4 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



mountains recede, while the rootlike branches 

 in their flat deltas are at the same time spreading 

 farther and wider into the seas and making new 

 lands. 



Under the control of the vast mysterious 

 forces of the interior of the earth all the conti- 

 nents and islands are slowly rising or sinking. 

 Most of the mountains are diminishing in size 

 under the wearing action of the weather, though 

 a few are increasing in height and girth, espe- 

 cially the volcanic ones, as fresh floods of molten 

 rocks are piled on their summits and spread in 

 successive layers, like the wood-rings of trees, on 

 their sides. New mountains, also, are being cre- 

 ated from time to time as islands in lakes and 

 seas, or as subordinate cones on the slopes of old 

 ones, thus in some measure balancing the waste 

 of old beauty with new. Man, too, is making 

 many far-reaching changes. This most influ- 

 ential half animal, half angel is rapidly multiply- 

 ing and spreading, covering the seas and lakes 

 with ships, the land with huts, hotels, cathedrals, 

 and clustered city shops and homes, so that soon, 

 it would seem, we may have to go farther than 

 Nansen to find a good sound solitude. None of 

 Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are 

 wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must 

 always be in great part wild, particularly the sea 

 and the sky, the floods of light from the stars, 

 and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, 



