THE DIVINE ABYSS 



fertile fields or hill-slopes would have taken their 

 place. In the older Hawaiian Islands, which prob- 

 ably also date from Tertiary times, the rains have 

 carved enormous canons and amphitheatres out of 

 the hard volcanic rock, in some places grinding the 

 mountains to such a thin edge that a man may liter- 

 ally sit astride them, each leg pointing into opposite 

 valleys. In the next geologic age, the temples and 

 monuments of the Grand Canon will have largely 

 disappeared, and the stupendous spectacle will be 

 mainly a thing of the past. 



It seems to take millions of years to tame a moun- 

 tain, to curb its rude, savage power, to soften its 

 outlines, and bring fertility out of the elemental 

 crudeness and barrenness. But time and the gentle 

 rains of heaven will do it, as they have done it in the 

 East, and as they are fast doing it in the West. 



An old guide with whom I talked, who had lived 

 in and about the canon for twenty-six years, said, 

 "While we have been sitting here, the canon has 

 widened and deepened"; which was, of course, 

 the literal truth, the mathematical truth, but the 

 widening and deepening could not have been appre- 

 hended by human sense. 



Our little span of human life is far too narrow for 

 us to be a witness of any of the great earth changes. 

 These changes are so slow, — oh, so slow, — and hu- 

 man history is so brief. So far as we are concerned, 

 the gods of the earth sit in council behind closed 



59 



