TIME AND CHANGE 



fifty feet; the fourth, five hundred feet; and the 

 fifth, five hundred feet. The finish at the top shows 



as a heavy crumbUng wall, 

 probably one hundred feet 

 or more high. How the mass 

 seems to be resisting the 

 siege of time, throwing out 

 its salients here and there, 

 and meeting the onset of the foes like a military 

 engineer. 



The pyramidal form of these rock-masses is ac- 

 counted for by the fact that they were carved out 

 from the top downward, and that each successive 

 story is vastly older than the one immediately be- 

 neath it. The erosive forces have been working 

 whole geologic ages longer on the top layer of rock 

 than on the bottom layer; hence the topmost ones 

 are entirely gone or else reduced to small dimensions. 

 But what feature or quality of the rock it is that 

 lends itself so readily or so inevitably to these archi- 

 tectural forms — the four square foundations, the 

 end pilasters and balustrades, and so on — is to 

 me not so clear. The peculiar rectangular jointings, 

 the alternation of soft and hard layers, the nearly 

 horizontal strata, and other things, no doubt, enter 

 into the problem. Many of these features are found 

 in our older geology of the East, as in the Catskills 

 — horizontal strata, hard and soft layers alternat- 

 ing, but with the vertical jointing less pronounced; 



54 



