NATURE IN MOTION. #1 



hurled them into her powerful currents, and thus they 

 were carried southward, bearing on their broad shoulders 

 huge masses of rock that had rolled down upon them 

 from their native mountains. These gigantic guests from 

 the North soon stranded against the mountains of the 

 continent ; they melted under a more genial sun, and 

 their burden fell to the ground. When, afterwards, the 

 bottom of this vast sea rose and became dry land, these 

 foreign visitors also rose with it, and found themselves, 

 with amazement, in a southern country, under a southern 

 sun. 



How long ago these early travels were made by rock 

 and stone, we know not; but they are by no means at 

 an end. The same process is still going on, even now. 

 The Arctic still sends her children out to dwell in warmer 

 climes, and year after year sees wandering stones come 

 from high, icy regions, and tumble into the Atlantic, or 

 strand on the low shores at the mouth of the St. Law- 

 rence. If the bottom of the sea on the banks of New- 

 foundland is ever to see the sweet light of heaven, it 

 will be found strewn with mighty rocks from Greenland, 

 and our children's children may yet erect a monument 

 to the great father of our country, hewn out of Green- 

 land stone. 



Other rocks are sea-born. Lofty mountains, now capped 

 with snow and wrapped in clouds, bear unmistakeable 

 evidence that they once dwelt at the very bottom of the 

 ocean. Sandstone blocks, piled up high until they form 

 large mountain chains, on which gigantic trees are deeply 

 rooted, and the birds of heaven dwell, to whose summit 



