CHARACTERS OF MOUNTAINS. 243 



primary separation of the land and the water. 

 Certainly there is no subject more inviting ; for 

 it brings us immediately to the grand questions of 

 " whence we came," and " whither we must go?" 

 and in such places it almost seems as if the rich 

 and the tempting of the small of nature were kept 

 away, in order that our meditations may be on the 

 sublime of the great. It is true that we do find 

 traces of recent times even in those situations : 

 the waste occasioned by the last winter, the last 

 thunder storm, or the last flood; and though 

 they are few in number, and not in general very 

 high in usefulness, there are animals and vegeta- 

 bles there, and their states indicate the state of 

 the season and the weather, upon the same prin- 

 ciples as others do in other places, though not to 

 the same degree. 



But still those characters are characters of the 

 mere surface, and they and all that belongs to, or is 

 connected with them, might be taken away without 

 much alteration of the grand mass of what is before 

 us. Deep sea shells, embedded by countless thou- 

 sands in the solid strata near the tops of high 

 mountains, are good quotable proofs of the sea's 

 having been there, when we are arguing the point 

 on the plain with probably not an inch of native 

 rock within our horizon ; but to appeal to so small, 

 though satisfactory testimony on the mountains, 

 would be about as unnecessary as to prove the 

 presence of the sea from the shells upon the beach, 

 on which we were standing, and looking upon the 

 expanse of waters, curling in pleasant waves, and 

 wafting into port the richly-loaded vessels from 

 the opposite hemisphere. 



Y 2 



