THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST'S EYES 



They are immeasurably old, but they do not look 

 it, except to the eye of the geologist. There is no- 

 thing decrepit in their appearance, nothing broken, 

 or angular, or gaunt, or rawboned. Their long, easy, 

 flowing lines, their broad, smooth backs, their deep, 

 wide, gently sloping valleys, all help to give them a 

 look of repose and serenity, as if the fret and fever 

 of life were long since passed with them. Compared 

 with the newer mountains of uplift in the West, 

 they are like cattle lying down and ruminating in 

 the field beside alert wild steers with rigid limbs and 

 tossing horns. They sleep and dream with bowed 

 heads upon the landscape. Their great flanks and 

 backs are covered with a deep soil that nourishes a 

 very even growth of beech, birch, and maple forests. 

 Though so old, their tranquillity never seems to 

 have been disturbed; no storm-and-stress period 

 has left its mark upon them. Their strata all lie 

 horizontal just as they were laid down in the old 

 seas, and nothing but the slow gentle passage of the 

 hand of time shows in their contours. Mountains 

 of peace and repose, hills and valleys with the flow- 

 ing lines of youth, coming down to us from the fore- 

 world of Palseozoic time, yet only rounded and mel- 

 lowed by the aeons they have passed through. Old, 

 oh, so old, but young with verdure and limpid 

 streams, and the pastoral spirit of to-day ! 



To the geologist most mountains are short-lived. 

 When he finds great sturdy ranges, like the Alps, 



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