IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



of whatsoever hides beneath his beloved 

 turf is highly irrelevant to the golfer's foot. 

 The day was, and not long since, when 

 geologists held the Laurentian granite to be 

 the first visible link of a disappearing chain ; 

 but the cosmic book-keeping is amended, 

 and drafts upon an unexpected fund of 

 years found lying to credit, balance the new 

 accounting. With enlarged scope for 

 immeasurable processes, fresh mountain 

 ranges have been tossed in air and wea- 

 thered to dust through ages of ages, con- 

 tinents have been sunk a thousand fathom 

 deep or built up from the abyssal depths of 

 ocean. In place of the lore of our child- 

 hood we are taught to believe that the 

 Laurentians thrust up through older 

 sedimentaries of such vast thickness that 

 their deposit exhausted unimaginable aeons. 

 Nothing remains near Murray Bay of these 

 miles of ancient crust. The mountains 

 themselves — perhaps the loftiest ever 

 reared to the heavens — are worn to the 

 very roots, yet still we may reverently view 

 them as the oldest Plutonic rocks exposed 

 on the earth's surface, and only the 

 geognostic is likely to detect in them the 

 down-at-heel look of mountains which have 

 seen better days. 



12 



I 



