THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 



the original plateau out of which the mountains 

 were carved was first lifted up in Palaeozoic times, 

 when the earth was in her teens. The indications 

 are that on some quiet day the peaceful waters 

 became suddenly charged with new material and 

 the streams or rivers from some unknown land 

 in the vicinity poured it into the old Devonian 

 lakes where it hardened into rock. The changes 

 indicated by these streaks of soft red sandstone 

 suddenly alternating with the hard laminated Cat- 

 skill formation, well up the mountain-sides, with 

 a sharp dividing line between them, occurred many 

 times during the Devonian Age. During one geo- 

 logic day the earth-building forces brought one 

 kind of material, and the next day material of 

 quite another kind, and this alternation without 

 any change of character seems to have kept up 

 for millions of years. How curious, how interest- 

 ing! Both from near-by land surfaces, and yet so 

 different from each other! How difficult to form 

 any mental picture of the condition of things in 

 those remote geologic ages! It is as if one day 

 it had snowed something like brick-dust to a 

 depth of many feet, and the next day it had 

 snowed a dark-gray dust of an entirely different 

 character, and that this alternation of storms had 

 kept up for ages. Long before we reach the tops 

 of the mountains, or at about a thousand feet 

 above the river valley, the red soft strata cease, 



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