THE EARTH FRAME 
205 
tense that it can be heard. The very air is 
freighted with the hush of a majestic presence. 
It comes to us with an indescribable vibration 
which has about it the hum of distance and im- 
mensity. The sea-shell which the child holds to 
its ear suggests the same wondering tale. It is 
something that tells of power and eternity. 
How many centuries that masonry has stood ! 
How many centuries, through heat and cold and 
earthquake shocks, it will continue to stand ! 
‘¢ When you and I behind the veil have passed, 
Oh but the long, long years the world will last.” 
Surely, it has a strong foundation. Not here 
in the Alps alone, but in the Caucasus, the 
Andes, the Rockies, its supporting courses of 
rock keep peeping out. It was only geological 
yesterday that these breaks in the crust became 
apparent ; and, perhaps, under the rounded, tim- 
ber-grown slopes of the Appalachians, or the old, 
old, grass-grown plains there rest still mightier 
strata of rock. Again, the scratches made in 
the great shell by eroding rivers like the Colo- 
rado, the Mississippi, the Hudson, the Rhine, 
the Danube, are but recent gnawings of water 
upon rocks. Under the table-lands and the 
foot-hills may rest an untouched rock-structure 
Under- 
structure of 
the moun- 
tains, 
Hardness 
of the 
rocks, 
