The Testimony of the Rocks. 85 



nery. That lower stratum of the heavens occupied in the previous 

 vision by seething steam, or giay, smoke-like fog, is clear and trans- 

 parent ; and only in an upper region, where the previously invisible 

 vapor of the tepid sea has thickened in the cold, do the clouds 

 appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they 

 lie, thick and manifold,— an upper sea of great waves, separated 

 from those beneath by the transparent firmanent, and like them too, 

 impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has 

 taken place in creation ; but its most conspicuous optical sign is 

 the existence of a transparent atraosphei'e, — of a firmanent 

 stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from 

 the waters below. But darkness descends for the third time upon 

 the seer, for the evening and the morning have completed the 

 second day. 



" Yet again the light rises under a canopy of cloud ; but the 

 scene has changed, and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of 

 sea. The white surf breaks at the distant horizon, on an isulated 

 reef, formed mayhap by the Silurian or Old Red coral zoophytes 

 ages before, during the bygone yesterday ; and beats in long lines 

 of foam, nearer at hand, against a low, winding shore, the seaward 

 barrier of a widely spread country. For at the Divine command 

 the land has arisen from the deep, — not inconspicuously and in 

 scattered islets, as at an earlier time, but in extensive though flat 

 and marshy continents, little raised over the sea level ; and a yet 

 further fiat has covered them with the great carboniferous flora. 

 The scene is one of mighty forests of cone-bearing trees, — of palms, 

 and tree-fern, and gigantic club mosses, on the opener slopes, and 

 of great reeds clustering by the sides of quiet lakes and dark 

 rolling rivers. There is deep gloom in the recesses of the thicker 

 woods, and low thick mists creep along the dank marsh or slug- 

 gish stream. But there is a general lightening of the sky over 

 head ; as the day declines, a redder flush than had hitherto lighted 

 up the prospect falls athwart fern covered bank and long with- 

 drawing glade. And while the fourth evening has fallen on the 

 prophet, he becomes sensible, as it wears on, and the fourth dawn 

 approaches, that yet another change has taken place. The Creator 

 has spoken, and the stars look out from openings of deep un- 

 clouded blue ; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales 

 in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze into 

 gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious 

 ■sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his com'se rejoicing. R 



