Scramble Up The Archaean By Myself And Sit In
The Shade, Near The Shelter Tent, Until I Am Put On The Burro Joe And
Started Off With The Doctor.
Back at Bass Camp.
"Dad had brought the burros here to receive us, all the
animals we had ridden to Point Sublime having been left on the north side.
At Bed Rock Camp we all have
lunch; and then at 4:00, the others with the burros having gone on
ahead, we follow. I remain on my burro all the way up, save at three
places, where Mr. James deems it best for me to dismount. At last, we make
the final ascent, I see the tent above my head, then the roof of the house
at Bass Camp, and in another moment or two the most memorable and wonderful
trip of my life is over."
CHAPTER XIII. How The Canyon Was Formed*
* This chapter, while in manuscript, was read by Dr. Charles D. Walcott,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and formerly Director of the
United States Geological Survey, and also by Professor Matthis, of the
Survey. It may therefore be accepted as a fairly accurate and authoritative
presentation of the geological conditions existent at the Canyon, with
their explanations, as accepted by the leading scientists of to-day.
The beginning of land. In the long ago centuries, when the world was
"without form and void," waters covered the face of the earth, and darkness
brooded over the waters. As the earth's crust began to shrink under the
water, in the process of cooling, the first masses to crumple up, to
wrinkle, were the first to arise above the surface of the vast, primeval,
shoreless ocean. They appeared as tiny islands, pinnacles, or ridges thrust
up, exactly as we see them sometimes on the coast, - hidden at high tide;
appearing again at low tide.
The Laurentian Hills. Nature had plenty of time before her, so she did not
hurry her work, and it took long centuries before there was any large
amount of land thrust up out of the bosom of the sea. The scientists are
able to tell us, with some definiteness, which came forth first. They say
that on the continent of America the earliest born land was a mass of
granitic rock in Canada, - the Laurentian Hills. The next to peer above the
surface and feel the warmth of the sun were peaks and ridges that made
islands of themselves, in what are now known as the Rocky Mountains and the
Appalachians. Now, at last, the great waves of the sea and the resistless
storms had something to play with, and they pounced down upon the land as
with tooth and claw. They rubbed and pounded, raged and smashed for a
thousand years, and then another thousand, and still another, while Mother
Earth uneasily thrust forth her rocky children out of the ocean into the
light of day. Surprised at such treatment by the storms and seas, the newly
born earth masses began to crumble and "weather." The detached fragments
slipped back, or were washed back, into the deeper or shallower parts of
the ocean, and were there tossed back and forth, pounded and ground into
sand and silt, into pebbles and boulders, while more land was slowly being
thrust out for the angry sea to work upon.
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