THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 



that preserves the form of sunken islands like 

 wax maintains the form of a coin, has not the 

 power in the course of millions of years to build 

 whole mountains? 



We rise out of the water into the light. Now 

 we will go to the islands of stone and penetrate 

 into their depths, where only the miner goes, and 

 enter in even deeper than he. Very well ; we pro- 

 ceed into the depths. The rocks open up before 

 us even as the water with its nine hundred at- 

 mospheres of pressure gave way before us. We 

 pass through the coral layers mixed with float- 

 ing sand, through shallow strata into the tim- 

 ber work of the mine which penetrates into the 

 foundation of the earth. At six thousand feet 

 we come to the last depth that man has reached 

 by boring. We have left the coral cliff, the 

 "living rock," behind us, and are in the original 

 rock. There rise around us in enormous squares 

 the stiffened waves of a stone ocean. Indeed, 

 there is much that looks like the work of waves : 

 the strata are bent, swollen, often regularly 

 rolled up and slipped over one another. We can 

 imagine how the crust of the earth writhed in 

 its hidden depths, how it pressed the hard stone 

 until it became plastic; a silent titanic work, 

 whose power still occasionally quivers above in 

 earthquakes that overturn human cities like 

 card houses. In these twistings and bendings of 

 the layers thousands of feet below the surface 

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