10 A DAY IN THE OBERLAND 



level both upwards and downwards, whilst often the folds 

 are rolled over on to each other. 



This crumpling and folding has gone on at great 

 depths — that is to say, some miles below the surface (a 

 mere nothing compared with the 8000 miles diameter of 

 the globe itself), though we now see the results exposed, 

 like the pastry folded by a cook. Immense time has been 

 taken in the process. A folding movement involving a 

 vertical rise of an inch in ten years would not be noticed 

 by human onlookers, but in 600,000 years this would 

 give you a vertical displacement of more than 5000 ft. 

 (nearly a mile !). It has been shown that in Switzerland, 

 along a line of country extending from Basle to Milan, 

 strata of 10,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. in thickness, which, if 

 straightened out, would give a flat area of that thickness, 

 and of 200 miles in length, have been buckled and folded 

 so as to occupy only a length of 130 miles ! The former 

 tight-fitting skin of horizontal rock layers has " had to " 

 buckle to that extent here (and in the same way in other 

 mountain ranges in other parts of the world), because the 

 whole terrestrial sphere has shrunk, owing to the gradual 

 cooling of the mass, whilst the crust has not shrunk, not 

 having lost heat. 



Filled with interest and delight in these things, I 

 reached the railway station at Lauterbriinnen, from 

 whence the little train is driven far up the mountain, even 

 into the very heart of the Jungfrau, by an electric current 

 generated by a turbine, itself driven by the torrent at our 

 feet, the waters of which have descended from the glaciers 

 far above, to which it will carry us. In a few minutes I 

 was gently gliding in the train up the slope to the 

 " Wengern Alp " and the " Little Scheidegg " — a slope up 

 which I have so often in former years painfully struggled 

 on foot for four hours or more. One could to-day watch 

 the whole scene, in ease and comfort, during the two 



