painters," Chapter IV.]
When you stand some day on one of the high peaks of the Rocky
Mountains, and look out over the great fields of upheaved stone,
you will notice how closely the parallel ridges resemble ranks of
waves making toward a shore. Like sea waves also, the vast backs of
these waves of stone are long and sloping, while their fronts are
comparatively short and much steeper. Another thing that makes you feel
as if you were looking out upon a sea whose waves had been changed to
stone is the fact that these stone waves are not only green but have
white caps; for in the valleys, and far up the sides of the mountains,
are the forests with the perennial green of their pines, and on the
peaks the eternal snows.
[Illustration: "AND EVERY TOSSING OF THEIR BOUNDLESS CRESTS"]
Not only is the mounting and forward drive of waves repeated in
mountain forms, but also the whirlpools among the rocks when sea waves
reach the shore. Says the famous French geographer, Reclus[22]:
"The centre of the Pyrenees resembles a great whirlpool around which
the mountains rise like enormous waves."
[Footnote 22: "The Earth."]
Finally we might imagine that the mountains, like the mountain streams,
hear the call of the sea and are stirred by it. For, again to quote
from Ruskin's wonderful chapter on the nature of the thing we call a
mountain:
"Behold as we look farther into it, it is all touched and troubled.
The rock trembles through its every fibre, like the chords of an
Æolian harp--like the stillest air of spring with the echoes of a
child's voice. Into the heart of all those great mountains and through
every tossing of their boundless crests and deep beneath all their
unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering of their substance.
"'I beheld the mountains and lo they trembled; and all the hills moved
lightly.'"
[Illustration:
_From Norton's "Elements of Geology."
By permission of Ginn and Company_
"THAT STRANGE QUIVERING OF THEIR SUBSTANCE"
This picture shows mountain-peaks carved in folded strata in the
Rocky Mountains in Montana. How well it illustrates Ruskin's grand
lines.
]
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
Of course you saw that the Greeks meant the story of Phaeton to
account, among other things, for the origin of deserts, but what is
there in it that would lead one to believe the Greeks knew there
were such things as volcanoes? Read what the encyclopedia says
about volcanoes and Vulcan and the physical geography of Greece and
the Greek islands.
Where is Mount Stromboli and why is it called "The Lighthouse of
the Mediterranean"?
On which of our coasts do we have young and growing mountains, and
on which old mountains that are much worn down?
Did you ever notice, on your map of Europe, how the curve of
the Carpathian Mountains follows the curve of the shore of the
beautiful Adriatic Sea so far away?[23] What does that remind you
of in the story of the relation between the mountains and the sea?
[Footnote 23: How far away is it? The scale of miles on your map will
tell.]
"Yes," you say, "but if mountains are formed on the borders of the
sea why are the Carpathians so far from the Adriatic; and the Alps
so far from the Mediterranean and the Rocky Mountains of America
and the Altai mountains of Asia so far away from any sea at all?"
Professor Heilprin[24] knew you would say that; at least I suppose
he did, for he has explained all this in his little book, written
especially for young people, "The Earth and Its Story." After you
have read this part of the story write it out in your own words and
then copy it into your notebook. You might call your own story,
"How Mountains are Moved Back from the Sea."
[Footnote 24: Professor of Geology in the Academy of Natural Sciences,
Philadelphia.]
What mountains do the waves of the Indian Ocean rise to salute? How
do they compare in size with other mountains that you know of?
How does the carbon in the gases of volcanoes get into the plants?
What does it say in Proverbs 6:6 that might remind one of the fact
that the ants helped solve the puzzle as to how volcanoes are made?
As to the hills that were moved in, a Wisconsin writer, who has,
among other things, written delightfully of his companionship with
the rocks and hills of his State[25] tells about sinking a well 132
feet deep on his farm, and going through this imported scenery all
the way.
[Footnote 25: Charles D Stewart, "Essays on the Spot."]
"Somewhere down there," he says, "if I had kept on going I should
have struck the original Wisconsin."
And why not be an author yourself? Start a little book of science
of your own and learn to make notes on interesting things you
have been reading about. For instance, put in it now some of the
different things we have learned about the wonder-workers of the
Ice Age, up to and including this chapter. Call what you write "The
Story of the Old Men of the Mountain." At the end of the part you
write now you can put "To be continued," just as they do in a story
paper; for we are not through with the work of the old men, as you
will see.
How did Rome get its seven hills? (You know it was called The City
of the Seven Hills.)
The Bible quotation in Ruskin about the trembling of the mountains
is from Jeremiah 4:24. How grand it sounds, doesn't it? Like the
music of a pipe organ. The Bible has many references to "hills" and
mountains. Here are some of the most striking: Psalms 114:4; Exodus
20:18; Deut. 5:23; Rev. 8:8; Micah 1:4; Isaiah 54:10.
Where are the most famous of the Bad Lands of our Western States?
Those of South Dakota are perhaps the strangest. Among other
strange things is the fact that some of the hills were set on fire
by rain--goodness knows how long ago--and these hills are like
gigantic stoves for the cattle, who never fail to collect around
them on bleak days.
In the article on South Dakota in the Britannica you'll learn all
about how the rain started the fire. Then perhaps you will want to
look up "spontaneous combustion" and "iron pyrites."
Aren't those ancient monsters whose bones they find in the hills
comical looking creatures--now that we are several million years
safely away from them? The comic artists (of pen and pencil) are
always having fun with them. Arthur Guiterman, for instance, in
picturing what spring must have been like in those old days:
"Go-dum, bally hoosh!" is the note of the Icthyosaurus.
"Notorum-dorando!" the blithe Hippocampus replies.
"Chin-chin-orizaba-pelote!" rings the jubilant chorus
Of sweet Pterodactyls that wing the cerulean skies.[26]
[Footnote 26: "The Laughing Muse."]
[Illustration: ON A NEW ENGLAND HILL
"Great lumps of pudding the giants threw,
They tumbled about like rain."
]