THE HE ION OF FIRE. 



53 



highly heated portions. If the solid and the molten por 

 tions suffered equal losses of heat, the molten, by shrink 

 ing the most, became too small for the enveloping crust. 

 The crust, there 

 fore, must wrin 

 kle, to fit the 

 shrinking nucle 

 us. Thus incip 

 ient inequalities 

 of the surface be 

 gan to appear. 

 These were the 

 germs of moun 

 tains and of con 

 tinents. From a 

 new-born wrinkle 

 grew the lofty 

 Cordillera. a&amp;gt;--.. 



A Scene of ter- Fig. 13. Ideal Section of the Earth in primeval times. 



. ... a, a, a. The surface when solidification first commenced. 



rillC Sublimity ap- &, &, b. Wrinkles developed in the crust by the shriuk- 

 , age of the nucleus. 



proaches. As yet 



no water existed upon the earth. No rain had fallen upon 

 the parched and blackened crust. All the water which 

 now fills the oceans, and the rivers, and the lakes all 

 which saturates the atmosphere, and the soil, and the 

 rocks rested then upon the earth as an arid, elastic, in 

 visible vapor, extending an unknown distance into sur 

 rounding space. This vapor was not cloudlike, but in 

 tensely hot and transparent. It was a gas, like the steam 

 just issuing from the escape-pipe of a steam-boiler. The 

 time had now arrived, however, when the remoter regions 

 to which this aqueous gas extended began to be so far re 

 duced in temperature as to cause condensation to begin- 

 as the heated steam, rushing from the locomotive, soon 



