20 OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 



particles carried in this water, just as you see mud carried in a stream 

 after a shower, deposited themselves gradually in layers on the bottom, 

 continually lessening the water's depth. Geologists call these layers 

 strata after they harden into rock. 



If you were in the Glacier National Park to-day you would see 

 broad horizontal streaks of differently colored rock in the mountain 

 masses thousands of feet above your head. These are the very strata 

 that the. waters deposited in its depths in those far away ages. 



But how did they get away up there in the air ? The answer to 

 that is the wonderful story. 



According to one famous theory of creation, the earth was once 

 a great globe of gases, and it has contracted through unnumbered 

 cycles of time to its present hard rocky self. Well, in the times we 

 speak of the earth was still contracting or growing smaller. Conse- 

 quently its rocky crust continually kept getting too big and, like the 

 orange you are sucking, some part of it somewhere was always 

 bulging and giving way. 



That is what must have happened where the Glacier National Park 

 now is. The bottom of the lake or sea, under the enormous pressure 

 against its sides and from below, gradually rose and became dry land. 



Then the land at this point, probably because it was pushed hard 

 by the contracting land masses on both sides of it, rose in long irregu- 

 lar wavelike masses, forming mountains. Then, when the rock could 

 no longer stand the awful strain, it cracked and one edge was thrust 

 upward and over the other edge and settled into its present position. 



The edge that was thrust over the other was thousands of feet thick. 

 It crumbled into peaks, precipices, and gorges. 



Upon these mountains and precipices the snows and the rains of 

 uncounted centuries have since fallen, and the ice and the waters 

 have worn and carved them into the area of distinguished beauty 

 that is to-day the Glacier National Park. 



Think of this when you go there, and when you hear people speak 

 of the Lewis Overthrust you will know what they mean. This range 

 of the Rockies is called the Lewis Mountains. 



SCENES OF EXQUISITE BEAUTY 



To picture to yourselves this region, imagine a chain of very lofty 

 mountains twisting about like a worm, spotted everywhere with snow 

 fields and bearing glistening glaciers in sixty or more huge hollows. 



Imagine these mountains crumbled and broken on their east sides 

 into precipices sometimes three or four thousand feet deep and 

 flanked everywhere by lesser peaks and tumbled mountain masses of 

 smaller size in whose hollows lie the most beautiful lakes you have 

 ever dreamed of. 



