II 
THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 
FIND there is enough of the troglodyte in most 
persons to make them love the rocks and the 
caves and ledges that the air and the rains have 
carved out of them. 
The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; 
they are one more remove from us; but they lie back 
of all, and are the final source of all. I do not sup- 
pose they attract us on this account, but on quite 
other grounds. Rocks do not recommend the land 
to the tiller of the soil, but they recommend it to 
those who reap a harvest of another sort — the ar- 
tist, the poet, the walker, the student and lover of 
all primitive open-air things. 
Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the 
rocks as from no other objects in the landscape. 
Geologic time! How the striking of the great clock, 
whose hours are millions of years, reverberates out 
of the abyss of the past! Mountains fall, and the 
foundations of the earth shift, as it beats out the 
moments of terrestrial history. Rocks have literally 
come down to us from a foreworld. The youth of 
the earth is in the soil and in the trees and verdure 
that springs from it; its age is in the rocks; in the 
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