204 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The vault- 
ing of the 
globe. 
The base of 
Jungfrau. 
work ? The northern Libyan desert may yet 
form the bed of a great inland sea. 
And is there nothing more permanent about 
the earth than prairie grass, and forest trees, 
and shifting desert sands—nothing more sub- 
stantial than these? If one stands on the 
height of Mtirren and looks across to the base 
of the Jungfrau, he may think differently. What 
a stupendous pedestal for that white-capped 
young goddess of the Oberland! The wall of 
rock is simply tremendous in volume. It 
stretches wide, it reaches high. It is the vault- 
ing of the globe—a glimpse of the understruct- 
ure of the crust—exposed to view by the acci- 
dent of a valley. It is this massive vaulting that 
apparently holds the globe together as the shell 
does the egg. It stretches around the whole 
earth ; and the forests, the sands, the mountains, 
the seas, are related to it only as the mosses, the 
wind-blown dust, and the rain-pools to the Col- 
iseum’s walls upon which they lie. The struct- 
ure is almost stifling to the imagination, so 
great is the plan, so small is the mind of man 
to grasp it. If we look away from the wall of 
rock up into the far valleys, where the blue air 
lies packed in between the uplifted peaks, and 
listen a moment, we shall realize a silence so in- 
