TIME AND CHANGE 



doors. All the profound, formative, world-shaping 

 forces of nature go on in a realm that we can reach 

 only through our imaginations. They so far tran- 

 scend our human experiences that it requires an act 

 of faith to apprehend them. The repose of the hills 

 and the mountains, how profound! yet they may be 

 rising or sinking before our very eyes, and we detect 

 no sign. Only on exceptional occasions, during earth- 

 quakes or volcanic eruptions, is their dreamless 

 slumber rudely disturbed. 



Geologists tell us that from the great plateau in 

 which the Grand Canon is cut, layers of rock many 

 thousands of feet thick were cut away before the 

 canon was begun. 



Starting from the high plateau of Utah, and going 

 south toward the canon, we descend a grand geo- 

 logic stairway, every shelf or tread of which consists 

 of different formations fifty or more miles broad, 

 from the Eocene, at an altitude of over ten thousand 

 feet at the start, across the Cretaceous, the Juras- 

 sic, the Triassic, the Permian, to the Carboniferous, 

 which is the bottom or landing of the Grand Canon 

 plateau at an altitude of about five thousand feet. 

 Each step terminates more or less abruptly, the first 

 by a drop of eight hundred feet, ornamented by 

 rows of square obelisks and pilasters of uniform pat- 

 tern and dimension, "giving the effect," says Major 

 Dutton, "of a gigantic colonnade from which the 

 entablature has been removed or has fallen in ruins." 



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