158 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The wear of 
water. 
The 
sculptor of 
the land. 
sunlight—have a cutting and a wearing power 
that nothing can withstand. There is no edge 
to water itself, but its action sets grit and 
gravel, stones and even bowlders moving, and 
the teeth of these are very sharp. <A stream 
running four miles an hour will roll down 
stones nearly three inches in diameter, and 
wherever the water flows and particles touch, 
there is wear upon the land. This never-ceas- 
ing rub, rub, rub, carves deep lines in the 
course of centuries ; and soit is that the smooth 
water becomes the great sculptor of the earth. 
Standing on Storm King and viewing the val- 
ley of the Hudson, standing on the Minnesota 
bluffs and overlooking the valley of the Missis- 
sippi, standing on the heights above the Cafion 
of the Colorado, we gain some idea of what lines 
this great sculptor can cut. A gulch five hun- 
dred or a thousand feet deep, from one to ten 
miles broad, and from a thousand to two thou- 
sand miles long, is not an extraordinary feat for 
water to accomplish. Along the sand-stone 
battlements of the Mississippi bluffs, far above 
the present bed of the river, the trace of water- 
wear is still plainly visible ; and centuries ago 
the little hills, the inland valleys, the clefts and 
cloves and narrow defiles in the Catskill Moun- 
