THE DIVINE ABYSS 
fertile fields or hill-slopes would have taken their 
place. In the older Hawaiian Islands, which prob- 
ably also date from Tertiary times, the rains have 
carved enormous cafions and amphitheatres out of 
the hard volcanic rock, in some places grinding the 
mountains to such a thin edge that a man may liter- 
ally sit astride them, each leg pointing into opposite 
valleys. In the next geologic age, the temples and 
monuments of the Grand Cafion will have largely 
disappeared, and the stupendous spectacle will be 
mainly a thing of the past. 
It seems to take millions of years to tame a moun- 
tain, to curb its rude, savage power, to soften its 
outlines, and bring fertility out of the elemental 
crudeness and barrenness. But time and the gentle 
rains of heaven will do it, as they have done it in the 
East, and as they are fast doing it in the West. 
An old guide with whom I talked, who had lived 
in and about the cafion for twenty-six years, said, 
“While we have been sitting here, the cafion has 
widened and deepened”; which was, of course, 
the literal truth, the mathematical truth, but the 
widening and deepening could not have been appre- 
hended by human sense. 
Our little span of human life is far too narrow for 
us to be a witness of any of the great earth changes. 
These changes are so slow, — oh, so slow, — and hu- 
man history is so brief. So far as we are concerned, 
the gods of the earth sit in council behind closed 
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