PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE UNITED STATES 309 



later centuries Apollo, as the stimulator of life, developt into the 

 god of culture ; but to early tradition he is the sun, a nature-god 

 coordinate with Pluto, the underground. Geology has long 

 recognized Pluto, but has made him coordinate with the sea- 

 god, Neptune, naming her rocks in two great groups, the plutonic 

 and neptunian. Neptune has place also in the pantheon of 

 geography, but only as a vassal of the mightier Apollo. 



Apollo gives to the earth light, heat, frost, storm, and rivers, 

 and is daily the creator of motion and life. Pluto is an unknown 

 god, hidden and mysterious. The Greeks named him Hades, 

 the unseen. His only attribute of which we are altogether sure 

 is heat. Imagination pictures him in various ways, but imagina- 

 tions differ, and their conflicting sketches need not claim our 

 attention today. He made the continent and is never tired of 

 remaking it. But for him the globular earth would be envelopt 

 in an endless ocean, and life would be far different from the life 

 we know. By ridging the outer rind of the earth he created the 

 land and set a limit to the' sea, and from age to age he swells 

 broad land tracts upward or draws them' downward, so that the 

 outlines of sea and land are ever changing. Crushing the rock 

 together here and there, he forces up mountain ridges ; fusing it, 

 he pours out lavas that congeal and build up other mountains. 



Apollo dips up water from the sea and sprinkles it on the rock 

 to moisten and soften it. By alternate heating and chilling 

 he cracks it into bits ; and by a complex chemistry which, de- 

 spite our studies, still seems magical, he changes it to fine soih 

 in which plants may grow and in which the husbandman may 

 delve. Lifting more water from the sea, he pours it broadly on 

 the land to make rills and rivers, which wash the soil away, 

 spreading it in the hollows and building plains. This scouring 

 cuts the uplands into hills, but eventually they, too, are worn 

 down, so that the plain is the end and aim of the water work. 

 Preparing for the plow the yielding soil and level surface which 

 make its labors light, and showering the fields with fertilizing 

 moisture, he is the beneficent patron of agriculture. 



The mountains of Pluto, lifted to the region of clouds, intercept 

 and engender storms and are the perennial sources of streams. 

 Rugged with gorges and crags and scantily clothed with soil, they 

 extend no welcome to the farmer, but instead they harbor a forest 

 growth, storing timber and fuel; and in some lands their huge 

 banks of winter snow are reservoirs for the water of irrigation. 



Pluto and Apollo separate the earth stuff into kinds. If all 



