198 On the Campus 



nothing if not that the earliest deposits on it indicate 

 the shore-line or bottom of the cretaceous seas. However 

 this may be, evidence of unusual geologic change is 

 everywhere within the shortest distance. Eocene, mio- 

 cene, in great thickness and many distinct strata were 

 spread abroad, all before ever these mountains were 

 formed at all. Then comes the folding, the mountain- 

 making, and the subsequent erosion and then the plio- 

 cene laid against the face of all these hills, probably to 

 the height of eight hundred feet. On the southern slope 

 of the Point, a most striking formation, probably eocene, 

 lies immediately on the granite ; there it is, anybody can 

 see it; a conglomerate, an ancient sea-bottom, fossilized, 

 full of boulders worn, and pebbles and sand all cemented 

 together, capping the granite. You have seen the same 

 thing on the top of the Alps, on the Eigi, for instance ; 

 but wherever seen the situation is one of the most mar- 

 velous and tells of the age of this world and of its 

 changes as can nothing else. This old sea-bottom is 

 crowned now with flowers and trees but all returning 

 rapidly, lapsing into the maw of that restless, insatiate 

 sea. There it goes, even while you watch! That big 

 wave which you but just escaped has broken off the very 

 coast on which you stood and is even now rolling it back 

 in its retreat far down the shingly bottom. Those who 

 follow us a hundred years from now will see another 

 shore-line. Ours will have become part and parcel of the 

 ocean floor. And yet, they say, the coast is rising. Every 

 once in a while Dame Nature shifts a little these outer 

 fringes of her mantle and all California goes trembling 



