My First Summer 



laid down here each in its place ; nor have 

 they stirred, most of them, through calm 

 and storm since first they arrived. They 

 look lonely here, strangers in a strange land, 

 huge blocks, angular mountain chips, 

 the largest twenty or thirty feet in diameter, 

 the chips that Nature has made in model- 

 ing her landscapes, fashioning the forms of 

 her mountains and valleys. And with what 

 tool were they quarried and carried? On 

 the pavement we find its marks. The most 

 resisting unweathered portion of the sur- 

 face is scored and striated in a rigidly par- 

 allel way, indicating that the region has 

 been overswept by a glacier from the north- 

 eastward, grinding down the general mass 

 of the mountains, scoring and polishing, 

 producing a strange, raw, wiped appearance, 

 and dropping whatever boulders it chanced 

 to be carrying at the time it was melted at 

 the close of the Glacial Period. A fine dis- 

 covery this. As for the forests we have 

 been passing through, they are probably 

 [ 134 ] 



