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 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES 
 OF A PEBBLE
 
 ADVENTURES IN NATURE'S WONDERLANDS 
 
 THE 
 
 STRANGE ADVENTURES 
 OF A PEBBLE 
 
 BY 
 
 HALLAM HAWKSWORTH 
 
 AVXHOR or "THE ADVENTURES or A GRAIN OF DOST' 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 A 
 
 THE SCRIBNER PRESS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of this little book is to present the chief 
 features in the strange story of the pebbles; and so of the 
 larger pebble we call the earth. It is hoped that readers 
 of various ages will be entertained, without suspecting 
 that they are being taught. 
 
 Several things led the author to believe that such a book 
 might be wanted. 
 
 (a) The circumstances under which it was written. 
 
 (b) The fact that there seemed to be an opportunity 
 for improvement not only in the popular presentation of 
 scientific topics but in the character and method of review 
 questions and suggestions following such topics in school 
 texts. 
 
 (c) Experience has shown that pictures may be made 
 to perform a much more vital function in teaching than 
 is usually assigned to them in the text-books. 1 
 
 1 On this subject I cannot do better, perhaps, than quote from an 
 article on "The Picture Book in Education," contributed to the New 
 York Evening Post : 
 
 "We learn more easily by looking at things than by memorizing 
 words about them. The principle, of course, holds whether the image 
 which the eye receives comes from the object itself or only from the 
 picture of the object. Therefore we should learn to read pictures as 
 well as books. 
 
 "New York has long recognized the added efficiency in the teaching 
 process to be obtained from the use of pictures. The Division of Visual 
 Instruction, established thirty years ago, has an international reputa- 
 tion for the extent of its equipment, the simplicity of its methods, 
 and the excellence of its results."
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 (d) In the particular field to which this story relates 
 comparatively little has been written either for reading in 
 the family circle or for use in the school; although the 
 relation of physiography, not only to human history and 
 political and commercial geography but to the whole im- 
 mense realm of natural science, is so basic and its great 
 principles and processes so striking in their appeal to curi- 
 osity and our sense of the grand and the dramatic. 1 
 
 What here appear as chapters were originally little talks 
 for the evening entertainment of the juvenile members of 
 a certain family and the neighboring children, who were 
 attracted by what came to be known as the "pebble par- 
 ties," during the season at Mount Desert Island. They 
 are here given in substantially the form in which they 
 first saw the light. While they proved entirely intelligible 
 to boys and girls of eight and ten they seemed equally 
 interesting to the older members of the audience, including 
 a youth of eighteen in his last year of high school, whose 
 comments, in the language of his caste, deserve to share 
 the credit for whatever of whimsical humor and colloquial 
 style the author may have succeeded in incorporating into 
 the narrative. 
 
 The familiar tone, the number and variety of the chap- 
 ters, the sub-heads and marginal captions and the char- 
 acter and treatment of the illustrations have a similar 
 origin. They represent the variety of aspects under which 
 it was found necessary to present the facts in order to hold 
 
 1 Commenting on the need of popular literature dealing with earth 
 science, Doctor Shaler says: 
 
 " In no other fields are large and important truths so distinctly 
 related to human interests so readily traced; yet the treatises dealing 
 with these truths are few in number and generally recondite."
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 a capricious audience whose attendance and attention were 
 wholly voluntary. 
 
 The use of unfamiliar words and scientific terms has 
 been avoided as much as possible, consistent with the edu- 
 cational purpose of the book. It is to be remembered that 
 educators do not consider it good practice to omit all words 
 which children cannot understand at sight; the theory being 
 that it is by the judicious introduction of words not cur- 
 rent on the playground that the intellectual interests and 
 capacities of children are enlarged. With regard to scien- 
 tific topics (it is further argued) a large proportion of the 
 classics of science written for the general reader and which 
 boys and girls of fourteen and upward should be able to 
 read easily and with pleasure Shaler, Darwin, and Wal- 
 lace, for example contain quite a few scientific terms; and 
 these it would be well that young people learn from con- 
 text or definition in their previous reading in works of a 
 more elementary nature. 
 
 Moreover, while younger children will read a book the 
 general character of which interests them, even though 
 they do not understand every word or get all the thoughts 
 in it, sophisticated youths of the high-school age will have 
 none of it, if they suspect that they are being talked down 
 to. In the story of the pebble the aim, accordingly, has 
 been not only to make a book that young people will not 
 outgrow but one that will be of some interest to adults, 
 particularly to travellers. 
 
 Not only in the text is special emphasis laid on the inter- 
 pretation of landscape, but the character, treatment, and 
 arrangement of the illustrations is intended to train the 
 eye to read the story of the earth drama as recorded in the
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 forms of valley, mountain, field, and shore. And since 
 the earth is not, after all, a mere geological specimen 
 these illustrations include reproductions of paintings, 
 scenery as interpreted by the poet and the artist. 
 
 To create an appropriate atmosphere and so add to the 
 vividness of conception, the twelve chapters each deal 
 with a seasonable subject. 
 
 RELATION TO THE TEXT-BOOK 
 
 The relation of this book to the formal study of physiog- 
 raphy or geology in the schools will be apparent. The 
 classified and exhaustive treatment of the text-book, while 
 so admirably adapted to organize knowledge already 
 acquired, or reward an appetite already aroused, is not at 
 all adapted for creating this appetite in the first place; a 
 thing so essential to true progress in education. For exam- 
 ple, in a text-book, the many aspects of glaciers and their 
 work, which are here distributed in a number of sections 
 (as the discovery of these aspects was distributed in time) , 
 are usually dealt with in a single chapter or series of chap- 
 ters, whose nature the reader at once gathers from the 
 title, "The Work of the Glaciers." 
 
 The young reader or school pupil is thus deprived of the 
 element of surprise, of the pleasure of following an unfold- 
 ing mystery, which was at once the inspiration and reward 
 of men of science to whom we owe these discoveries. 
 
 If left to the text-book alone, the student acquires his 
 facts too rapidly and too easily. The result is a loss of 
 both pleasure and profit. The movements of the glaciers 
 and the nature of the movement, which gave Agassiz seven 
 years of keen delight to ascertain, the pupil acquires
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 through his text-book in something like seven minutes, 
 and without either the pleasure or the profit of Agassiz' 
 gradual and inductive acquirement of this knowledge. 
 
 In other words, to begin the study of a given science by 
 means of a text-book, without previously arousing interest 
 in the subject, is to assume a greater zeal on the part of 
 school pupils and college students than, it is reasonable 
 to assume, was possessed by the scientists themselves. It 
 was the attraction of the unknown rather than the rapid 
 acquirement of the known that drew them on to their 
 grand discoveries, their illuminating generalizations. 
 
 In recording the pebble's story the endeavor has been 
 to cause the reader to come upon the data on which these 
 generalizations were based, piece by piece, here a little and 
 there a little as did the scientists themselves. 
 
 Interesting as the mere facts of physiographic science 
 finally become to the trained scientist they make little 
 appeal either to the average boy or the average adult, if he 
 must first come in contact with them as they are presented 
 in the text-book; classified, catalogued, labelled in scientific 
 terms and laid away (as it seems to him) in chapter, sec- 
 tion, and paragraph, like specimens in a museum. 
 
 Since this book is concerned mainly with landscapes and 
 the story of the forces that helped to shape them it does 
 not undertake to deal with mineralogy. Within the fields 
 thus defined it is believed that the larger facts, the great 
 moving causes of things, have been covered as thoroughly 
 as they are in the average elementary text-book. In addi- 
 tion, subjects in great variety are touched upon which do 
 not come within the province of the text-book, but are 
 such as naturally suggest themselves in the broader and
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 richer discussion of such topics in the conversation of 
 cultivated people. 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Since the whole purpose of the school is to prepare for 
 the larger world of life and books outside the school, special 
 attention is invited to the department of questions and 
 suggestions following each chapter. As indicated in the 
 introduction to the first of the series, an effort has been 
 made to capitalize the fact that young people enjoy conun- 
 drums and curious quests in the field of books quite as 
 well as mere passive reading. 
 
 The treatment is somewhat discursive, and in this and 
 other respects is intended to be more like the conversation 
 of cultivated parents with their children than like the 
 review questions of a text-book; the review element being 
 incidental, in recalling the topics out of which these ques- 
 tions and suggestions grow. The correlations in the most 
 modern texts lead into equally wide and varied fields. 
 
 If he has succeeded in the aim thus indicated, the author 
 believes this department may easily prove one of the most 
 interesting as well as educatively useful features of the 
 work. H. H.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGI 
 
 I. In the Beginning i 
 
 II. The Winter that Lasted All Summer ... 20 
 
 III. The Soul of the Spring and the Lands of Eternal 
 
 Snow 41 
 
 IV. The April Rains and the Work of the Rivers . 66 
 V. The Fairyland of Change 93 
 
 VI. The Secrets of the Hills 113 
 
 VII. The Stones of the Field 145 
 
 VIII. The Desert 161 
 
 IX. In the Lands of the Lakes 191 
 
 X. The Autumn Winds and the Rock Mills of the 
 
 Sea 212 
 
 XI. The Handwriting on the Walls . . .' . . 234 
 
 XII. The End of the World 260 
 
 Index 279
 
 THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 In furtherance of the idea referred to in the preface, 
 that a far more effective use may be made of pictures 
 in teaching than is usual, a very extended use has been 
 made of them in "The Strange Adventures of a Pebble," 
 and, moreover, these pictures have been made to talk, 
 as it were, by means of extended analysis and comment 
 upon their significant features; this for the double purpose 
 of teaching important facts, as only pictures can teach, 
 and of stimulating the invaluable habit of observation 
 and of logical reasoning about things observed. 
 
 One of the main purposes of the book, as stated in the 
 preface, is to stimulate interest in further reading and 
 study on the many subjects to which it relates. 
 
 The author wishes to make special acknowledgment of 
 the co-operation of the editor of St. Nicholas and the fol- 
 lowing publishers in supplying the illustrations on the 
 pages indicated: 
 
 The Macmillan Co.: u, 29, 36, 41, 52, 83, 108, 121, 
 132, 145, 152, 168, 173, 195, 221, 225, 226, 235, 240, 249, 
 254, 257. The Century Co.: For the following from the 
 St. Nicholas magazine: 38, 47, 70, 184, 199. 
 
 D. Appleton and Co.: 12, 22, 60, 97, 102, 136, 141, 224, 
 236, 241, 243, 245, 247, 252, 257. G. P. Putnam's Sons: 
 59, 105, 147. E. P. Button & Co.: 157. Henry Holt & 
 Co.: 37, 84, 149, 193, 207, 250. Silver Burdett Co.: 28. 
 World's Work: 79. Geological Survey: 13, 23, 114, 130, 
 194, 238. Wisconsin Survey: 33. Encyclopedia Bri- 
 tannica: 256.
 
 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES 
 OF A PEBBLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 (JANUARY) 
 
 In the beginning the earth was without form and void. 
 
 Genesis i: 1-2. 
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 I. How THE WORLDS AND MYSELF WERE BORN 
 
 I've been through fire and water, / tell you ! From my 
 earliest pebblehood the wildest things you could imagine 
 have been happening to this world of ours, and I have 
 been right in the midst of them. 
 
 HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT 
 
 The first scenes of all in my strange, eventful history 
 remind me of the old Greek story about Apollo and that 
 boy of his Phaeton. Apollo's business, you remember, 
 was to take the sun through the skies every day in his 
 golden chariot, so that people could see to get about. It 
 was a ticklish job, as the horses were fiery. As a rule, 
 however, things went fairly well. To be sure, there were 
 overdone days occasionally, just as there are now. Then 
 the crops would wither and the birds and brooks stop 
 singing. This, as the little Greek boys and girls believed, 
 was because Apollo's horses ran too near the earth,
 
 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 HOW MR. APOLLO TURNED ON THE LIGHT 
 
 Behold the sun-god starting on his daily round ! Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, 
 precedes him scattering flowers, the lovely colors of the morning sky. The other 
 figures are the early hours. 
 
 The Greek poets used to play with these myth stories a good deal, changing 
 them to suit their poetic fancy. Theocritus, for example, in a beautiful fragment 
 that has come down to us, paints this picture of the breaking day: 
 
 "Dawn, up from the sea to the sky, 
 By her fleet-footed steeds was drawn." 
 
 You see, according to this poet's conception, Miss Dawn had a chariot of her own. 
 
 But nothing serious happened until one time Phaeton 
 persuaded father to let him drive the sun chariot for a 
 day. The horses, feeling at once a new and weak hand 
 on the reins, tore out of the regular road and went dashing 
 right and left. They even got so near the North Pole 
 that the ice began to melt. They fairly flew down toward 
 the earth, set the mountains smoking, and dried up all the 
 springs and most of the rivers. 
 
 THEN THINGS BEGAN TO HAPPEN 
 
 They dried up a certain great lake, so that there is to 
 this day the Libyan Desert in Africa, where this lake used 
 to be. They made the very sea shrink so that there were 
 "wide naked plains where once its billows rose."
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 3 
 
 Finally Mother Earth called on Jupiter Pluvius, as god 
 of thunder, rain, and storms, to stop Phaeton and the run- 
 aways and put out the fire. 
 
 Struck by a bolt of lightning poor Phaeton fell headlong 
 from the skies, and a world- wide rain put out the world- 
 wide fire. 
 
 From a cameo by Da Vinci 
 
 THE FALL OF PHAETON 
 (Museum, Florence) 
 
 Now, would you believe it, this queer old Old World 
 story may really be true in its way. Of course there never 
 was a sun god and no spoiled boy who did just that thing; 
 although many spoiled boys have tried to set the world 
 on fire and failed because they thought it would be so easy. 
 
 But the earth really has been on fire in a sense; that is, 
 has melted from the heat. And in parts w.here you would 
 least suspect the rocks. There's where I got into it. 
 And some of these rocks, not more than ten miles 1 from 
 where you live, are either still molten, or continue to melt 
 from time to time; as you can see when lava comes pour- 
 ing from volcanoes, such as those of Hawaii. 
 
 Straight down, of course.
 
 4 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 In the days of the Apollo story most men still thought 
 the earth was the centre of the universe; that the sun, 
 moon, and stars moved around it. But Pythagoras, one 
 of the Greek philosophers, had formed a general notion of 
 the truth that the earth is only one planet in a great sys- 
 tem. Then, along in the Sixteenth Century, came Coper- 
 nicus, and by mathematical calculation he was a fine 
 hand at figures began to find out things that showed 
 the wise old Greek had made a happy guess. Then 
 Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others, each working on 
 different parts of the problem, finally settled the question. 
 They found that there are just worlds of worlds, and that 
 ours is only one of them. 
 
 About the time of the American Revolution a great 
 French mathematician, Laplace, worked out a story of the 
 origin of the earth which is, briefly, this: 
 
 What we know now as the solar system the sun with 
 its attendant worlds was once a single big ball of fiery 
 gas, a nebula. As this nebula cooled it shrank, and as it 
 shrank it whirled faster because it had a smaller track in 
 which to turn, and with an equal amount of force would, 
 of course, get around oftener. The faster it whirled the 
 more the outside of it tended to fly off, as water flies off 
 a whirling grindstone or as a stone flies from a sling. 
 This centrifugal or " fly-away" force was greatest at the 
 sun's equator, and it threw off big rings. Afterward, 
 around some centre of greater density in these rings, the 
 gaseous particles in the rest of the ring gathered, so form- 
 ing spheres. Then some of the spheres themselves threw 
 off rings in the same way which became what are called
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 By permission of the Mount Wilson Observatory 
 
 WATCHING THE MAKING OF WORLDS 
 
 At first you won't see anything very striking about this picture, perhaps; but 
 doesn't it give you something of a thrill to be told that you are here looking not 
 only at the making of a world but of worlds of worlds? A whole solar system ! In 
 the course of unthinkable time that big, round ball in the centre will be the sun, and 
 what appear to be little knots wrapped close around it they are really far from 
 each other and from the sun will become rounded worlds like ours. They will be 
 forced into roundness by their own gravity, pulling toward their centres. They 
 don't look any farther apart than the strands in a little sister's braided hair, do 
 they ? But remember how small this picture is compared with what it represents. 
 What here show as little dark lines, separating the embryo worlds, are in reality 
 vast spaces, like those you see between the stars at night millions and millions and 
 millions of miles ! 
 
 satellites. The moon, which is our satellite, Laplace sup- 
 posed to have originated in this way. The ring which 
 Saturn still wears he thought would some day become a 
 satellite. 
 
 So, you see, the myth story of Phaeton foreshadowed,
 
 6 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 in a way, the science story of Laplace. For, according to 
 the Laplace theory, the world was on fire; and a big rain 
 storm, lasting for ages, with plenty of thunder and light- 
 ning, did help put it out. 
 
 This theory of Laplace was long accepted as the true 
 one. Indeed, it was only yesterday, comparatively, that 
 other explanations were offered as to how we came to 
 have a world to stand on. The broadest of these new 
 theories the one that undertakes to explain the most 
 is that of Professor Chamberlin, of the University of 
 Chicago. 
 
 YOU CAN SEE THESE WORLDS IN THE MAKING 
 
 Owing to the more powerful telescopes of to-day, and 
 the amount of exploring among the worlds that has been 
 going on since the time of Laplace, several things have 
 been discovered that have brought his theory into ques- 
 tion. For one thing, many more nebulae have been found 
 in space than were known when Laplace worked out his 
 great conception, and among them all not one has been 
 
 THE SUN AND HIS PEBBLE WORLDS 
 
 However the worlds of our solar system may have been made, when they were 
 done there was the sun in the centre and his worlds travelling around him in their 
 ordered orbits. Nearest the sun is Mercury. Then Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, 
 Saturn, Uranus; then, finally, Neptune nearly 3,000,000,000 miles away and with 
 an orbit so big that Christmas comes only once in 60,000 years !
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 7 
 
 found with a central mass surrounded by a ring. More- 
 over, our sharp-eyed telescopes show that Saturn's ring, 
 which Laplace thought was a solid mass, is really made up 
 of a great number of small satellites: baby worlds. The 
 greater number of these nebulae are like the ones you see 
 
 HOW YOU CAN WATCH THE WORLD TURN ROUND 
 
 Timepieces, you know, are really machines for keeping track of the apparent 
 movement of the sun. Here is a device, as simple as a sun-dial and much simpler 
 than a clock, by which you can record the actual motion of the earth. Sprinkle the 
 surface of the water in a bowl with chalk dust. On this, sift from a piece of paper 
 powdered charcoal or pencil dust, so as to make a clean-cut band extending across 
 the centre and over the edge of the bowl. In the course of several hours you will 
 find that the black band has swept round from east to west, because the water has 
 stood still while the bowl has been carried from west to east by the whirling world. 
 
 in the illustration on page 5. They consist of very bright 
 centres with spirals streaming out from opposite sides. 
 Just take a look at the picture. Doesn't the. shape of those 
 spirals suggest that the central mass is whirling? And no- 
 tice the little white lumps here and there. The thinner, 
 veil-like portions of the mass, as well as the " lumps, " are 
 supposed to be made of particles of matter, but the lumps 
 to be more condensed. All the particles, big and little, are
 
 8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 known to be revolving about the central mass, much as 
 the earth revolves about the sun. The little white lumps, 
 or knots, in the filmy skein are supposed to be worlds in 
 the making. Being larger than the other particles, they 
 draw the smaller to them, according to the same law of 
 gravitation which makes every unsupported thing on earth 
 fall to the ground, because the earth is so much bigger 
 than anything there is on it. Since these bright little 
 lumps behave so much like the worlds we know as planets, 
 and yet are relatively so small, they are called planetessi- 
 mals, or "little planets." So Professor Chamberlin's idea 
 of the origin of worlds is known as the " planetessimal 
 theory." 
 
 According to this theory the earth was once a mere 
 baby world like those white lumps, and grew by gathering 
 in its smaller neighbors from time to time by the power 
 of gravitation. The larger it grew the more particles of 
 solid matter it could draw to itself. Then it drew larger 
 masses, for with increased mass came an increased pull 
 of gravity. In the same way the earth is still growing, 
 for it is thought that the shooting stars or meteors we see 
 at night are little planets being gathered in. 
 
 II. How THE CONTINENTS CAME UP OUT OF THE SEA 
 
 And before I got to be myself at all, while I was still 
 only a part of the big pebble called the Earth, your geog- 
 raphy and I lay at the bottom of the sea. 
 
 For ages and ages ! 
 
 This is one of the stories you will find in the literature 
 of science, of how, along with North America, South
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 9 
 
 America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia have I left 
 out any? I came to land and brought your geography 
 with me. 
 
 I remember hearing a pretty young lady say, once upon 
 a time: 
 
 "There," said she, "I'm through with geography for- 
 ever!" 
 
 You see, although she had passed with marks around 
 90, she still had the idea that geography is a book. 
 You and I know, of course, that the real geography isn't 
 a book at all. It's the world itself. 
 
 PUTTING THE CONTINENTS ON THE GLOBE 
 
 But there was a time when there was no land. It was 
 all water, and the continents were lifted into their places, 
 much as you model a continent in making a relief map; 
 they were sketched out and then filled in. North America, 
 for example. First of all up came that mass in the north- 
 east in what is now Canada; the Lauren tian Highlands, 
 as they are called in your geography. They rose very, 
 very slowly, you understand, only a few feet in a thou- 
 sand years; for Nature has all the time there is and never 
 hurries. These highlands (they are really granite moun- 
 tains worn down), along with the other rock formations 
 of our continent, are supposed to be the oldest land on 
 the earth. The continents of Europe and the rest were 
 born later. So you see Columbus didn't discover the 
 New World at all; he really came from the New World 
 and discovered the Old ! 
 
 Next after the highlands north of the St. Lawrence up 
 came the tops of the mountains you see running along
 
 io STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 HOW YOUR GEOGRAPHY ROSE OUT OF THE SEA 
 
 the eastern coast, what we now call the Appalachians. 
 Then the Rocky Mountains began to raise their heads and 
 looked eastward toward their brother mountains across a 
 great mediterranean sea, the bottom of which is now the 
 Mississippi Valley. Mediterranean means "middle of the 
 land." 
 
 ADMITTING NEW STATES TO THE MAP 
 
 Wisconsin, into which I moved from the Laurentian 
 Highlands in later years, was on the lower end of a long, 
 thin tongue of rock reaching out from these highlands to 
 the southwest. While Wisconsin went on growing, the 
 Alleghanies came up and brought some Middle Atlantic 
 geography with them. Up with all these early settler 
 mountains came, in the course of time, the beginnings of 
 neighbor States. All these big, barren rocks (as they were 
 then), rising and ever rising, age after age, spread more
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 ii 
 
 surface to the sun. And the sun, and the wind, and the 
 frost, followed by the lowest forms of plant life the Adams 
 of the vegetable world gradually worked the surface of 
 the rock into soil; and so, as we may say, got ready for 
 the spring plowing. 
 
 By this constant rising and building on of the soil the 
 foundations of our States grew out toward one another in 
 order, according to the constitution of things, "to form a 
 more perfect union." The United States, at a time which, 
 we may say, corresponds to "The Expansion Period" in 
 your school history, grew southward from Wisconsin and 
 westward from the Appalachians until they made con- 
 tinuous land; and there was your Ohio and Indiana and 
 the rest of the North Central group. Below, toward the 
 south, were more big stone islands here and there, the 
 first sketches or blockings out of the Southern States. 
 Florida seems to have been added later, as a final touch; 
 an afterthought, as one of my Wisconsin neighbors puts 
 
 LANDS THE SEA HAS SWALLOWED 
 
 Parts of the continents as they used to be but which are now beneath the waters 
 are here shown. Compare this with the globe map in your geography. It is 
 estimated that there are 10,000,000 square miles of this land. You'll hear more 
 about this swallowing habit of the sea in Chapter X; but, as you will learn, there's 
 nothing to be frightened about.
 
 12 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 From Gilbert and Brigham's "An Introduction to 
 Physical Geography." By permission of D. A pple- 
 tini and Company 
 
 BUT WON'T WE GO UNDER AGAIN? 
 
 These little people of the sea-floor furnish one of the most assuring evidences we 
 have that although the continents rose out of the sea, they will never go under the 
 sea again. These are shell creatures found in the slime dredged from the bottom 
 of the deepest parts of the sea. The shells of creatures that live near shore are 
 found in abundance in our rocks, but these types are found only in the deepest seas. 
 So, since the deep down-wrinklings of the earth that make the sea-basins have 
 never risen, it is probable they never will; and consequently that the up-wrinkles 
 the continents will continue to stay above the waters. 
 
 it. And it was much enlarged by those remarkable little 
 world builders, the corals. Mexico and Central America, 
 of course, are a part of the Rocky Mountain system. 
 
 It's a wonderful old story, isn't it? But more wonderful 
 still, it always seemed to me, is the story of how they found 
 all this out.
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 13 
 
 Who do you suppose first told about it? The last 
 people you would ever think of, I'm sure the oysters ! 
 
 WHAT THE OYSTERS TOLD XENOPHANES 
 
 It sounds like a passage from "Alice in Wonderland," or 
 "Through the Looking-Glass," doesn't it? But it's a fact. 
 Away back, more than 2,000 years ago, a wise Greek called 
 Xenophanes, who lived in a place called Colophon, and so 
 was called Xenophanes of Colophon, said that he thought 
 the rocks of the mountain sides must once have been 
 under the sea because of the oyster shells that were found 
 embedded in many of them. 
 
 "For," said Xenophanes of Colophon, "how else could 
 
 HOW THE OYSTERS TOLD THE GREAT SECRET 
 
 Here is a good example of the thing that led wise old Xenophanes of Colophon 
 to make the startling assertion that the mountains were once at the bottom of the 
 sea. These are the shells of oysters embedded in limestone which, by the way, 
 the shells of the oysters themselves helped make and this piece of stone is from 
 the top of a high mountain.
 
 I 4 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the oyster shells have got there? Who ever heard of 
 oysters climbing a mountain?" 
 
 Another evidence that lands come up out of the sea is 
 this: Even before the days of Scott and Maryatt and 
 Fenimore Cooper, men and, of course, boys were inter- 
 ested in caves that face upon the sea. They are such 
 jolly places for pirates, and for boys playing pirate, and 
 for mermaids drying their hair. It was plain that down 
 where the waves in storms could reach them the sea itself 
 bored out these caves. But how about those caves in the 
 cliffs high above the waves? The sea must have made 
 them, too, once upon a time when the land was lower in 
 the water. Then the land was raised. 
 
 Still more striking was the fact that not only caves but 
 old sea beaches were found on hill and mountain slopes 
 far. from the sea, sometimes hundreds of miles inland. 
 You can tell the old beaches by their shape and the way 
 in which the pebbles are sorted by size, just as you find 
 them on beaches to-day. 
 
 THE BAKED APPLE AND THE BULGING WORLD 
 
 The causes of the rise and fall of the sea coasts are many, 
 and there are things about these movements not yet under- 
 stood. By what wonderful machinery, then (we might 
 naturally ask), were the continents themselves lifted out 
 of the sea? To this, which would seem much the harder 
 question of the two, the answer is simple; as simple as a 
 baked apple. You know an apple that goes into the oven 
 with a smooth, neat skin comes out covered with wrinkles. 
 Now suppose, instead of a little, hot apple, covered with a 
 thin skin, you have a big, hot earth covered with a thick
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 
 
 THE RISE AND FALL OF JUPITER SERAPIS 
 
 In this account of the ups and downs of land and sea I must tell you the story 
 of Jupiter Serapis. In the days of the Romans this temple, for his honor, stood 
 on the seashore near Naples. Of that temple only three pillars remain, but they 
 answer a very important question. On these pillars, over twenty feet above sea 
 level, is a belt of holes bored in the stone by a certain shelled sea-creature, one of 
 the barnacle family; so evidently these pillars must, at some time, have sunk, as 
 shown in the second picture, and then risen again, as shown in the third, which rep- 
 resents them as they stand to-day. 
 
 Another interesting thing is that the third picture observe shows a volcano 
 that isn't in the other two. Following a series of earthquake shocks in 1538 the 
 earth opened and out popped hot stones and ashes and built themselves into a 
 small volcano right before everybody; for it was all done in a short time, and you 
 may be sure the frightened people kept their eyes on it, and they named it Monte 
 Nuovo, which is Italian for "New Mountain."
 
 1 6 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 crust of stone, and the inside of the earth shrinking all the 
 time as the inside of the apple shrank away from its skin. 
 The rock skin would wrinkle, and the wrinkles, rising out 
 of the seas that then covered it everywhere, would make 
 continents. 
 
 "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gath- 
 ered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: 
 and it was so." 
 
 According to the planetessimal theory the way in which 
 the seas were made was this: 
 
 Owing to the collision the "bang" of the planetessi- 
 mals against the earth, and against each other as they met 
 at the "terminal station," heat was generated. The com- 
 pression, the squeezing together, of the earth from its own 
 weight the gravity pull of the whole mass toward the 
 centre generated still more heat, and the heat and pres- 
 sure drove the gases out of the rock. These gases included 
 hydrogen and oxygen. These two gases cooling and com- 
 bining themselves, in a way they have, became water, and 
 there were other gases, such as nitrogen and carbon gas, 
 that helped to make the air. 
 
 WHEN THE SEAS WERE ALL IN THE SKY 
 
 At first the water was in the form of dense clouds of 
 overhanging vapor which, growing bigger and bigger, 
 finally fell in rain. The heat, made by the pressure of the 
 outside of the earth toward the centre as the earth kept 
 growing, caused volcanic explosions. But there were far 
 more volcanoes in those early days when the earth was 
 settling down, and being "settled up," as it were, by these 
 energetic pioneers in the fields of space the planetessimals
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 17 
 
 and the surface became pitted with craters. In these 
 great catch basins the rain was stored, and, as for ages 
 the rain kept falling faster than the vapor rose from the 
 earth, many of these bodies of water united, and so formed 
 the lakes, the river systems, the oceans, and the seas. 
 
 THE FOUR GREAT FEATURES OF THE BIBLE STORY 
 
 All of which, while it differs so much from the theory of 
 Laplace, does not affect the Bible outline of the origin of 
 the earth. For these four great things must still have 
 been: (i) an earth without form, and void; (2) a great 
 deep; (3) upon its face darkness from the continuing masses 
 of black rain-laden clouds which overhung it and shut 
 out the sun; (4) the final dividing up of supply between the 
 vapor of the clouds ("the waters above the earth") and 
 "the waters upon the earth," so that at last the dark 
 cloud curtain disappeared, and the sun began to rule the 
 day. "Let there be light." 
 
 But good-by to Phaeton and the story of an original 
 glowing ball which cooled off on the outside. If the earth 
 grew bit by bit instead of being whirled off in one fiery 
 mass by the sun it was never any hotter than it is now, if 
 as hot. It grew hot by being pressed together by its own 
 weight, and by the blows of additional little worlds as 
 they fell upon it. 
 
 But on one thing everybody agrees, that the rocks, as 
 you go toward the earth's centre, have been and still are 
 in a molten state; that this rock, when it cools, becomes 
 granite, all full of little crystals like a lump of sugar, and 
 that the Granites are one of the F. F. E.'s. 1 
 1 First Families on Earth.
 
 1 8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 I, as you see, am a Granite. So, besides going through 
 fire and water yes, and ice, as you will learn and having 
 many strange and wearing adventures both by land and 
 sea I'm ''awfully" old. Older than you think. I looked 
 it up in the family record called the "Geological Column" 
 just the other day. That column gives my age as 
 "80 +." This means I'm 80,000,000 years old, going on 
 81 ! (The plus sign, in geology language, means "going 
 on"; or, "and then some," as a certain slangful high 
 school freshman puts it.) 
 
 But I don't think I show my age. Do you? 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Who wants to sit and be talked to all the time ? When boys and 
 girls are playing games, the greatest pleasure is in taking part, and 
 it's the same way in the Wonderland of Books. Books mean most 
 to those who "get into the game"; who help chase after the an- 
 swers to things. This hunting for answers up and down among 
 the books is one of the interesting games we're going to play; and 
 those of you who don't come in will miss a lot of fun. That's all 
 I've got to say! Let's begin like this: 
 
 In the Greek myth stories what else was Mr. Apollo supposed 
 to do for the world and its people besides turning on the light ? 1 
 Why doesn't the force of the earth, whirling along as it does at 
 
 19 miles a second, cause the wind to blow us all away? (Earth.) 
 What is the difference between a planet and a sun? 
 
 How does the earth compare in size with its brother planets of 
 the sun family? 
 
 How often would Christmas come around if we lived in the 
 moon? 
 
 1 Answers to all these questions at the ends of chapters will be found 
 in books you can easily get hold of encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and 
 schoolbooks; or books usually found in home, school, or public libraries. 
 Words in parenthesis or italics indicate the headings where the informa- 
 tion referred to will be found.
 
 IN THE BEGINNING 19 
 
 What causes different phases of the moon? 
 
 Why may we be said to have eclipses of the moon every month ? 
 
 "Moon" and "month" sound a good deal alike when you come 
 to think of it. Don't you wonder why? "Moon" comes from a 
 word meaning "to measure." You'll find the rest of the word- 
 story of the moon in any dictionary that is big enough to tell about 
 the origin of words. 
 
 By the way speaking of the timekeepers in the sky don't for- 
 get to look up the lives of the great astronomers mentioned in this 
 chapter. You will find, among other things, how Galileo, when 
 only eighteen years of age, helped to give us our clocks and watches 
 by counting his pulse-beats while watching a hanging lamp swing 
 back and forth in the Cathedral of Pisa; how he found out who 
 "The Man in the Moon" really is and what the "Milky Way" is 
 made of; how he invented the wonderful glass for playing hide and 
 seek among the worlds, and with it found four moons in one night ! 
 
 Yes, and how do you suppose he found that the sun is going 
 round and round like a top, just as the earth does? It was the 
 simplest thing ! You'll see ! 
 
 Old Father Science may be said to be a Santa Claus who keeps 
 a curiosity-shop. His pack is not only full of curious things but 
 he is always "springing surprises on us," as our High School Boy 
 puts it. For example, one of the most curious as well as picturesque 
 evidences that great stretches of land sink under the sea from time 
 to time is furnished by the English swallows. Like many other 
 wealthy people, they spend their winters in Algiers, and they find 
 their way over the Mediterranean, not by any lands they can see 
 between coast and coast for there are none but by lands that 
 used to be there, thousands upon thousands of years ago. 
 
 But how do the swallows know? They don't. Is it instinct? 
 No. (Whatever instinct is!) Then why do they do it? Look it 
 up and you'll see. 1 Yes, and you'll see that we have habits that 
 we get in the same way; our habits of bowing, for example, because 
 it's the custom, although few people know how it originated. 
 
 1 "Colin Clout's Calendar," by Grant Allen.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 (FEBRUARY) 
 
 Up rose the wild old Winter King 
 And shook his beard of snow; 
 " I hear the first young harebell ring, 
 'Tis time for me to go ! 
 Northward o'er the icy rocks, 
 Northward o'er the Sea." 
 
 Leland. 
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 
 
 It's been just one thing after another with the world 
 and me ever since we were born. First it was the fire, 
 then it was the flood, and then it was the winter that 
 lasted all summer. 
 
 Just what started it nobody knows to this day. Some 
 of the theories have been that this particular winter stayed 
 so long because the earth wavered on its axis, or that it 
 flew the track for a while and got too far away from the 
 sun. From our present knowledge of the machinery of 
 the heavens it is certain that the earth's motions could 
 not vary to this extent. One theory that appeals to many 
 scientists to-day is that when so much of the carbon in 
 the air went into the making of our coal beds the earth 
 became unusually cold, and so snows of each successive 
 winter kept piling up instead of melting away during the 
 spring and summer. When there is plenty of this gas in 
 the air the earth's heat does not escape so fast. But with 
 the great amount of carbon taken up in the growth of the
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 21 
 
 From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company 
 WHEN THE ICE SHEETS COVERED THE LAND 
 
 vast forests that were made into coal, Mother Earth's air 
 blanket grew thinner, so to speak, hence the long, cold 
 spell. 
 
 But whatever caused it one thing is certain; it was a 
 winter that beat anything the oldest inhabitant ever saw; 
 for the cave men are known to have been on earth during 
 this great winter, which is known as the Ice Age or the 
 Glacial Period. A great big ice cap reached from the
 
 22 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 North Pole far down into the Temperate Zone in North 
 America, Europe, and Asia. 
 
 FROM THE CAVEMAN'S DIARY 
 
 This is a little note on the Ice Age from the caveman's diary the picture of a 
 mammoth scratched with a flint on a mammoth's tusk. You can see how the 
 artist kept trying for the true form with different lines, as all real artists do. Art- 
 ists don't just have a kind of sign that stands for the thing like a little boy's pic- 
 ture of a man that he always makes in just one way. Notice the action, the nat- 
 ural motion of the animal. The artist means to say: "This is the way he came 
 at me." 
 
 I. THE MILD SPELL AND THE MENAGERIES 
 
 Just before this dreadful winter set in we had a long, 
 open spell; about a million years or so. It was just like 
 summer most of the year in the temperate zone, and much 
 warmer than it is to-day in what is now the land of the 
 little frosty Eskimo. 
 
 There weren't any little Eskimos in those days. In fact, 
 there wasn't much of anything that was little. Every- 
 thing was on a big scale. Think of a mud-turtle twelve 
 feet long ! He was all of that. His skull alone was a yard 
 long and he must have weighed a couple of tons. He had 
 for neighbors in the bordering swamps a number of huge 
 creatures that one wouldn't care to meet.
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 23 
 
 DREADFULNESS OF MR. DINOSAUR 
 
 The Dinosaur, for instance. His name means "terrible 
 reptile." Some members of the family were, indeed, terri- 
 ble creatures. Just see this one at lunch, Mr. Ceratosau- 
 rus. He has the head of a queer horse "probably a night 
 mare," says the High School Boy teeth and tail and belly 
 scales like a crocodile, a comb that suggests a rooster's, 
 legs like an ostrich, the talons of an eagle, and the dainty 
 little arms of a child. What a combination ! Those small 
 fore limbs were used only for grasping. On his hind legs 
 he stalked about, seeking whom he might eat for dinner. 
 He was about fifty feet long when he was all there. At 
 
 THE KING OF THE DINOSAURS AT LUNCHEON 
 
 Contrast the little, almost dainty, fore limbs with the enormous legs. You 
 can't help thinking of the arms of a human being, can you ? In fact, this mixed-up 
 creature looks as if nature were even then dreaming of man, the quadruped who, as 
 some Frenchman said, "took to walking on his hind legs that he might conquer 
 the world."
 
 24 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 this late day scientists usually find only parts of him scat- 
 tered around. 
 
 These Dinosaurs came in sizes and differed considerably 
 as to looks and eating and getting about. Some were as 
 small as cats, some walked on four legs, some like the 
 gentleman at lunch walked on two. Some were strict 
 vegetarians, while others would have nothing but meat. 
 The Big Boys of the whole tribe were called the Sauropoda 
 or reptile-footed Dinosaurs. One of these, whose bones 
 were found in Colorado, was sixty-five feet long when 
 complete, and he must have weighed around twenty tons. 
 His family nickname was Diplodocus or "Double Beam," 
 because of his long, beam-like neck and his long, beam- 
 like tail. 
 
 GENTLE MR. DIPLODOCUS AND HIS WAYS 
 
 Considering the reputation some of the other Dinosaurs 
 had as bad citizens, it is only fair to the Diplodocus to say 
 that he was really a gentle creature, and never disturbed 
 anybody unless somebody disturbed him first. Then he 
 would give them a switch with that tail of his, and it was 
 a switching they were not likely to forget. But his great 
 delight indeed, his main occupation in life was to sit 
 deep in the water, prop himself up with his great long tail, 
 like a kangaroo, with just his head out, like a turtle in a 
 pond. Then he would strain little water bugs and similar 
 things through his teeth. He got his meals in this way, 
 very much as the whales do now. 
 
 And elephants ! You ought to have seen some of the 
 members of the elephant family that arrived after the rep- 
 tile age, the mammoths, for instance. These huge creatures
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 25 
 
 and many other strange animals were all over the place. It 
 was just like a circus day everywhere all the time. Such 
 elephants don't travel with circuses now, of course, because 
 they were all killed during that dreadful winter, but you 
 
 From the mural painting by Charles R. Knight in the American Museum of Natural History 
 WHEN ELEPHANTS WORE UNDERCLOTHES 
 
 This painting on the walls of the American Museum of Natural History in New 
 York City shows herds of reindeer and mammoths in the Ice Age. They didn't 
 mind the cold as elephants do to-day, because of their woolly underclothes. They 
 fed on the shoots and cones of those firs and pines. The reindeer, then as now, 
 ate the lichens we call "reindeer moss,' first scraping away the snow with their 
 feet. 
 
 can see them in museums, all dressed in their skeletons 
 and neatly held together with wires. 
 
 HOW THE MAMMOTHS PASSED AWAY 
 
 Picture herds of these mammoths huddled together like 
 sheep in dark ravines, and the blinding snow, swept down 
 by the winds, burying them deeper and deeper. That 
 was how they died. You'll notice that they wore their 
 hair long, while the elephants we see in the circuses or at 
 the zoo have hardly any hair at all. This long hair was 
 part of their winter clothing. Under it they wore a close 
 fleece. But this winter was so severe and it lasted so long 
 that even their heavy woollen underwear couldn't save 
 them. Sometimes there would be a thaw, but this was 
 only on the surface and helped turn the snow into ice.
 
 26 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 And winter piled on winter and on the bodies of the mam- 
 moths until they were buried under tons and tons of snow 
 and ice. 
 
 HOW THE SNOW CHANGED ITSELF INTO ICE 
 
 You know snow will get solid, like ice, where it is undei 
 pressure, and it will make hard cakes and ice balls under 
 your shoes. Well, this snow of the long winter just 
 " packed its own self" (as a small boy might say) into ice. 
 It did this by piling on and piling on. The weight of the 
 snow above and behind, in the spaces between the moun- 
 tains and in the mountain valleys, pressed with enormous 
 force on the snow below and in front. 
 
 Then what do you think this ice did? It began to 
 move. And of all the things it did from then on ! 
 
 II. MARVELLOUS CHANGES IN THE OLD HOME PLACE 
 
 Did you notice those scratches on my face? The ice 
 did that. But, of course, that's nothing in itself. And, 
 besides, I'm not one to complain, as you know. I only 
 speak of it to show what big things may be back of little 
 ones; how much you can learn from the study of so com- 
 mon a thing as a little pebble. For the very same ice fields 
 that scratched the faces of little pebbles like me deepened 
 the gorges and canyons among the mountains and shaved 
 the crowns of the old ones Bald Mountain, in the Adi- 
 rondacks, for example. They carried off good farming 
 soil by the thousands of acres from one place and piled it 
 in another; they shoved the Mississippi River back and 
 forth; in fact, turned many streams out of their courses
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 27 
 
 some of them the other end to, so that they now flow south 
 where they used to flow north. They took old river sys- 
 tems apart, and with the pieces made new ones the big 
 Missouri for one. They set Niagara Falls up in business; 
 
 rom Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of 
 Cinn and Company 
 
 THE LITTLE MOUNTAIN IN THE BIG CITY 
 
 In one of the parks in New York City you can see this illustration of how the 
 glaciers rounded off the mountain-tops. 
 
 got all the waterfalls ready that are now turning the wheels 
 of New England factories, and even put in great water 
 storage systems that remind one of the Salt River irriga- 
 tion works, with their big Roosevelt dam in Arizona, or 
 of the reservoirs which England built in the Nile. Lakes 
 in river systems act as reservoirs, you know, and make 
 them flow more evenly, thus keeping the power of falls 
 more uniform, as in the case of Niagara, and making a 
 uniform depth of water for vessels, as in the case of the 
 St. Lawrence River. The Great Lakes do both of these 
 useful things. 
 
 There were three great centres union stations, we might
 
 28 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 This huge mass in the Canadian Rockies is known as the Beehive Mountain. 
 Originally a cliff, it was reshaped by the glaciers. Can't you tell from the picture 
 which was the face of the cliff, and from the information in the text which side the 
 glacier climbed up and on which side it tobogganed down? 
 
 call them from which the ice trains moved out. These 
 were the points at which the ice gathered to the greatest 
 depth, the tops of the great snow banks. . One, as you see 
 by our Ice Age map, was away over on the Pacific Coast 
 of Canada. It is called the Cordilleran Centre, from the 
 vast mountain system of which it is a part. Over what is 
 now the province of Keewatin, Canada, was the Keewatin 
 Centre, while the Labrador Centre stood guard over the 
 highlands of Labrador. The ice from the Keewatin and 
 Labrador fields, you notice, flowed farthest to the south. 
 The Keewatin ice giant travelled away down the Missis- 
 sippi Valley as far as the mouth of what is now the Mis-
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 29 
 
 souri, while the giant from Labrador got nearly to the 
 mouth of the Ohio. 
 
 The reason Old Mr. Labrador didn't reach the mouth 
 of the Ohio as you can easily guess was -that he didn't 
 
 THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN AT THEIR WORK 
 
 Don't you always think of a glacier as a big white thing? So it is when it starts 
 to work, but after it has ploughed down the mountain valleys and gathered up a 
 lot of soil such as the heaps you see in the foreground of the picture it begins 
 to look as black as a coal-heaver ! It gets cracked up into all sorts of odd shapes, 
 too. Doesn't that figure near the centre look like some queer kind of old elephant, 
 with a fierce white eye (it's a big stone) and a snarl on his face? 
 
 go far enough, but could you answer a conundrum like 
 this: 
 
 "Why was Mr. Keewatin bound to reach the mouth of 
 the Missouri and stay there for awhile no matter how far 
 he went?" 
 
 The answer is easy, when you know it. Because he 
 made the Missouri himself. What we now know as the 
 Missouri River was made of other rivers that the big ice 
 sheet turned around as it advanced and of the water from
 
 30 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the ice as the glacier melted its way back home. It was 
 something like Mary and the little lamb, all the time, so 
 long as Mr. Keewatin travelled south; for everywhere he 
 went the Missouri was sure to go, because he kept push- 
 ing it ahead of him. 
 
 HOW THE OLD MEN PUSHED THE MISSISSIPPI ABOUT 
 
 As the ice sheets pushed into its valleys, now from the 
 northeast and now from the northwest, the Mississippi 
 River was pushed back and forth as if it were a well, as 
 if it weren't anything ! It is known that the Mississippi 
 was pushed out of bed by this burly guest from the north 
 because its former channels have been traced along the 
 old ice fronts. 
 
 In one part of its course the Mississippi actually got mis- 
 placed, and hasn't found its way back to its old bed to 
 this day. This you can see at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. 
 At that point the Minnesota River flows in the Missis- 
 sippi's old valley which is plainly too big for it while 
 above Fort Snelling 'the Mississippi is forced to squeeze 
 its way through a stingy little gorge that used to belong to 
 the Minnesota, and I'm sure would be plenty big enough 
 for it now. It's like the story of a changeling baby in a 
 fairy tale, isn't it? Only in the fairy tale the changeling 
 always gets back to his old home, while the misplaced 
 Mississippi in Minnesota doesn't. 
 
 But the glaciers made it up to the Mississippi, in a way, 
 for this rude jostling. They not only left it an enormous 
 extra supply of water as they melted back home what 
 would a river be without water? but they actually took 
 some smaller rivers away from the St. Lawrence and made
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 31 
 
 them do their pouring into the Mississippi system. Al- 
 though they didn't owe the Ohio any apology for any- 
 thing, so far as I know, they did the same thing for it, 
 just to be good fellows, I suppose. All the rivers that 
 now empty into the Ohio above Cincinnati used to flow 
 into Lake Erie, but the glaciers turned them south and 
 they've gone on obediently flowing that way ever since. 
 
 A PLOWMAN WHO PLOWED THE FARMS AWAY 
 
 That these giants of the north, although they must 
 have looked as cold as ice, really had good hearts is shown 
 by the way Old Mr. Labrador treated New England when 
 he went Down East. New England was at that time 
 covered with good, deep, rich soil, the decay of the granite 
 rocks that had been basking in the sun for ages and grow- 
 ing early grass and vegetables for the live stock of those 
 days. Then along came Old Mr. Labrador with his plow, 
 and set to work. But he plowed so deep that he plowed 
 all the farms away! Of the gigantic furrows that he 
 turned a lot of the slices fell over into New York State; 
 but some, I'm sorry to say, dropped off into the sea. This 
 left New England in a bad way, so far as prizes for farm 
 produce at the country fairs a few thousand years later 
 were concerned. 
 
 But then what do you suppose Mr. Labrador did, the 
 good old soul? He took a lot of streams that had been 
 flowing north, blocked them up with pebbles and dirt, 
 making them turn right around and flow south, so that in 
 climbing down from the rocks in these new unworn beds 
 they made waterfalls. And it was from the power made
 
 32 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 by its waterfalls, you know, as your geography tells you, 
 that New England grew to be a great " manu-factur-ing " 
 section. 
 
 Courtesy of " The Scientific American." 
 HOW THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAIN COME TO SCHOOL 
 
 You can have glaciers like this right in the schoolroom, and icebergs, too, by 
 means of which the Old Men of the Mountain went to sea. Both the iceberg 
 and its parent, the glacier, are made by the crumpling of white paper around books 
 or any other support. Cliffs of dark-brown grocery-paper bound the deep gully 
 through which the glacier has crept down to the sea. The sea-waves are made with 
 crumpled paper of appropriate colors. (Think what lovely green waves you could 
 make with a piece of old window-shade !) Pieces of white string make good 
 breakers, and powdered chalk can easily be made to turn to snow. 
 
 Of course I'm only joking when I speak of these glaciers 
 as if they had minds like the rest of us, but really it almost 
 seems true, when you come to think of all the things they 
 did. Take these New England waterfalls, for instance. 
 The glacier not only made them by turning the rivers 
 around, but, as the ice melted away toward the north the
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 33 
 
 THE GRAY TEMPLE OF THE WINDS 
 
 This gray mass of sandstone on the Wisconsin prairies is a piece of architecture 
 with which man has had nothing whatever to do. It is all the work of the winds 
 and the rains; of the sea and of rivers; of water and rivers of ice; and the vertical 
 division of the rock into joints by the shrinking of the earth. The detail, the 
 rounding of the pillars, and so on, is largely the work of the winds and their helpers, 
 the frosts, the rains, and the wind-blown sand. 
 
 The original mass was carved out of a big rock-bed by flowing rivers that had 
 their course around it on either side. Then one of these rivers was dammed by 
 ice in the days of the glaciers and a lake was formed in which this rock mass stood 
 as an island. The level prairie you now see around it was made by the sand and 
 gravel deposited in the bottom of this lake. The vertical divisions are cracks in 
 the earth crust called "joints." The horizontal divisions are due in part to this 
 cracking process and in part to "stratification," the layer-like arrangement of the 
 rocks when laid in the bottom of the sea, as explained in Chapter X. The "cornice" 
 is a layer of harder rock which has yielded less to nature's tools. 
 
 land rose again, being relieved of the enormous weight. 
 And in rising the sloping land not only gave more force 
 to the new southward flowing streams but made it more 
 sure that they should go on flowing south. As if the 
 glaciers said:
 
 34 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 "I've turned you around and I want you to stay turned 
 around. And I want you to go on running south and 
 dropping over the falls until the people of New England 
 come down to Lowell and Manchester and those places 
 and get ready to put you to work." 
 
 Anyhow, that's just what happened. You can look at 
 it any way you want to. 
 
 It was in much the same way that Mr. Labrador and his 
 friend Keewatin did that great piece of engineering at the 
 Great Lakes. Where the Great Lakes are now there used 
 to be rivers that were a part of the St. Lawrence system. 
 Then along came the ice sheets, dammed up these rivers, 
 just as small boys dam up roadside rivulets after a rain, 
 and so made big lakes, as the boys make little lakes in 
 these streamlets. But this wasn't all. The glaciers evi- 
 dently wanted these to be nice big lakes that would stay 
 there for people to ride on in the beautiful summer weather, 
 and to help haul coal and iron ore and other kinds of 
 freight Michigan peaches and everything. For look 
 what else they did. With pebbles and big stones and dirt 
 they built the lake walls higher, and dug deep basins for 
 them out of the solid rock. Then they poured in a lot of 
 extra water beautiful blue water, tons and tons of it 
 and went back home. 
 
 The digging into the rock was done with big chisels 
 what a carpenter would call "round-nosed" chisels. These 
 chisels, of course, were made of ice. They were what are 
 called the "tongues" or "lobes" of glaciers. As a glacier 
 flows along always on some down grade there are por- 
 tions of it those long lobes or tongues that move on 
 ahead of the main mass. This is because those parts of
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 35 
 
 THE THOUSAND-YEAR CLOCK AT NIAGARA 
 
 You've heard of eight-day clocks and clocks that have to be wound only once a 
 year, but here is a clock that was wound up several thousand years ago and is still 
 going beautifully ! In placing the wondrous waterfall in Niagara River the 
 glaciers also started a kind of water-clock by which to record for those who would 
 take the trouble to study it out how long ago it was the glaciers visited us. Ow- 
 ing to the constant wearing away of the base of the falls, by the water grinding the 
 pebbles against it, great blocks like the one here shown (known as "The Rock of 
 Ages") come tumbling down. So the falls are constantly retreating up-stream, 
 and the distance from where they once stood to where they are now gives a rough 
 idea of the time that has passed since the Old Men of the Mountain set them np 
 in business about 25,000 years. 
 
 the ice sheet strike a steeper bit of land than the rest of 
 it, so how could they help moving faster? 
 
 The fronts of these lobes are rounded like the waves 
 flowing up a beach, or syrup travelling over pancakes on 
 a cold winter morning. The reason of this roundness is 
 that the centres of these lobes of ice or water travel fastest 
 because the mass on either side furnishes a kind of ball- 
 bearing for the central part. 
 
 But this wasn't all. At the very same time, by the very
 
 36 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 same act, Labrador, Keewatin & Co. set Niagara Falls up 
 in business. In those days there was a Niagara river but 
 no Niagara Falls; at least not the one we know to-day. 
 The ice filled the Ontario Valley so that the streams flow- 
 
 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF NIAGARA 
 
 This is a bird's-eye view of the Niagara region. Where the river crosses a bed 
 of limestone below Buffalo, and again where it crosses another just above the crest 
 of the falls, some of the rock has been dissolved away, thus making it rougher, so 
 that slight rapids have formed. Then conies the mighty plunge, after which the 
 water flows through a gorge for about seven miles. Where the gorge bends abruptly 
 at right angles is the great eddy called "The Whirlpool." 
 
 ing into it had to turn around and flow south. The 
 Niagara River was one of these streams. Then, as the ice 
 melted, it poured loads of extra water into Lake Erie, so 
 that it was some 30 feet higher than it is at present and 
 began draining out through the new Niagara River, over 
 the rocks that make the falls. 
 
 NATURE IS THE ART OF GOD 
 
 "Nature," as Sir Thomas Browne so finely said, "is the 
 art of God." And nowhere is this art more striking in its
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 37 
 
 beauty than in the work done by the glaciers. Those 
 wonderful falls and the blue inland seas we call the Great 
 Lakes, and thousands of smaller lakes scattered all over 
 where the glaciers came, are only a part of this art work. 
 
 AND TO THINK WE DID IT ALL! 
 
 The main ice sheets, you notice, didn't reach down among 
 the mountains of California, but these mountains had 
 small glaciers of their own in those days, just as they have 
 now. Only they were much larger then because, as we 
 have seen, it was such a snowy time all over the northern 
 world. Listen to what these home-made glaciers of Cali- 
 fornia did, and listen to how John Muir tells it: 
 
 "It is hard," he says, "without long and loving study, 
 to realize how great was the work done. Before the gla- 
 ciers came, the range" he is speaking of the Sierras 
 "was comparatively simple; one vast wave of stone in 
 which a thousand mountains, domes, canyons, ridges, and 
 so forth lay concealed." To carve them out of the stone 
 "nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or the light- 
 ning, but the tender snow flowers, noiselessly falling
 
 38 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 through unnumbered centuries. The snowflakes said, 
 'Come, we are feeble; let us help one another. Marching 
 in close, deep ranks let us roll away the stones from these 
 mountain sepulchres, and set the landscape free.'" 
 
 It is evident that this was all in the Great Plan of things. 
 For the rocks had to be of a certain kind and laid in a 
 certain way for the little members of this art society of 
 the sky to work these landscapes out. And the rocks were 
 so made and laid when they were at least a mile below the 
 surface on which the glaciers set to work. 
 
 "It was while these features were taking form in the 
 depths of the range, the particles of the rocks marching 
 to their appointed places in the dark, that the particles of 
 icy vapor in the sky, marching to the same music, assem- 
 bled to bring them to the light. Then, after their grand 
 task was done, these bands of snow flowers, the mighty 
 glaciers, were melted and removed, as if of no more impor- 
 tance than dew destined to last but an hour." 1 
 1 "The Mountains of California." John Muir.
 
 THE WINTER THAT LASTED ALL SUMMER 39 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 How do you suppose warm water of all things! could have 
 caused the Ice Age? This theory is one that was offered by a 
 very eminent geologist, Doctor Shaler, of Harvard. 1 
 
 In the same book he also explains how the old men of the moun- 
 tain may have helped to make New York City, although they were 
 never there in their lives, of course. 
 
 When you take up geology as a special study I hope you will 
 you will find that there were five particularly heavy snowfalls 
 during the long winter. But why not look it up now? If you 
 can't do it just get somebody else in the family to do it for you. 
 Where is father's college geology? In the last two of these storms 
 Mr. Labrador rode all over New England and clear to the sea, 
 where he amused himself for a long time by setting icebergs drift- 
 ing out over the Atlantic. 
 
 How do they know about the icebergs? That's one of the inter- 
 est,ing things the books tell. 
 
 These books also show how Niagara Falls acts as a great time- 
 clock that tells how long ago it was since the glaciers visited us. 
 According to the record on the "dial " it was somewhere between 
 20,000 and 30,000 years ago. (Of course this isn't what we would 
 call very close timekeeping; but remember, in the long story of 
 the earth even a hundred thousand years is a mere tick of the 
 clock.) 
 
 And the way this clock is running down shows we're going to 
 lose Niagara Falls in the course of time. All falls finally run down 
 in the same way. This is the rather flippant way my high school 
 friend put it: 
 
 "First, the water falls over the waterfall; then the waterfall 
 falls, piece by piece, and the water falls no more. It's a sad case." 
 
 (You'll see what he meant, quickly enough, when you read up 
 on waterfalls. Your geography tells, doesn't it? Well, then, of 
 course you know.) 
 
 But here's a question you can answer right out of this chapter. 
 Which one of the illustrations shows that the mammoths and the 
 cave men lived on earth at the same time? 
 
 That the mammoth was seen in the flesh by those remarkable 
 
 1 "Nature and Man in America."
 
 40 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 artists of the caves is plain, but what do you say to seeing a mam- 
 moth in the flesh in these days? Remember the mammoths have 
 all been dead for thousands of years. (Elephant, Mammoth, 
 Siberia.} 
 
 What is there about the climate of Siberia that made this strange 
 thing possible? 
 
 How did the mammoth get his name? Was it because he was 
 so big such a "mammoth" creature? 1 
 
 How did the mammoths compare in size with the elephants of 
 to-day? 
 
 Which was the bigger, the mastodon or the mammoth ? 
 
 Did we ever have mastodons in North America? And were 
 there mammoths, too? 
 
 If you want to see more about what the travelling menageries 
 of the days before the Ice Age looked like hunt up these words: 
 Archelon, dinosaur, ceratosaurus, diplodocus, stegosaurus, triceratops. 
 
 See what the geography says about the manufacturing towns 
 of New England and how many of them have water power. 
 
 In that remarkable little book by Grant Allen 2 already referred 
 to in the H. & S. at the end of Chapter I, on page 139, you will 
 find what the Ice Age had to do with the fact that the rabbits of 
 Canada and our northern border States wear white clothes in 
 winter, while Brer Rabbit of our Middle and Southern States keeps 
 his yellow-brown suit on all the year. 
 
 And on page 204 how a little plant, whose old home was in the 
 Arctics, got stranded on an English hilltop among the mossy 
 clefts of weathered granite, and how the beautiful lady who has a 
 little flower named after her slipper (we all know that slipper) is 
 leaving England because the climate is too mild ! 
 
 1 Mammoth, you will find, comes from a word meaning "earth." 
 It didn't mean "big" at all at first. One of the most lovable traits 
 of a good dictionary, I think, is that it tells so many interesting little 
 stories like that about the early life of words; of their days of adven- 
 ture, so to speak, when there was no telling how they would come out. 
 
 2 "Colin Clout's Calendar."
 
 THE SUMMER PASTURES ON THE JUNGFRAU 
 
 Here are some of those Swiss cattle in their summer pastures. Doesn't look 
 much like summer, does it? But there's one thing besides the cattle that tells. See 
 that stretch of snow all by itself? That's a snow-bank which has escaped the 
 summer sun because it is protected by the ravine in which it lies. All around it 
 the ground is bare of snow. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 (MARCH) 
 
 With rushing winds and gloomy skies 
 The dark and stubborn Winter dies; 
 Far off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, 
 Bidding her earliest child arise. 
 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING AND THE LANDS 
 OF ETERNAL SNOW 
 
 And that's how the Old Men of the Mountain visited 
 us in the Ice Age and what they did and how they did it. 
 But now that they have all been back home so long don't 
 41
 
 42 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 you think it would be nice and polite to return the call- 
 especially when you remember all they did for us, making 
 beautiful lakes and rivers and waterfalls and mountain 
 scenery ? 
 
 I. SPRINGTIME IN THE ALPS 
 
 The best time to do this would be in the spring, because 
 then the kingdom of the glaciers is most beautiful, and the 
 spirit of a glorious new world, just waking up, is abroad 
 everywhere. The glaciers themselves seem to feel so good 
 about it that they start to sing. And like the birds, their 
 joyous springtime mood responds to the quick changes of 
 sun and shade. In our own land when the sky grows 
 cloudy, even for a short time as you may have noticed, 
 birds stop singing. Then when the sky clears they start 
 up again. But, up here in the Alps in the spring when 
 the birds are singing among the mountain meadows, the 
 glaciers, at whose feet these meadows lie, do the very same 
 thing. The songs of the birds are various, and the song of 
 the same bird will differ at different times of day, but the 
 song of the glacier is always the same a pleasant dreamy 
 tune between the murmur of little voices and the tinkle of 
 distant bells. 
 
 The very rocks that the glacier carries on its back seem 
 to catch the spirit of the springtime; for, when the weather 
 is bright, they go strolling. And when they do they remind 
 us a little of that painting by Franz Hals, "The Laughing 
 Cavalier," for they apparently wear a big broad-brimmed 
 hat cocked jauntily on one side.
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 43 
 
 UP WHERE THE GLACIERS GROW 
 
 Here we are, looking down on the roof of the Alps from a flying-machine, let 
 us say. The sky-line used to be more like the ridge of a house, straight across. 
 In the course of the ages the glaciers and the weather have cut down the softer 
 rock, leaving those peaks. At the top are the snow-fields. Farther down the 
 glaciers begin to form. Still farther down, where the glaciers have begun to melt, 
 you can see a stream its waters have taken white in the picture because of the 
 foam and the ground-up rock in it called "rock flour" falling into the woods be- 
 low, the "timber line" of your geography. Ruskin has a wonderful word-picture 
 of these mountain streams in his "Modern Painters." The index of any edition 
 will tell you where. 
 
 THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED THE ICE AGE 
 
 The Alps are the most famous of all the homes of the 
 glaciers, not only because of the great number of the gla- 
 ciers and the beauty of the scenery, but because it was in 
 the Alps that Agassiz, living in a little stone hut among 
 the mountains, studied the glaciers and their ways and 
 proved that it was these strange creatures of snow and 
 ice that had come down during the Ice Age and worked 
 such marvellous changes on the face of the earth. In the 
 Alps, just as Muir found them doing among the glaciers of
 
 44 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Alaska, the flowers bloom at the very edge of the snow 
 line. And they come on much more rapidly than they do 
 in temperate climates. As fast as the snow melts back 
 blossoms just cover the meadows thick with the deepest, 
 
 LOUIS AGASSIZ 
 The great teacher who discovered the Ice Age. 
 
 richest colors blue, red, white, yellow, purple, and every 
 shade of these. Some of these flowers are as pure white as 
 the snows. The queen of beauty among them all, many 
 think, is the Alpine rose. In that pure, clear air its color 
 seems actually to glow like the famous peak, the Jungfrau, 
 at sunrise. 
 
 One little flower is in such a hurry, so afraid it will miss 
 the first May party, that it blooms under the ice and melts
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 45 
 
 its own way right up through. Then it calls to the bees 
 and the butterflies, in the way that flowers have: 
 
 " Good morning ! It's spring, and here I am again and 
 how do you do ? Come and kiss me ! " 
 
 The soldanella grows among the thick pebble beds and 
 the big boulders right on the edges of the glaciers. It is a 
 member of the primrose family. It may be pink, white, 
 or blue. The blue flowers are most common. But blue, 
 pink, or white, these baby bells are always born twins; 
 two sisters side by side on the same stalk, showing their 
 dear fairy faces just above those layers of ice. They are 
 such delicate little things you wonder how they can ever 
 stand it. But ice, pshaw, they don't mind it at all. 
 
 BLUSHING A WAY THROUGH THE ICE 
 
 If you are a bashful boy or girl you can understand how 
 the Misses Soldanella have been able, in spite of their icy 
 covering, to get here to greet us on this lovely May morn- 
 ing. You know how warm your face feels when you blush. 
 It seems to be somewhat the same way with all flowers 
 when they blush into bloom. The blossom becomes quite 
 a little warmer than any other part of the plant. It is the 
 heat of the growing buds and, still more, the heat of the 
 blossoms that melts a passage for the Soldanellas through 
 the ice, for they often blossom before they get above the 
 ice at all. 
 
 The higher we climb the brighter the flowers, and they 
 grow in thicker masses, and each kind spreads out into 
 larger fields than they did where we came from down 
 below great belts of blue gentians, whole fields of golden 
 yellow globe flowers. You'd hardly expect this, would
 
 46 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 you? And you'll be still more surprised at the reason. 
 Did you notice, as shown in their pictures, that the Sol- 
 danellas have only the bees for their callers? Just look 
 if you can see any bees where we are now. Not a bee. 
 But butterflies everywhere. And that's the answer. The 
 flowers of the upper meadows are brighter, grow thicker 
 and spread wider all on account of the butterflies; to 
 get the butterfly "trade." 
 
 WHY THE BEES GET OUT OF BREATH 
 
 Bees can't climb to such heights because the air is very 
 thin, and, therefore, harder to fly in. Remember their 
 little bodies are heavy and their wings are small. They 
 get out of breath, like a fat man with short legs working 
 his way up Pike's Peak. The butterflies, on the other 
 hand, have small bodies and large wings, and so have the 
 meadows of the higher Alps all to themselves. That the 
 flowers here look so brilliant is partly due to the thinness 
 and clearness of the air and partly to the disposition of the 
 butterflies. A bee is all business, because she has so many 
 mouths to feed at home, and is laying up honey for the 
 days of the long winter. Mr. and Mrs. Butterfly, on the 
 other hand, are gay and carefree society people. 
 
 "We have no family waiting to be fed, so why worry?" 
 This is the butterfly philosophy. Only a sip of nectar now 
 and then for their personal wants; for the rest of the day 
 the merry air dance, here, there, everywhere! They flit 
 long distances without lighting. To attract the bee's 
 attention a blossom need be neither large nor bright, as 
 the bee goes straight from flower to flower, wasting no 
 time in aimless flights. But to catch the eye of the butter-
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 
 
 47 
 
 HOW THE SOLDANELLA SISTERS GOT TO THE MAY-PARTY 
 THROUGH THE SNOW 
 
 fly the flowers must be brilliantly colored and grow in 
 large masses. So up in the butterfly zone only brilliant 
 flowers, and those having the habit of growing in groups 
 produce seed and have descendants. Those that dress 
 plainly and are not fond of company die out. 
 
 Now didn't it turn out just as I said; that the butterflies 
 themselves help brighten the flowers that grow among 
 these ice fields? I have something else quite as curious 
 to tell you: Both the Alpine butterflies and the flowers were 
 left over from the Ice Age. Not in the same sense that we
 
 48 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 pebbles were, for we are the identical little passengers 
 who rode in on the ice trains, and the life of a butterfly, 
 as every one knows, is very short. So is that of a flower. 
 Yet suppose you found that the only other butterflies and 
 flowers like these are found, not among the flowers and 
 butterflies in the lands lower down in the Alps but up 
 toward the Arctic Zone, in Finland and Lapland; in the 
 snow regions of mountains in the temperate zone all over 
 the world? It would look very much as if these flowers 
 and butterflies, or their ancestors, had been left behind 
 there some time or other, wouldn't it? This is what the 
 men of science think, and they reason about it in this way : 
 
 HOW THE BUTTERFLIES MISSED THE TRAIN 
 
 As the glaciers spread downward from the Far North 
 in the Ice Age they brought all their home things with 
 them climate, plants, insects, animals. Plant and ani- 
 mal life was driven step by step before the advancing ice. 
 Then, as the ice melted, flowers, butterflies, and all fol- 
 lowed their natural climate back. But those that lingered 
 too long in the meadows around the mountain tops could 
 not cross the hot summer plains that now lay between 
 them and the retiring ice sheet; for plants and animals 
 that are used to cold can't stand the heat any more than 
 those from the tropics can stand the cold. So only the 
 flowers and butterflies remained in the temperate zone 
 that found their natural climate among the mountain 
 peaks and stayed there. 
 
 Near the top of Mount Washington, the highest peak 
 in New Hampshire, is a colony of the descendants of these 
 butterfly pilgrims from the north who never leave their
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 49 
 
 high and wind swept meadows. There are no such butter- 
 flies in the hills and plains below, but go into Labrador 
 and you will see plenty of them. 
 
 LEFT-OVER PIECES OF THE ICE AGE 
 
 Of course you understood all along that these aren't the 
 very same butterflies that came with the glaciers, yet in 
 shady glens in high mountains, where the snow never 
 melts, people do sometimes find masses of ice, which, 
 there is every reason to believe, have been there since the 
 Ice Age. And sometimes thick veins of ice, buried hun- 
 dreds of feet under pebbles, boulders and soil, are struck 
 in sinking wells. These are known as ice wells; huge ice 
 water tanks that never need filling! 
 
 II. A LITTLE VISIT WITH. THE GLACIERS 
 
 But if the ice masses in the shady glens and under the 
 old moraines may be said to be pieces of the Ice Age left 
 over, the glaciers of to-day are, in a sense, the Ice Age 
 itself. For these glaciers do, on a smaller scale, what Mr. 
 Labrador and his partners in northern America, Europe, 
 and Asia did on a large scale so many centuries ago. Sup- 
 pose now, like Agassiz, we trace a glacier to its source. It 
 will be a long journey, all steep, some of it almost straight 
 up, and along chasms of slippery ice with sudden storms 
 that hide the chasms and blind your eyes and take away 
 your breath. The first part of our journey is over a field 
 of ice, gray with the dirt of weathered rock from the moun- 
 tain sides. Along its borders are those sharp-edged stones 
 neatly packed in rows, that our geography tells us are
 
 SO STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 calletj "lateral moraines." It has another row of these 
 stones sticking up right in the middle of its back, like the 
 sharp-pointed vertebrae of the ceratosaurus. 
 
 By noon, as often happens in the Alps as elsewhere at 
 this time of year, a rain comes up and we lunch under the 
 shelter of a tumbled heap of rocks. Watching the down- 
 pour drift across the desolate wastes we think what jolly 
 times like this Agassiz and his companions had in their 
 little hall of science under the big stone. After lunch we 
 start again, and although it's stiff going, and it takes a lot 
 of this thin air to make one good breath, we spare a little, 
 now and then, for shouting, to hear the wonderful play 
 of the echoes among the mountains. We go through all 
 kinds of weather rain, mist, snow. Then suddenly we 
 burst into blinding light. The sun is so dazzling on the 
 snow, now no longer ^ covered with dirt and mountain 
 debris, that we must all put on our colored glasses. In 
 some places, among bare rocks that absorb the sun's heat, 
 it is positively sultry. 
 
 The fields around us look like an ocean turned to stone. 
 Waves are formed in the surface ice of the glacier because 
 surface ice moves faster than the main mass beneath. On 
 the bordering mountain walls the ice rises into still greater 
 waves "foaming about the feet of the dark central crests 
 like the surf of enormous breakers." And this great, still 
 image of the parent sea, from which the air currents car- 
 ried the moisture that made it, has eddies and whirlpools, 
 and like the troubled sea, "whose waters cast up mire and 
 dirt," the glacier, where it swirls along its shores, works 
 pebbles and dirt to the surface. Often this material is 
 carried into the centre of a whirl, as sea weeds and the
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 51 
 
 rubbish of the seashore are driven into eddies among the 
 rocks. 
 
 Somebody must have been here just ahead of us. Isn't 
 that a dark glove over there? We come closer. What 
 at a distance seems to be a glove proves to be a hole in 
 the ice so deep it looks dark. Lying flat and carefully 
 peering over the edge we look into something strangely 
 beautiful an ice palace, with icicles in fantastic groups 
 hanging from the roof. Through this roof the sun comes 
 in delicate floods of pale green light, the combination of 
 the yellow rays with the blue of the ice. We drop peb- 
 bles into the hole. They rattle down and down with long, 
 dull echoes, dying away. We can hear the murmur of 
 running water. Gusts of cold air come up that bite like 
 the wind on a sharp winter day. 
 
 These underground palaces of art start as great cracks 
 in the ice, called "crevasses," from a French word mean- 
 ing a crevice. They can usually be seen plainly as yawn- 
 ing chasms, but sometimes are so bridged over by the 
 snows that a small, dark hole is all you see. And we might 
 not see that in time. This would be very bad, for these 
 snow bridges are often quite thin. One might like to go 
 down in a crevasse and explore about in this beautiful 
 dream world but not when one wasn't looking ! 
 
 Even when one is looking and is as careful as can be it's 
 dangerous. But still you may be sure that the famous 
 men who have studied glaciers have done it, for every 
 true man of science likes to get at the bottom of things. 
 It was Agassiz who first went down in this way into the 
 heart of a glacier. It was while he was making his studies 
 in the Alps, and he came very near being drowned in one
 
 52 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 of the streams that always flow at the bottom of a cre- 
 vasse, for these crevasses, breaking up the ice, increase 
 the rate of melting. (You know broken ice will not keep 
 so well as a big block.) 
 
 WHAT TWO BOYS SAW IN THE FAIRY-LAND OF ICE 
 
 When you have read John Muir's story of how he climbed down into a crevasse 
 in California in his shirt-sleeves (see H. & S.) you will know that he was the other 
 of the "two boys" I refer to, one of them being Louis Agassiz, whose adventure in 
 this fairy iceland down in the glaciers is told in this chapter. Don't look danger- 
 ous at a distance, do they, those crevasses? Remind one of the crimps in a Christ- 
 mas pie. But notice the difference when you get up close to one of them in the 
 next picture. 
 
 BUT THESE SCIENTISTS WILL BE BOYS 
 
 Agassiz had been lowered by a rope. When his feet 
 suddenly plunged into the icy stream his shout for help 
 was misunderstood by his friends and he was lowered still 
 further. His second cry, which you may be sure promptly 
 followed the first, showed that something had gone wrong
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 
 
 53 
 
 THOSE LITTLE CURVED LINES WHEN YOU GET UP CLOSE 
 
 This is what those little curved lines are really; great yawning chasms in the 
 ice. The sun is shining from the left; a morning sun, probably, as those tourists 
 are out for a walk. This scene must be pretty well down the glacier's course, far 
 from the upper fields, for you see these people are just in ordinary dress not in 
 the dress of mountain-climbers, with ropes and Alpine stocks and everything. 
 
 and he was drawn out. The worst of it was that coming 
 up he had to steer his course among those huge icicles, 
 any one of which, being worn away or broken loose by the 
 friction of the rope and striking his head, would probably 
 have killed him. But they are always doing things like 
 that these men of science. They keep on being as curi-
 
 54 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ous and enthusiastic about the things they are interested 
 in as any boy. 
 
 It is perfectly safe to climb glaciers as we are doing in 
 a book but they are really ticklish things to go about on, 
 as well as down into. To find out all the interesting things 
 you can so easily get through pictures and the printed page 
 took years of skillful study, ingenuity, and endless patience 
 and much courage. What a little further on in this chap- 
 ter you will learn about the movements of glaciers in seven 
 minutes, it took Agassiz seven long years to find out and 
 make sure of. To Agassiz more than to any other one 
 man the world owes the tremendous idea of the Ice Age 
 and its story. His home among the glaciers of these Alps 
 named playfully by the devoted scholars who worked 
 with him the "Hotel des Neuchatelois " was a rude 
 shelter under a projecting rock. The results of this long 
 study he published in a work in two volumes, and so made 
 known the great facts he had found and the theory about 
 an Ice Age which he based upon them and which is now 
 everywhere accepted. He became professor of geology at 
 Harvard University and as famous a teacher as he was a 
 student of nature. After his great and useful life was 
 ended he was buried in his adopted land with a boulder 
 from the site of the little stone hut on the glacier for his 
 monument. 
 
 III. THE SOUL OF THE GLACIER 
 
 Many of the fellow-countrymen of Agassiz, the peasants 
 of the Swiss Alps, believe the glacier is a living thing and 
 has a soul. In the spring the peasants take their sheep
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 55 
 
 and cattle into the High meadows called "alps," from 
 which the mountains get their name, and remain there 
 until fall with the glaciers all around them. There are 
 nearly 2,000 glaciers in the Alps, varying from less than 
 a mile to over ten miles in length, and from a few hundred 
 feet to a mile in breadth. So the peasants have every 
 opportunity to get acquainted with their big white neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 "The glacier has a soul," they say, "and a voice, many 
 voices. Sometimes he groans. This is when he is in 
 pain. Listen ! " 
 
 SOUNDS THAT GIVE ONE THE " CREEPS" 
 
 We do hear a sound very like a groan. Even experienced 
 mountain climbers can hardly keep down a "creepy" feel- 
 ing when they hear it. This sound is made when the ice 
 is cracking into a crevasse and while it is enlarging. These 
 crevasses are formed by various strains in the ice as it 
 moves along. So long as the strain which caused them 
 continues the crevasses keep widening. The "groans" 
 may be said to be "growing pains." 
 
 In some places you hear a constant roaring sound. The 
 peasants are not superstitious about this sound however. 
 They know it is made by what they call the "moulins" or 
 mills of the glacier. Water, melting on the surface, makes 
 streams. These, running together, make a larger stream. 
 This stream, coming to a crack in the ice where a crevasse 
 is just beginning, pours down, hollows out a little shaft and 
 joins streams in the interior of the glacier, like that in 
 which Agassiz took a bath when he didn't want to. The
 
 56 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 noise of the water, striking far below, comes up through 
 the shaft, as a voice comes up through a speaking tube. 
 But the crack into which the water falls must be very 
 narrow, so that the water can melt both walls and thus 
 form a shaft; otherwise it merely glides down the nearer 
 wall and makes no sound. 
 
 NOISES WE PEBBLES HELP MAKE 
 
 Where two ice rivers emptying into a main stream come 
 together you hear a constant dull rattle and rumble. This 
 is made by the blocks of stone and trains of pebbles that 
 have ridden in on the backs of the two glaciers thus going 
 into partnership, falling between the glaciers at the point 
 where they come together. The stones that do not fall 
 over are brought together in the centre of the glacier and 
 so make that spiny backbone of his, the "medial moraine." 
 The rows of stones on the two sides of the glacier, called 
 the " lateral moraines," have fallen piece by piece from 
 the mountain walls as the glacier moved along between 
 them. 
 
 But the strangest thing about the voices of the glaciers 
 I have yet to tell. Whenever the sun is shining brightly, 
 as I have said, and the gentians and the globe flowers open 
 their petals and the birds start the chorus of the day, the 
 glacier begins singing, too, humming to itself a pleasant 
 tune. When the sky grows cloudy, even for a short time, 
 the birds stop singing, the flowers cover their faces, the 
 bees and butterflies hurry to shelter, and the glacier's song 
 gradually dies away. Any cloud may bring rain, as far 
 as the flowers and the bees and the butterflies know, and, 
 for the same reason, the winged people hurry to cover
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 
 
 57 
 
 because they don't want to get their wings wet. The 
 flowers hide their faces to keep the rain from washing their 
 pollen away, and the birds stop singing because, like the 
 rest of us, they don't feel so cheerful under gloomy skies. 
 
 ON THE ROOF OF THE ANDES, WHERE IT'S TOO COLD TO 
 GROW GLACIERS 
 
 But the glacier, why does he stop singing too? Because 
 that murmuring tinkle you heard was made by the water 
 melting on the glacier and running into rivulets a little 
 way under its surface. When the sun stops shining the 
 surface ice stops melting, the water gradually quits run- 
 ning and the murmur of the song dies away. 
 
 It is because of these queer human habits of the glacier 
 and, above all, his sensitive response to the moods of days 
 and seasons, that many of the mountain people insist he 
 is not only a living creature, but that he has a soul. We
 
 5 8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 think of all this now as the western sun drops behind the 
 snowy summits, the glacier's song grows silent, and we 
 hear, mingling with the vespers of the birds, voices echo- 
 ing from crag to crag the words of the psalm, "Praise ye 
 the Lord." These are the voices, of the herdsmen speak- 
 ing to each other from alp to alp the evening call to 
 prayer. 
 
 IV. How THE SNOW MEN, THE GLACIERS, AND THE 
 ROCKS Go WALKING 
 
 Now that we have learned how glaciers, wild flowers, 
 and butterflies get up into this high world, by climbing up 
 here ourselves in the beautiful springtime, the next thing, 
 I suppose, is to climb down again. But first just look 
 over the edge here and you can get some notion of how 
 high we are, not merely in feet and figures, as we have it 
 in the table of mountain heights in our geography, but in 
 actual feeling. 
 
 "What are those little blocks, all ruled off like a chess- 
 board, away down there?" 
 
 " Those are the little Swiss farms with the gray roads 
 between." 
 
 "And those small white things among the farms that 
 look like pieces of grit?" 
 
 "Those are the Swiss villages." 
 
 "And the black specks on the slopes of the mountain?" 
 
 "Those are tourists with their guides, coming up. Peo- 
 ple, no doubt, whom we should like to know, but we shall 
 have an interesting new acquaintance travelling down 
 with us. You've met some of his family, no doubt, for
 
 THE SOUL OF THK SPRING 
 
 59 
 
 THE OLD MAN OF BALISTAN 
 
 Where would you say, judging from the head-dress of the man in the middle, 
 this scene is located? Somewhere in Asia, wouldn't you? For in Asia the na- 
 tives, particularly the Mahometans, wear turbans, as you would learn by simply 
 looking up "turban" in a dictionary. And wouldn't those summer helmets lead 
 you to suppose that this is a hot climate, in spite of the great ice-pillar and the 
 snow-field? And don't those helmets suggest Englishmen? Now, where in Asia 
 would you find vast mountains, a hot climate, Mahometans, and Englishmen to- 
 gether? Yes, to be sure, in the Himalayas of India. And that's just where an 
 expedition of English scientists came across this grotesque creature of stone and 
 ice one summer day, on a glacier in Balistan. So I just called him ''The Old Man of 
 Balistan." 
 
 he's an ice man. There are several of these ice men 
 always travelling down on the glaciers." 
 
 You'll know one of them the moment you see him, for 
 they are queer-looking fellows with only one leg or 
 rather one leg at a time and they wear big stone hats. 
 They never go walking without them. They can't. 
 
 To the group of boys and girls to whom I first told these
 
 60 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 stories of my life and adventures nothing was more inter- 
 esting than this account of the ice men who walk. On 
 that occasion I called them snow men because the boys 
 had just been making a snow man, and these ice men up 
 
 LOOKS LIKE A BROTHER, BUT HE'S NO RELATION 
 
 This "old man'' is a creature, not of the snows but of the winds. The capstone 
 apparently conglomerate, it looks so rough and pebbly tumbled down from 
 the mountains once upon a time and found a resting place on a bed of softer rock, 
 a section of which became separated from the mass on either side by those earth 
 cracks called "joints." Then the winds and other instruments of weathering got 
 their fingers in these cracks, wore the neighboring sections away, and left this 
 pillar standing. It is broader at the bottom because the winds, checked by the ob- 
 stacles on the ground, didn't strike with such force as they did higher up. 
 
 here, like the glaciers on which they always travel, are 
 made of snow turned to ice. You have heard the expres- 
 sion "clothes make the man," but in the case of these men 
 of the snows it is literally true, so far as their hats are con- 
 cerned, for it is their hats that make them grow. 
 
 "I bite," said the High School Boy, "what's the an- 
 swer?"
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 
 
 CAN YOU SOLVE THIS PICTURE PUZZLE? 
 
 For reply I roughly sketched the picture at the top of 
 the page. From this hint my audience thought out the 
 answer for themselves. See if you can do so before you 
 learn, in the next few paragraphs, what the answer is. 
 
 It comes about like this. One day we see a big stone 
 lying on the glacier, and when we come that way again 
 several days later this same stone is standing on a tall 
 pillar of ice. We notice the stone hat is tilted forward a 
 little, apparently to shade this queer man's face, which is 
 always turned directly toward the sun. It sits jauntily 
 on one side this hat of his as if he were feeling particu- 
 larly contented with himself and the world on this sunny 
 day and had started for a stroll. 
 
 And it really is because the sun is so bright that the 
 hat is tipped. Moreover it is because of the sunshine that 
 the man takes a stroll. If, after more days of sunshine, 
 we return we see the same stone further down the slope 
 of the glacier and apparently standing on the same leg. 
 
 "But does he or it actually walk on that leg?" 
 
 (The audience, who at first thought I was joking, had 
 begun to believe I was in earnest.)
 
 62 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Yes, that leg and others. Before this Alpine tourist 
 ends his travels down to the valleys below he may have, 
 all told, as many legs as a centipede, but only one at a 
 time. Like the legs of the amoeba and the claws of the 
 crab they are renewed as wanted. A big stone falling 
 from the mountain side upon a glacier protects the ice 
 beneath from the sun's rays, so, as the ice melts down 
 around it, the stone is left standing on a pillar. These 
 " glacier tables" (to use the scientific term) are formed on 
 the south sides of glaciers where there is the most sun. 
 Owing to the slant of the rays the rock is heated most on 
 the south end and so tips in that direction more and more. 
 Finally it falls off and, in so doing, pitches farther down 
 the slope. Then a new pillar is formed and the whole 
 process is gone through again. 
 
 (If we should get lost up here any one of these snow 
 men will tell us the way out. The snow man's hat, for 
 the reason stated, always tips toward the south.) 
 
 The stones of the winter lands are not only like human 
 beings in the fact that they walk, but like little human 
 beings in the fact that when they are small they can't. 
 In one of the pictures I drew for the boys and girls that 
 representing the ice pillar from which the stone has slipped 
 you may be able to make out a little pebble. It got a 
 ride because it was hiding under the big stone. Left to 
 itself "it wouldn't have a leg to stand on," as the saying 
 goes, for small stones are heated through by the sun and 
 so sink down into the ice and form no "legs." 
 
 MR. GLACIER'S CATERPILLAR TRACTOR 
 
 "The glaciers," says Reclus, "seem as motionless as the 
 peaks that tower above them." Nevertheless, as we know,
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 
 
 fnm a phvograph cop^dzhiedtby Merl La Voy 
 
 THE RUSH OF THE AVALANCHE 
 
 It's seldom you can get a snap-shot at an avalanche it's so sudden ! Then, 
 when you do get one you must be an expert or your picture will be a blur. This 
 picture was taken by Merl La Voy. An interesting thing about it is that the 
 scene is on Mount McKinley, which, as your geography will tell you, is the highest 
 mountain in North America. The avalanche started near the top, where the 
 greatest fields of loose snow lie. We see it in the act of plunging into a vast cre- 
 vasse several miles below, and sending up clouds of snow. They look like steam. 
 
 they do move. While the motion is in so many respects 
 like that of a river that glaciers are often called "ice 
 rivers," they have motions and, so to say, "methods" that 
 curiously suggest the inventions of men. Take, for exam- 
 ple, the way they climb down a steep hill; for all the world 
 like the "tanks" in the Great War. The tanks, you 
 remember, made nothing of shell holes, rough country, 
 ravines, or trenches, but lumbered and crushed their way
 
 64 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 along, resistless as the Fates. And, you may also recall, 
 the tanks moved by laying sections of themselves the 
 great cleats on the outside belt which they picked up 
 again, as they advanced. This was called the "caterpillar 
 tractor" system of travelling. 
 
 Now watch the glacier when it comes to an incline much 
 steeper than its ordinary slope. It breaks across in sec- 
 tions at right angles to its bed, and section after section 
 drops down. Then the forward sections crowded upon by 
 those in the rear are pushed up close, freeze together again, 
 and on goes the glacier as good as new. 
 
 As a traveller, ' however, it is a little slow. It made 
 faster time in the old days in the Ice Age when glaciers 
 were so much larger, but to-day, at the rate at which 
 ordinary glaciers travel, it may take a boulder as big as 
 Plymouth Rock something like a hundred years to be 
 carried from the upper fields to the heap of stones and 
 soil which your geography calls a "terminal moraine," 
 and where Mr. Glacier says: 
 
 "All out! Far as we go." 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 How would you like to go to school to the pretty Misses Sol- 
 danella? They can teach you a lot about botany. If you learn 
 what an unusual thing they do with their leaves, for instance, that 
 will lead you to follow up leaves in general. Leaves are wonderful 
 things. Indeed, it isn't often yod find the leaf of a book that will 
 tell you half as much as the leaf of a plant, if you only know how 
 to read it. 
 
 In Grant Allen's "Flash Lights on Nature," you will find that 
 the Soldanella sisters store food in their leaves all winter just as 
 we put things away in the cellar, and how this helps them get up 
 so early in the spring; why the fact that the little sisters are not
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SPRING 65 
 
 very tall makes them hurry so; and why if they didn't hurry they 
 wouldn't get to the party at all ! 
 
 What other members of the primrose family do you know? 
 
 See what you can find about our earliest flowers hepatica, 
 bloodroot, dog-toothed violet, jack-in-the-pulpit, Dutchman's 
 breeches, anemones. 
 
 If you will examine closely many early spring buds and flowers 
 especially those like the willow and hazel catkins you will find 
 that they too keep warm and grow in the early spring, not from 
 the warmth of the sun alone but from the fuel they have laid up 
 in their buds. 
 
 Did you know that to see the very first flowers of all in the spring 
 you must look up away above your head? (Maple.) 
 
 Any good book on Alaska will tell a number of striking things 
 about how rapidly spring comes on in the lands where glaciers 
 grow. 
 
 Get Muir's "Mountains of California" and hear him tell about 
 how he went down into a crevasse in his shirt-sleeves, and of the 
 fairy underworld he found there, and how he hated to come away. 
 
 Reclus 1 tells how the glaciers not only come down to call on 
 the farmers, sometimes, but even help them pick cherries! 
 
 I suppose the children who go to the excellent Swiss schools take 
 delight in telling grandmother that Mr. Glacier isn't really a per- 
 son as he is in the tales of the winter fireside but wouldn't both 
 grandmother and the children open their eyes if they knew that in 
 Greenland there is a glacier so big it feeds itself and makes its own 
 snow and its own storms and everything? Hobb's "The Face of 
 the Earth" tells all about it. 
 
 And the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Hobbs together will tell 
 you how to make a good glacier. There are a half-dozen things 
 you must remember or your glacier won't turn out right, (i) You 
 must take plenty of snow; (2) and keep it in a cool place; (3) but 
 you must warm it a little too, once in a while; (4) your mountain 
 gorges must not be too steep; (5) you must have your mountains 
 set just so; (6) and distribute your storms with care. By doing 
 all these things you get fine, durable glaciers, 100 to 200 feet thick, 
 sometimes 500 and even 1,000 feet thick. But you must be care- 
 ful, and, of course, it takes time. 
 
 1 "The Earth."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 (APRIL) 
 
 Now the noisy winds are still; 
 April's coming up the hill ! 
 All the spring is in her train, 
 Led by shining ranks of rain. 
 
 Mary Mapes Dodge. 
 
 THE APRIL RAINS AND THE WORK OF THE 
 RIVERS 
 
 I always liked the little boy's definition of a river sys- 
 tem. " Rivers that empty into other rivers that empty 
 into other rivers that empty into the sea." 
 
 What is still more interesting, the sea at the same time 
 is emptying into the rivers; for the waters of all the lands 
 and the waters of all the seas, are one, and what the rivers 
 give to the sea the sea returns in the rain clouds that are 
 blown landward by the winds. The Earth's waters are 
 thus always in circulation like the blood in our bodies. 
 In making this endless circuit they do an immense amount 
 of useful and beautiful work, and have many strange and 
 curious ways of doing it. It's a great family affair of the 
 Waters people. Everybody has a hand in it, from the 
 baby rill that toddles across the country road, the brook 
 it meets in the meadow, the creek that runs through the 
 wood, and the river into which it flows, to the greater river 
 which carries forward these mingled waters to the sea. 
 
 66
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 67 
 
 I. WHAT I BROUGHT BACK FROM THE CREEK 
 
 I met a raindrop once that had followed the thing 
 through, starting where a little creek began, and got such 
 a load of information I could hardly carry it, about the 
 wonderful part the rivers take and have taken in the mak- 
 ing and remaking of the world. 
 
 We see the April rains carve fairy canyons in the soft 
 clay of the roadside or the creek, but it is hard to realize, 
 as we stand on some pinnacle of the Alps and look out 
 over the deep and wide valleys, the gorges, the cliffs, and 
 mountains cut in two, that all are but the handiwork of
 
 68 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the raindrops banded together as flowing waters. For a 
 long time this was questioned by scientific men, because the 
 idea so upso:t the old theory that great changes in this 
 world of ours came about all of a sudden and from causes 
 
 HOW THEY STUDY GEOGRAPHY IN BOSTON 
 
 This is what, in the Boston schools, they call an "umbrella party." "Umbrella 
 party" sounds much more attractive than "geography lesson," but as a matter of 
 fact it is a geography lesson and a fine one. As soon as they get off that brick 
 pavement the boys and girls will see those rain-drops cutting out little Mississippi 
 River systems, filling little Great Lakes, plunging over Niagaras two inches high ! 
 
 not at work in these days. Now, however, nobody doubts 
 that the big things are done by the little people, working 
 together over long periods of time; little snowflakes, little 
 raindrops, little cells in plants. As a result, the Alps, so 
 far as the expression of their faces is concerned, are as 
 little like the Alps of the past as the face of the old farm of 
 to-day is like the farm of those ancient yesterdays, when
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 69 
 
 the brontosaurus browsed where old Dobbin is nipping 
 the meadow grass and the mammoth ate the leaves of 
 trees that stood where White Face is thoughtfully chewing 
 her cud in the shade. 
 
 Right where you sit reading, perhaps, the land used to 
 be buried two miles deep beneath rocks which have been 
 worn away by wind and rain and by rivers which vanished 
 long ago. Everything has been so changed that if the old 
 scenery should be put back you would be lost right on the 
 home farm. 
 
 WHERE YOU CAN JUMP ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI 
 
 Wrinkles in the earth and in the mountainsides make 
 the first troughs for the streamlets and the rivers, and 
 then the running water itself digs these natural channels 
 deeper. Many rivers begin as streamlets flowing out of 
 springs. The great Mississippi began as a baby, just like 
 the rest of us. You can jump across it still if you go up 
 to its source. Springs not only start rivers in life but go 
 on feeding them. Most large river systems get secret 
 gifts in this way, as they flow along, from thousands of 
 springs that empty into them or their tributaries. 
 
 So springs start and feed the rivers. Now what do you 
 suppose starts the springs? Raindrops stored away in 
 big stone "safes," much as a small boy stores away pennies 
 in his tin bank ! The water of rains and melting snows, 
 passing down through the soilj soaks into the little cham- 
 bers or pores in such rocks as sandstone and limestone, 
 and keeps going on down until it comes to a bed of hard 
 stone, such as slate or granite, into which it cannot soak. 
 
 Now rockbeds, as you know, have a slope some more,
 
 70 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 THE SPRING WHEN EMPTY 
 
 THE SPRING WHEN FULL 
 
 THIS SPRING PLAYS IT'S A TOWN PUMP 
 
 These two pictures show an intermittent spring about five miles from Singer 
 Glenn, Virginia, and there called the "Tide Spring." You can see where the idea 
 of the tide comes in, but can you think why the spring seems to have a tide sys- 
 tem all its own? You know what a siphon is. Well, think how a kind of siphon 
 might be formed in rock, dissolved out by water flowing underground. Then look 
 at the picture on the next page.
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 HOW THE LITTLE SPRING WORKS ITS PUMP 
 
 This is how the pump of an intermittent spring is worked. Some portions of 
 rock are dissolved by underground waters more readily than others and so cavities 
 are sometimes formed, as shown. As long as the water in the reservoir is below 
 the arch of the siphon-shaped outlet no water escapes, but as soon as it rises to 
 the level of the arch the whole of the water is drawn off. Then the spring ceases 
 to flow until the reservoir fills up again. You can empty water in the same way 
 by using a bent tube of any kind. Can you tell why the water flows up-hill in this 
 way? Remember what you know about air-pressure and then look up "siphon" 
 in your encyclopaedia. 
 
 some less owing to the wrinkling of the earth's crust. 
 So the water, slowly trickling through the porous rock, 
 forms a steady stream which runs down along the hard 
 rock, as rain runs down a roof, and finally gushes out at 
 some lower level. 
 
 You can be sure these companies of raindrops, hurrying 
 back to the light, don't fail to notice any cracks in the 
 rocks along the way, and at such places they come gushing 
 up with sparkle and dance; and the greater the dip of the 
 rock beds the higher they dance, of course. 
 
 But it takes any one raindrop so long to get back into 
 the sunshine after it starts on its underground journey
 
 72 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 that you'd think it would forget how to dance at all ! It 
 isn't just the same raindrop, to be sure, that goes into the 
 ground and comes out again, because the raindrops get all 
 mixed up with each other as they move along, but just 
 imagine some one raindrop that fell, say, on a hilltop on 
 the day a baby was born in a valley five miles away, where 
 there was a spring in a shady hollow near the baby's home. 
 By the time that raindrop got down to the spring the baby 
 would be old enough to vote ! 
 
 Yet this is a very good thing for the rivers and the rest 
 of us this slow travel of the underground water, whether 
 it comes out in springs or simply seeps through the soil as 
 most of that which supplies the rivers does. Otherwise, 
 if all the water of the rains went directly into the rivers 
 we would have floods after every wet spell and empty river 
 beds between times. 
 
 Here's another river rebus. How do rivers grow longer 
 at the top? All rivers grow at their source because their 
 headwaters eat back into the rocks and the soil, just as 
 the rain wears away the head of any gully. Where the 
 rock is soft they eat back faster. The Mohawk River in 
 New York State probably wouldn't have amounted to 
 anything if it hadn't done this very thing. From Albany 
 westward past Utica runs a belt of shale, a weak stone, 
 but here so soft that the surface of it crumbles back to 
 clay in every winter's frost. Into this the Mohawk, which 
 in past ages was only a little stream, has eaten back its 
 way until now it is over a hundred miles long. 
 
 But sometimes rivers are so big the very first day they 
 come into the world that you may say they are born half 
 grown. You find them, among other places, in the moun-
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 73 
 
 tains of California. Nearly all the water from the melting 
 snows on Mount Shasta sinks at once into the porous lava 
 fields of the mountain slopes, and after wandering about 
 in the hidden veins comes out, filtered and cool, in the 
 form of large springs which make rivers that set out on 
 
 From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permis- 
 sion of Ginn and Company 
 
 HOW MOST OF EUROPE'S RIVERS GET THEIR START 
 
 Most of the important rivers of Europe start as streams of ice-water, flowing out 
 of glaciers. Notice the boulders along the side of the stream. They also came 
 out of the body of the glacier, where, as we shall see when we take up "The Stones 
 of the Field" in 'Chapter VII, the boulders that rode south with the glaciers got 
 most of their roundness. 
 
 their life journeys without ever having been babies at all 
 so far as you can see. The Shasta River is one of these. 
 The McCloud is another. It gushes forth suddenly from 
 a lava bluff in a roaring spring seventy-five yards across, 
 two- thirds of the width of the river in its widest part. 
 The River Jordan in the Holy Land begins in one of these 
 great springs at the foot of Mount Hermon. 
 
 We know already what a hand the glaciers had in the 
 Ice Age in shaping the course and conduct of rivers, and
 
 74 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 you may be sure they have something to do with the 
 making of rivers to-day. The under side of a glacier gets 
 warmed from three sources: (i) its own pressure; (2) the 
 friction as it moves; and (3) the heat from the inside of 
 the earth which, on account of this thick ice blanket, can't 
 get away into the air as it does elsewhere. This heat 
 melts the ice and, as we know, there is water melting also 
 on the surface of glaciers and in the crevasses. Beside all 
 this the water of rains falls upon the glacier so that there 
 is plenty of water to make rivers, and we always find 
 streams of water running from a glacier's front. Most of 
 the rivers of Central Europe start in this way. 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF THE BRIDAL VEIL 
 
 And, although they didn't make the rivers themselves, 
 the Ice Age Glaciers are held responsible for the fact that 
 many little rivers always have to jump to catch the train. 
 That is to say, they come tumbling over falls to join the 
 larger streams into which they empty. The reason of 
 this is that when, in the Ice Age, the glaciers filled the 
 river valleys the larger glaciers in a main valley dug below 
 the tributary valleys and so left the mouths of the tribu- 
 tary rivers high up on the main valley's walls. The 
 famous "Bridal Veil" in the Yosemite is one of these side 
 valley falls. The fall 900 feet is so great that the 
 water widens to a fleecy foam and waves back and forth 
 in the wind like a gauzy veil and, instead of a roar like 
 Niagara, it makes a rustling sound like silk. 
 
 While some rivers come hurrying down like that as if 
 they really were afraid the larger river would go off and 
 leave them others, like the Amazon, roll on as stately as
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 75 
 
 a Lord Mayor's procession. But the waters of all are on 
 their way to the sea. The rock layers, owing to the wrink- 
 ling of the earth as it shrinks, are nowhere level, so SOW- 
 
 JUMPING .TO CATCH THE TRAIN 
 
 See the famous Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite Valley hurrying down to reach 
 the river below. As the stream descends, it broadens into a beautiful, filmy veil. 
 
 ing water is always on a down grade, sloping toward the 
 sea or toward other land that does slope toward the sea. 
 Then remember too as the sea bottom keeps sinking the 
 continents keep rising, which increases the pitch of the 
 land.
 
 76 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 All very simple, but none the less grand and impressive. 
 Ruskin, in one of the noblest of his passages, says: 
 
 "[All water courses], from the inch-deep streamlet that 
 crosses the village land in trembling clearness to the massy 
 and silent march of the Amazon and the Ganges, owe their 
 play and power to the ordained elevations of the earth; 
 [to] paths prepared for them by which at some appointed 
 rate of journey they must evermore descend, sometimes 
 slow and sometimes swift, but never pausing, the gate- 
 ways of guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and 
 chasm, and from afar off the great heart of the sea calling 
 them to itself." 
 
 That's a poetic way of putting it, but it's a fact never- 
 theless. 
 
 II. THE HUMAN NATURE IN RIVERS 
 
 There's a lot of human nature in rivers. To begin with, 
 as we might suppose, they do the most playing and the 
 least work when they are young. Brooks will be brooks, 
 you know ! 
 
 What pretty ways they have in babyhood ! Kissing the 
 pebbles, crooning, bubbling, chattering, playing, they are 
 big Mississippis or great oceans that, like Homer's ocean 
 river, flow around the world. Their bubbles are ships, 
 sometimes wrecked on dreadful headlands along the shores. 
 
 THE CHANT OF THE WATERFALLS 
 
 Waterfalls are found only in young streams and more 
 often as you near the source. Older streams have worn 
 down their beds more nearly to a level and, as we all
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 77 
 
 know, more rivers begin among the mountains and high- 
 lands than in the lower lands. In the mountain regions 
 there are plenty of rocks and cliffs to jump from, and the 
 rivers, you may be sure, make the most of their oppor- 
 
 ' BROOKS WILL BE BROOKS, YOU KNOW! 
 
 Our baby river of the meadow seems to be playing it has a Niagara Falls of its 
 own, "Rock of Ages" and all! See the "huge mass" of rock at the foot of the 
 falls; and the rapids? 
 
 tunities. At such falls as the Bridal Veil they jump so 
 far they are turned into white cascades, and as you climb 
 the cliff beside them and feel the wind wafting spray in 
 your face you hear the music of their songs. The more 
 or less regular dash of the water as it swings back and 
 forth in the wind gives that chanting sound described in 
 waterfall poetry.
 
 78 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Like children these dancing, singing rivers love pic- 
 tures and color. You see that in the rainbow tints of the 
 spray as the sunlight strikes the air bubbles the waterfall 
 "blows"; in the green of its waters turned to gray in the 
 foam; in the reflections of mountain, sky, and cloud in 
 the smooth stretches below the falls. 
 
 And, like pebbles and other little people, rivers love to 
 play in the rain. My ! What a time I In a storm, with 
 a gray flood pouring from the sky, you hear, mingled with 
 the voice of wind and rain, the swash and gurgle of the 
 eddies as the river goes along in its dance, wild with the 
 joy of it all. In a mountain stream during a heavy rain, 
 with wind, you can also hear the waves dashing against 
 the rocks along the shore or in the stream, and the smoth- 
 ered, bumping, rumbling made by the boulders on the 
 bottom knocking against each other. 
 
 STORM CHORUS OF THE MOUNTAIN TORRENTS 
 
 From any high place during a mountain storm you can 
 see twenty, yes, often a hundred torrents, and the noise 
 of the water and the moving stones makes a wonderful 
 storm chorus. Reclus compares the sound made by the 
 stones to dull thunder. 
 
 WHERE TO LOOK FOR HIDING RIVERS 
 
 Rivers, both young and old, play hide and seek. Possi- 
 bly the older rivers get to dreaming of their infancy when 
 they were springs, and want to play they are springs 
 again; anyhow, they disappear in the ground in one place 
 and then come out laughing in another as if they really 
 were springs ! And how they must chuckle to themselves
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 79 
 
 THE LOST RIVERS AND THE THOUSAND SPRINGS 
 
 These are the waters of some hidden tributaries of the Snake River gushing out 
 as springs from its beautiful banks. The group is called "The Thousand Springs," 
 and is supposed to be the reappearance of two "Lost Rivers" that disappeared 
 back in the sand wastes. 
 
 when they fool people into thinking they are brand new 
 rivers ! This happens sometimes, and so the river gets a 
 different name at the place where it comes out from the 
 name it bears up to the point where it disappears. Such 
 hide-and-seek rivers are found in regions where it doesn't 
 often rain. The Tujunga, which you cross in going from 
 Los Angeles to San Francisco, is such a river. At one 
 place in its course it comes out of a canyon, looks around 
 a minute, and then disappears in the pebbles, sand and 
 gravel of the plain. Down it goes until it reaches a bed 
 of hard rock. Along this underground bed it runs until
 
 8o STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 it gets to a place north of Cahuenga Peak, where it comes 
 up in springs and flows into the Los Angeles River. 
 
 Mountain lakes are where the lively little torrents stop 
 to sleep. "The sea," says Ruskin, "seems only to pause; 
 the mountain lake to sleep and to dream." 
 
 But after this sleep how they laugh and play those 
 baby rivers as they go dancing over the pebbles and 
 down the falls; for in these lakes they gather themselves 
 together into a larger volume of water, and so, of course, 
 flow on with increased energy. 
 
 "As soon as a stream is fairly over the lake lip it breaks 
 into cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce 
 abating one jot of its glad energy until it reaches the next 
 basin. Then swirling and curving drowsily (dropping off 
 to sleep again !) through meadow and grove it breaks forth 
 anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding in 
 glorious exuberance of wild bound and dance down into 
 another and yet another lake basin." 1 
 
 Just as it is with human beings, a river seems to grow 
 more thoughtful and thrifty as it grows older; and, best 
 of all, this thought and thrift is for others for the people 
 of the plant world along its banks and for its old parent, 
 the sea. With the help of pebbles it puts money in its 
 savings bank and pays it out from time to time. 
 
 In seasons of flood it carries loads and loads of pebbles 
 along. As the flood goes down these pebbles are dropped 
 and covered with the sediment that settles along its banks. 
 Then these pebbles begin to decay and so enrich the soil. 
 Later along comes another flood, takes the pebbles out of 
 the bank, carries them farther along, and, as the waters 
 1 Muir, "The Sierra Nevada Mountains."
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 81 
 
 WAYS OF A WANDERING RIVER 
 
 go down, puts them back in the bank again. In course of 
 time this kind of fresh food from the decaying pebbles gets 
 carried into the sea, where it helps to furnish food and 
 shell material for the shell-fish and raw material to be 
 worked up by the sea's rock mills. 
 
 III. THE MACHINERY OF THE RIVERS 
 
 To do all their great part in the world's work the rivers 
 need only time, enthusiasm, patience, machinery, and 
 tools. All these the rivers have, and the machinery they 
 use and the engineering methods they follow are much 
 more modern than we would suppose. Take, for example, 
 the way in which rivers widen their banks. The current 
 cuts with the greatest force on the outside of bends, and
 
 82 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the motion and effect is practically that of a circular saw. 
 This sawing is done on the largest scale where the current 
 meanders. Swinging from side to side it cuts away both 
 banks. 
 
 And what it cuts away it spreads over the valley by its 
 back-and-forth motion, much as men spread dirt with 
 scrapers when they are grading a road. 
 
 That's how crooked rivers make broad valleys. But 
 they have to have the help of us pebbles, too. We're hard 
 to get along without ! Notice, the next time the river or 
 the creek is up, the rolling, hopping motion of the pebbles 
 as they are carried along by the rushing water. It is these 
 pebbles grinding on the bottom and sides of the river's 
 bed that help most in this kind of valley deepening and 
 widening. In tne same way we pebbles helped dig those 
 grand affairs, the gorges and the canyons in the moun- 
 tains. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a part of 
 our work. 
 
 In the widening of valleys the circular saws of crooked 
 streams are very useful, but there are other things at 
 work. The rains dissolve the soil and wash the banks 
 away and slope them down; Jack Frost, with his wedges, 
 pries out both soil and rock; the little farmers with many 
 feet the burrowing animals and insects and the famous 
 farmer with no feet at all the angleworm loosen soil, 
 and so help the river to carry it away; and the ice, when 
 the river breaks up in the spring, chisels off the banks as 
 it passes. 
 
 If you have ever been in a machine-shop you must 
 have noticed how a planing-mill works away on a job it 
 has been set to do, without anybody watching it at all;
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 HOW RIVERS BUILD STONE BRIDGES 
 
 Natural bridges are made by the same agency that forms the intermittent springs 
 the dissolving power of water and, like the springs, are characteristic of limestone 
 regions because limestone is readily dissolved in water. In the little model of a 
 limestone region "a" and "a" are "sink-holes" saucer-shaped hollows dissolved 
 and washed into funnels through which the surface water joins underground streams 
 such as you see flowing beneath the two "bs," which are natural bridges in the 
 making. 
 
 The lower picture shows just how one of the bridge-builders looks while at work, 
 dissolving and wearing down the rock. The next two pictures will help tell you 
 two other ways in which rivers make their own bridges.
 
 84 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 and when it gets done with its job it stops, all by itself. 
 Such machinery is called "automatic," because, to a cer- 
 tain extent, it runs its own affairs. A river, in planing 
 down and reshaping valley scenery, has an automatic stop. 
 
 AFTER A FEW CUPS OF TEA 
 
 When winding rivers get a few cups of tea that is, are in flood they rush straight 
 ahead and, while much of the water may for a time still go on around the bend, 
 some of it is forced through openings in the rock and in time carves out a bridge. 
 How they do this is shown in the upper diagram on page 83. 
 
 When it has cut its valley down to sea level it stops, be- 
 cause, being then no higher than the sea, it can no longer 
 flow toward it. 
 
 But before this automatic stop shuts off their machinery 
 the work that rivers do is immense. The Mississippi 
 River carries enough solid matter to the Gulf every year to 
 make a mountain a mile square and 268 feet high.
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 
 
 YOU KNOW THIS BRIDGE, OF COURSE 
 
 The Natural Bridge of Virginia is an example of still another style of river 
 bridge-building. This bridge used to be part of the roof of a cave and remained 
 after the rest of the roof fell in. 
 
 When ordinary people want to cross a mountain they 
 have to climb over it. But do you know what a river 
 does? It cuts its way right through and makes what is 
 called a water-gap a great gate of stone that is always
 
 86 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 open and through which the stream forever flows. All 
 the river used was tools and time. The tools were the 
 sand and pebbles it swept along. So in the course of ages, 
 running like a band saw, the Potomac made the water- 
 gap at Harper's Ferry, the Delaware River the Delaware 
 Water-Gap. 
 
 HOW MOUNTAINS HELP MAKE THE WATER GATES 
 
 But how could a river do this ? It couldn't flow up one 
 side of the mountain and down the other, could it? No, 
 certainly not. What then? Wherever you find a river 
 cutting through a mountain range you may be sure the 
 river was there before the mountains rose, and that the 
 mountains rose so slowly the river kept right on in its old 
 channel and wore down the rock under that channel as 
 fast as the mountains rose; while, on either side, they 
 could rise as high as they wanted to for all the river cared ! 
 
 GROWING MOUNTAINS AND THE EARTHQUAKES 
 
 But suppose, before I had explained how water-gaps 
 are made I had told you I could show you a mountain 
 growing. You wouldn't have believed it. Regions in 
 which mountains are still rising, as on our Pacific Coast, 
 are liable to earthquakes. The reason is that as moun- 
 tains rise the rock layers of which they are made are 
 strained dreadfully. Every once in a while they crack 
 and the rocks on either side of this crack grind against 
 each other. This makes the earth shake, much as the 
 house shakes when a heavy table is pushed across a bare 
 floor. 
 
 If you want to see a job of river engineering that will
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 87 
 
 make you catch your breath, look over into some of the 
 river canyons and gorges of the West. 
 
 A mile isn't much straight ahead, but a mile straight 
 down and you on your stomach, with your eyes just over 
 
 THE GREAT CUMBERLAND WATER-GAP 
 
 Here is the famous Cumberland Gap that the river cut through the mountains; 
 so cutting a great figure in United States history, also, you remember. The pic- 
 ture shows the region as it looked in early days. 
 
 the edge it's an awful long way ! Imagine yourself look- 
 ing down a wall of rock like that, and the bottom of the 
 abyss so far off that it looks blue that's a canyon ! 
 
 AND YET THAT LITTLE RIVER DID IT ALL! 
 
 And now we are going down into the vastest canyon 
 in the world, a canyon so vast that it has already swal-
 
 88 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 lowed practically all the words in the dictionary suitable 
 to such scenery and still remains undescribed so all the 
 skilled writers say who have tried their hands at it. This 
 is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Do you remember 
 how in "Alice in Wonderland" the cat disappeared and 
 left nothing but its smile? Well, the first time you see 
 the Grand Canyon you feel as if it had swallowed you and 
 left nothing but your eyes ! And when they tell you that 
 it was all done by that little river that you can just make 
 out threading its way along the bottom, you can't believe 
 it! The total length of the river's gorge a canyon is 
 just a long gorge is some 400 miles. The part of it 
 known as the Grand Canyon is a yawning abyss of stone 
 into which the river walls widen for a distance of 42 miles. 
 The Lower Colorado River, that dug this chasm in the 
 rock, flows through a vast table-land where rain seldom 
 falls. But the river, which rises in the Rocky Mountains, 
 has a constant supply of water from the mountain rains 
 and the melting snow. The canyons you see branching 
 from the main gorge in our picture were cut by the Colo- 
 rado's tributaries. Working together on different sides, 
 they carved out those rock masses that look like oriental 
 temples and have been named accordingly the temples 
 of Brahma, Osiris, Zoroaster, and so on. 
 
 And here in this canyon is a splendid example of how 
 the rivers, in addition to all their other labors, write his- 
 tory. They helped to lay down on the borders of the 
 ancient sea the material out of which the rocks were made. 
 It is in the leaves in such books of stone that the geologist 
 reads the great events of world-making history. More- 
 over, the rivers may be said to cut the leaves of the book
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 89 
 
 when they dig down through them, as .in this immense 
 library of the Grand Canyon. 
 
 Busy, busy all the time these rivers. But although 
 they are always at work they not only never forget to look 
 
 From a photograph copyrighted by Fred Harvey 
 
 AND WE PEBBLES HELPED DIG THE GRAND CANYON, TOO! 
 
 River water alone couldn't cut those canyons the Grand Canyon and the rest. 
 The Colorado and its tributaries had to have grinding tools and the tools were 
 the pebbles they dragged over their rock-beds; and thus, in the course of ages, 
 wore them down and down and down. 
 
 beautiful but they beautify everything they touch. At 
 the outset the lines of a river valley are rather straight and 
 angular, as if the scenery were just being blocked out by 
 an artist, but as the valley grows older its slopes become 
 more gentle, the angles disappear into rounded forms, and 
 the river itself winds along in graceful lines, exactly repro-
 
 9 o STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 THAT MIGHTY RIVER IN THE MEADOWS 
 
 Yon stream, whose sources run, 
 Turned by a pebble's edge, 
 
 Is Athabasca, rolling towards the sun, 
 Through the cleft mountain ledge. 
 
 The slender rill had strayed, 
 
 But for the slanting stone, [braid 
 To evening's ocean, with the tangled 
 
 Of foam-flecked Oregon. 
 
 HOLMES. 
 
 ducing what the great English artist Hogarth called "the 
 line of beauty." 
 
 Back of all the work of the rivers from year to year and 
 age to age, there seems always the thought of beauty as 
 well as the thought of use. They are evidently under an 
 eternal law of service, of beauty, and of change. 
 
 "The hills are shadows, and they flow 
 From form to form and nothing stands. 
 They melt like mists the solid lands; 
 Like clouds they shape themselves and go."
 
 THE APRIL RAINS 91 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Isn't Tennyson's "Brook" a beautiful title picture of a baby 
 river and its ways? 
 
 Speaking of human nature in rivers and apparent differences in 
 disposition, why is it that some of the rivers of California run right 
 through the mountain ranges from east to west have evidently 
 cut their way while others run along, meekly enough, between 
 the ranges? I'm sure from what we have learned about rivers 
 that you can tell how this happened as well as if you had been 
 there when the rivers were made; but if you can't think after 
 trying real hard you will find the answer in the Hide and Seek 
 at the end of the next chapter. 
 
 Beside being so prominent in the literature of the Bible and so 
 famous in history, the River Jordan is a most curious and interest- 
 ing stream, and every child should know about it. Here are some 
 of the things you will find: Why it is born partly grown, and 
 doesn't begin as a little stream, like the Mississippi; why it may 
 be said to be in both the tropical and temperate zones 1 ; about its 
 two valleys, both of which it uses at the same time. 2 
 
 Another famous river over in that part of the world it's the 
 biggest river in Western Asia, in fact was born twins. See if 
 you can find such a river on the map. (The name of it is at the 
 end of the next chapter.) In the days of Alexander the Great 
 these twin rivers, which now unite in one after travelling along 
 independently for a while, were a good day's journey apart clear 
 to the end. In the article on this river in the Britannica, and in 
 books of travel you will find how, by a quaint and ingenious device, 
 the river is made to pump itself up hill and irrigate the fields; 
 how history, clear back to the beginning of civilization, is written 
 in the ruins of cities along its banks; how it used to put in part 
 of its time bounding the Roman empire, and how nowadays it is 
 forced to help support Arab river pirates and wild pigs. 
 
 Now let's go over into Africa with Doctor Livingstone and see 
 how a river can grind out a big, deep stone jar in solid rock. 3 
 
 1 Britannica. 2 International. 
 
 3 "The Expedition to the Zambesi," page 63. One of these natural 
 water-jars that Doctor Livingstone found was as wide as a well and 
 so deep it kept the water cool even under the broiling African sun.
 
 92 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Rivers grind out these pot-holes much as Indian women and the 
 American pioneers used to grind wheat and corn. (The river, 
 you'll find, uses pebbles for millstones.) 
 
 And what do you think of a waterfall big enough to swallow two 
 Niagaras? (It's the greatest waterfall in the world; so you must 
 have learned its name in your geography.) It's described on 
 page 268 of Doctor Livingstone's book referred to in the foot-note. 
 The natives call it "The Fall of the Thundering Smoke." They 
 wonder how water can smoke, and so that you can see the "smoke" 
 twenty miles away. You'll wonder, too, until you learn the 
 reason.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 (MAY) 
 
 When April steps aside for May, 
 
 Like diamonds all the raindrops glisten; 
 
 Fresh violets open every day; 
 
 To some new bird each hour we listen. 
 
 Lucy Larcom. 
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 What a wonderful world it is, this world of green fields 
 and perfume and blossoms of pink and gold ! Where did 
 it come from? How did it get here out of the white win- 
 ter? That bleak and barren winter that lay all around us 
 everywhere only a few short weeks ago? 
 
 Just suppose we had never seen apple trees in bloom, as 
 we are now seeing them everywhere, and somebody should 
 show us a little brown seed, and a piece of bark, and a 
 piece of root, and a green leaf, and a blossom, and an 
 apple, and tell us they grew out of each other were all 
 made of the very same stuff. 
 
 Well, just as sure as anything, you wouldn't believe it. 
 I wouldn't believe it. We simply couldn't! But we've 
 had this sort of thing all around us ever since we can 
 remember, and we've got so used to it we don't see any- 
 thing wonderful about it. It is wonderful just the same. 
 The Colossus of Rhodes, and Jupiter of Olympia, and the 
 
 93
 
 94 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 lighthouse of Alexandria, and all the other Seven Wonders 
 of the World that people used to go so far to see, weren't 
 anything to it. 
 
 And to this day, how it all comes about is as much of a 
 mystery as ever. Yet Nature does it right before our 
 eyes, and over and over and over again ! Even I, old as I 
 am, and as much as I know, 7 don't know how she does 
 it, but I do know how it all started; how Nature first be- 
 gan to change one thing into another. It was when she 
 began making marbles, granites, and other kinds of rock 
 out of other kinds. That was ages before she changed 
 little brown seeds into big trees with pink blossoms and red 
 apples on them, or little brown cocoons into big golden 
 butterflies, or anything like that. 
 
 I. IN THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 Ahem ! Ahem ! (Pebble coughing.) 
 
 I caught cold some several million years ago and I 
 haven't got over it yet. That's why I'm a granite pebble 
 instead of a slate pebble, or a sandstone pebble, or any- 
 thing common. It's a part of the story of the fairyland 
 of change, this cold of mine. 
 
 Ahem! 
 
 Would you mind getting me a lump of sugar? I don't 
 want it for my cold it never does that any good but 
 because a lump of sugar goes so well with this part of my 
 story. 
 
 You notice the sugar lump is made up of little crystals, 
 little building blocks just as I am, just as all granites are. 
 And the crystals in the sugar and in the stone were made
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 95 
 
 in the same way by first heating and then cooling the 
 material out of which they are made. 
 
 When the earth's surface first cooled, the melted rock is 
 supposed to have changed to granite. Melted rock, under 
 
 THE CRYSTAL FAIRIES IN THE SUGAR-BOWL 
 
 the same conditions, does that to-day. So, for a while, 
 granite must have been all the kind of rock there was. 
 There was as yet no sandstone, no shells or bones to make 
 limestone, no pebbles to help make conglomerate or "pud- 
 ding stone," no ground-up rock and soil to make slate. 
 
 The rocks of the earth have been made over so many 
 times that it is not probable that any of the granites now 
 " living" (so to speak) are the same rocks that were made
 
 96 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 when the earth first cooled, but you can see that we have 
 a right to say what I was careful to say when I introduced 
 myself to you in the first chapter, that we belong to one 
 of the very oldest families we Granites. 
 
 Ahem! 
 
 There is a variety of rock a crystallized rock with 
 bands all through it, called gneiss (say "nice"). Gneiss 
 is made from all kinds of rock including, of course, con- 
 glomerate; that is to say "pudding stone" * warmed over. 
 
 " And what they did not eat that night, the queen 
 next morning fried ! " 
 
 DOWN IN THE GREAT MELTING-POT 
 
 But how is old rock warmed over and made into new? 
 You might easily guess that as the heart of the earth is 
 melted rock the rock layers lying next to it would be 
 melted, too, and so started on their way to becoming crys- 
 tallized rock. Crystallization in rock takes place from 
 the surface down, in the same way that maple syrup turns 
 to sugar, as it does if allowed to stand undisturbed. So, 
 as the central mass of rock is cooling from above toward 
 the centre, we may suppose granite is still being formed 
 away down there, miles under our feet. 
 
 But there are other ways in which rocks make their 
 own heat rocks far above this central molten heart of 
 the world. One of these ways might remind you of how 
 the mother hen gets her chickens to come out of the eggs, 
 for rocks hatch out new rocks by sitting on one another ! 
 
 111 Pudding stone" is a rock with pebbles all through it, like the 
 plums in a Christmas pudding. Its book name is "conglomerate.'-
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 97 
 
 The pressure of the upper rocks generates heat in those be- 
 neath. 
 
 Then when these deeply buried rocks come up into the 
 upper world as parts of mountain chains, and the covering 
 
 THREE CHAPTERS IN THE STORY OF MARBLE 
 
 If you're ever in New York City up around ip2d Street, you can read the three 
 chapters in the life of a piece of marble right in the rocks themselves, for there 
 you'll see this mass of rock with that granite dike pushing its way through. The 
 rock on either side of the dike is limestone, and this limestone, owing to the heat 
 of the lava which afterward hardened and became a "dike," is full of crystals; 
 that is, began to turn to marble because of the heat. See how the lava crumpled 
 the limestone as it pushed its way up into the original crack? 
 
 of the softer rocks is, by the rivers and by weathering, 
 worn away, we find the granite. The wrinkling of the 
 rocks which makes mountains also creates immense pres- 
 sure, and this is another great source of made-over rock. 
 Such rock is found almost entirely in mountain regions. 
 Some rocks, as shown in pebbles stretched out like a piece 
 of gum, are heated by pressure without being crystallized.
 
 98 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Often one of these stretched pebbles is the only thing in a 
 crystallized rock that shows what kind of rock it was orig- 
 inally, all the finer material in it has been so changed. The 
 deeper down in the earth the rocks are the more apt they 
 are to be crystallized, because the rocks piled above them 
 help to hold in the heat, just as thick blankets keep you 
 warmest on a cold winter night. 
 
 KINDS OF "METAMORPHIC" ROCK 
 
 Rock of any kind may be changed to crystallized rock. 
 Where the conditions are not favorable for crystallization 
 the rock is made more solid, and material soaked out of 
 the rocks above filters down into it. The lower layers of 
 sandstone may become almost as solid as glass, and are 
 then called "quartzite." Clay rocks are hardened into 
 slate. Rocks changed in any of these ways are called 
 "metamorphic" rock, from two Greek words meaning "to 
 form over." But by " metamorphic " is usually meant 
 rock that has been crystallized. 
 
 NICE HATCHING TEMPERATURE FOR ROCKS 
 
 I compared the hatching of new rocks to the hatching 
 of new chickens, because it is done by the rocks sitting on 
 one another. But chicken hatching and rock "hatching" 
 are alike in still another way. The rocks need heat, but 
 not too much heat. Too much heat melts them. It is 
 only when they have cooled down a good deal that they 
 begin to crystallize; and that, you see, wastes time. 
 
 A nice hatching temperature for rocks is between 500 
 and 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. 
 
 But we might also compare Mother Nature's way of
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 99 
 
 changing rocks to the cooking that goes on in our kitchens. 
 She uses not only heat, but water and other things, includ- 
 ing salt and soda. Both the salt and some of the water 
 in the rocks comes from you'd hardly guess it the seas ! 
 Not the seas of to-day, but the seas of yesterday, when 
 these rocks were made. Then the pores were filled with 
 water and the water has been kept shut in down there by 
 the rocks above ever since. 
 
 From this sea water comes the salt. The salt in the 
 water, when heated, helps to dissolve the rocks so that the 
 different materials in them can separate and come together 
 again in new ways, and so form new rocks. You know 
 when you go to the lavatory to change your hands from 
 dark to light what a lot of difference it makes whether the 
 water is hot or cold and whether you use soap. The soap 
 helps dissolve the dirt on your hands just as the salt 
 helps dissolve the rocks. 
 
 The soda which Nature also uses is particularly good for 
 dissolving rock that will hardly dissolve without it; silica, 
 for instance, out of which are made the hardest of the 
 sand grains, the sand in sandstone, the sharp, glassy edges 
 of grass blades, and the blades of wheat, and the, stalks 
 of corn. Whenever there is a great deal of silica in rock 
 you find soda mixed right with it. This, having the 
 rocks already salted and mixed with soda before putting 
 them in the oven, Mother Nature has always found so 
 convenient ! 
 
 ONE PEBBLE MAY PLAY MANY PARTS 
 
 I, in my time, may have been many kinds of rock. 
 First, heaved up out of the sea by the earliest wrinkling of
 
 ioo STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the cooling earth as granite; then weathered away into 
 soil and carried by rivers to the sea, where I was remade 
 the first time, maybe, as part of the "dough" in a pudding 
 stone; then up again in an earth wrinkle and again back 
 to sea, this time to be made into some one of the clay 
 stones, and then back to granite again. 
 
 Anyhow here I am, a little freckled granite pebble talk- 
 ing myself red in the face because I've got so much to say, 
 such wonderful things to tell, and only a few hundred pages 
 to tell it in ! 
 
 II. How Do THEY KNOW? 
 
 But, after all, how do they know that one rock changes 
 into another? No one ever caught a rock doing this, did 
 they? 
 
 Not quite, but almost. To explain, I must first tell you 
 about the fossils that are found in stone. Haven't you 
 often noticed in marble curious figures that reminded you 
 of sea-shells? They were sea-shells but have been turned 
 to stone, and things similarly changed while still keeping 
 their original form are called ''fossils." 
 
 When the plants and the shell creatures of the sea die 
 they fall to the bottom, and mud and sand settles over 
 them and closes them in, much as you shut leaves and 
 flowers between the pages of a book. But while the book 
 presses the leaves of flowers out of shape these bodies of 
 the water-plants and shell creatures are slowly enclosed in 
 a soft mass of mud that doesn't change their shapes at all. 
 Then the particles that go to make up the soft bodies of 
 these buried things are slowly dissolved away, and the 
 minerals in the water and mud above them soak in and
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 101 
 
 take their places. It's like passenger after passenger in a 
 car getting up and other passengers taking the vacant 
 places. Finally this mass of limey shells becomes buried 
 deep under the sea, is turned to limestone, and when in 
 
 From a photograph by the American Museum of Natural History 
 
 STORY OF THE LITTLE JEWEL-BOX 
 
 A kind of jewel-box? Yes, the kind geologists call a "geode." It began as a 
 piece of limestone in which the underground waters had dissolved a cavity. But 
 these waters had already, in solution, quartz which they had dissolved from quartz 
 rock, and this quartz, deposited little by little in the cavity, formed into crystals. 
 The quartz also made the surrounding walls more solid, so that when the mass of 
 limestone containing this pocket was cut away by erosion this jewel-box remained, 
 and, being rolled about in streams or by the lap and plunge of waves, it was rounded. 
 
 course of time this part of the seashore rises as we know 
 shores have a way of doing or is wrinkled up into a 
 mountain, this limestone becomes a part of the face of the 
 land. 
 
 WOULDN'T WE SAY THE SAME THING? 
 
 Now suppose where some great granite rock stood up 
 through layers of other kinds of rock looking as if it had
 
 102 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 pushed itself through like the great granite boss on which 
 Edinburgh Castle stands you found that wherever this 
 intruder touched the other rock that rock was crystal- 
 lized. If we had just found all this out for ourselves, 
 as the geology people found it, we would say, just as they 
 said: 
 
 "I wonder what the granite did to the limestone and the 
 other rocks around it to make them 'sugar/ or, as we say 
 when speaking of rocks, ' crystallize ' ? Syrup sugars when 
 it is heated and then cooled without stirring. I wonder if 
 this intruding mass that is now granite didn't spout up, 
 
 FATHER, GRANDFATHER, AND THE CHILDREN IN THE 
 PORPHYRY FAMILY 
 
 In this piece of porphyry you see three generations, all living under one roof, as 
 it were. Notice that six-sided crystal near the centre? Compare it with other 
 good-sized crystals that haven't any distinctive shape. The reason for the dif- 
 ference is that the shapeless ones have had some of their substance taken away to 
 form the smaller crystals. The dark mass is lava. In it the big crystals formed. 
 Then, from most of the big crystals the lava reabsorbed material, and this material 
 later turned into little crystals the "grandchildren" of the three generations.
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 103 
 
 SPLITTING MARBLE ROCKS IN THE QUARRY 
 
 This is a scene in a marble-quarry. The men are splitting up a i2o-ton block. 
 A writer in Scribner's Magazine, in which this illustration originally appeared, also 
 describes the process. The wedges, carefully greased, are inserted in the drill-holes 
 which, for a horizontal split, are neither close together nor very deep, as that is 
 the natural plane of cleavage between the strata. Two men with sledges go down 
 the line giving each wedge a blow not too hard. Then two more men follow, 
 and in go the wedges a little farther. You see it wouldn't do to rush matters, or 
 you'd fracture the marble. The operation is so delicate, indeed, that the foreman 
 himself gives the final blows. Then the marble cracks from hole to hole. For the 
 vertical splits the holes, you notice, are closer together. They are also deeper. 
 
 in melted form, from down in the earth, and heat the rocks 
 on either side as it burst its way through. Then both 
 this hot rock and its neighbors cooled and crystallized. 
 That's it!" 
 
 In some places you find these granite masses in great 
 bosses, or domelike rocks; elsewhere in long strips, like an 
 iron bar thrust through other rocks; in still other places in 
 great slabs between other rocks, like a warming pan pushed
 
 104 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 between the bed-sheets on a cold winter night; but every- 
 where it touches other rocks these neighbors are crystal- 
 lized. 
 
 Now, coming back to our friends the fossils, we some- 
 times find limestone bordering one of these intrusive mar- 
 ble rocks with fossils in it, shading off into limestone con- 
 taining the same kind of fossils. As you get closer to the 
 granite mass the fossils in the marble gradually fade away 
 until you come to marble in which there are no fossils at 
 all. 
 
 So there we get the whole story of the life, not only of 
 marble but of granite, and what happened to them in 
 "The Fairyland of Change" and how it happened: 
 
 Chapter I. The limestone was made in the sea and the 
 shell creatures helped to make it. 
 
 Chapter II. Hot melted rock from the inside of the 
 earth broke its way up through these limestone beds. 
 
 Chapter III. Then, as the melted rock cooled, it changed 
 to granite, and the limestone on either side, being first 
 heated and then cooled, crystallized and changed to 
 marble. 
 
 Men of science have still other ways of working out this 
 problem as to whether and how and why one kind of rock 
 changes into another. 
 
 "But," we might say, "aren't they satisfied? We are. 
 It's all plain enough to us now that one kind of rock does 
 change into another. Then why do these geologist people 
 go on getting more evidence when they've already got 
 enough? It's like a boy learning two lessons when he 
 only has to recite in one; and whoever heard of such 
 a thing!"
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 105 
 
 THESE BOYS JUST LOVE TO STUDY 
 
 The answer is that this " going on" is one of the many 
 delights of study, particularly in Nature's books, when 
 once you get the habit. 
 
 Among other things, the scientists search the pockets 
 of the rocks, so to speak, for further evidence as to whether 
 one kind changes into another. Chemistry is a great help 
 in doing this, and, of course, the microscope. They find 
 
 * 
 
 From a photograph by Frith & Co., Ltd., Reigate 
 
 THE MARBLE ROCKS AT JABALPUR 
 
 The gorge of the "Marble Rocks," near Jabalpur, India, is a mile long and of 
 an unearthly beauty of which even this little picture will give you some idea. 
 The walls gleam white and golden in the sun. They are not really marble but 
 limestone, which, as you will learn in this chapter, is the stone that becomes marble 
 in "the fairy-land of change." It looks as if nature had begun the making of mar- 
 ble columns in those cliffs, doesn't it? This is because the cliff is cut up by joints. 
 You can also make out in one of the "pillars" the strata, or horizontal divisions of 
 the rock, as it was laid down in the sea.
 
 io6 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 in this way that rocks that are full of crystals, such as 
 granite and marble, and that look so different from the 
 rocks that are not crystallized such as limestone and sand- 
 stone have in them the very same substances silica, 
 lime, potash, iron, and so on. 
 
 And again they put the oysters on the witness stand. 
 (You remember how, long ago, oysters helped tell that 
 mountains were once a part of the sea bottom.) They 
 put a piece of limestone in a certain acid, and it bub- 
 bles and gives off a certain kind of gas. Then they do the 
 same thing to an oyster-shell, and it gives out the same 
 kind of gas. Then they try it on a piece of marble and 
 out comes that very gas again! So all three the lime- 
 stone,, the oyster-shell, and the marble must be pretty 
 close relations. Marble is just oyster and other shells 
 warmed up and then allowed to cool. 
 
 But they don't stop here these students of the rocks. 
 It isn't enough that all these facts point to one conclusion. 
 They want to actually try it out. So what do they do but 
 change chalk which is a kind of very soft limestone 
 into marble in the laboratory? This they do by heating 
 the chalk and then cooling it under immense pressure. 
 
 III. THE FAIRIES OF THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 If there really are fairies in this deep-down fairyland of 
 change and surely there must be I should say they were 
 the very same fairies we find in a lump of sugar the crys- 
 tals. For it is when these crystals take different shapes 
 the very thing fairies are always doing, you know that 
 things change into something else, so different you can
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 
 
 107 
 
 hardly believe it. One could easily believe that charcoal 
 and coal are related, they look so much alike in the face; 
 but who would say that a piece of charcoal and a diamond 
 were made of the very same stuff? They are. But dia- 
 
 D E F 
 
 SIX MEMBERS OF THE CRYSTAL FAMILY 
 
 Introducing six interesting members of the crystal family. The crystals of 
 common salt and of gold, among others, take the form shown at A. Alum and 
 diamonds crystallize as shown at C; while B and F belong to a system of crystals 
 which we find built up into ice and arsenic. D and E are building-blocks for green 
 vitriol, borax, and sulphate of soda. 
 
 monds are made of crystals and charcoal is not; and that 
 must be it. The carbon of the charcoal was never touched 
 by the wand of the Crystal Fairy. 
 
 A strange thing is that big crystals are always made up 
 of little crystals. So what looks like one crystal is really 
 a United States of crystals, all like each other and each 
 like all of them put together, much as our federal govern- 
 ment repeats the form of the State governments, and the
 
 io8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 State governments duplicate the government at Washing- 
 ton on a smaller scale. 
 But why do the little crystals always come together in 
 
 THE SAND GRAINS AND THE CRYSTAL FAIRIES 
 
 The crystal fairies often give battered sand grains a new lease of life and these 
 pictures show how they do it. Fig. "a" is a single sand grain which has grown 
 into crystal form; "b" shows parallel growths about a grain; "c" is a group of 
 neighboring grains that have crowded each other so in their growth that the crys- 
 tal facets have been destroyed. Sounds odd to speak of sand grains "growing," 
 doesn't it? But they do! 
 
 just such a way as to make big crystals shaped exactly like 
 themselves ? 
 
 Goodness knows ! - 
 
 But whatever the how and the why of it may be, not 
 only do the crystal people stick as closely to the family 
 pattern in dress as the Scotch Highlanders do to the plaids 
 of their clans, but the crystals are clannish in another 
 way. When a clay rock, for example, is dissolved by the 
 heat, moisture, and chemicals down in the land of change, 
 the particles of the same kind that are scattered through 
 it hunt each other out, and ever after cling together, like 
 Emmy Lou and her "nintimate friends." You've noticed
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE 109 
 
 how "spotty" granite is, haven't you? This is because it 
 is made up of different kinds of minerals; but, although the 
 crystals in all follow the granite pattern, the particles of 
 each kind of mineral "flock together." The feldspars and 
 the micas never mix. 
 
 JUST TRY IT WITH A PIECE OF PAPER 
 
 Now take a piece of writing paper and roll it into a tube 
 and I'll show you something else. Stand the roll up be- 
 tween your two hands and press down on the top. It takes 
 a good deal of pressure to bend or break it, doesn't it? 
 Now lay it on its side and squeeze. It breaks right away. 
 
 But how should the crystals in a piece of granite know 
 that a column of anything will stand so much more weight 
 when the .pressure comes on the ends than when it comes 
 on the sides? They seem to know; for I'll tell you what 
 they do, away down there in the dark of the earth. The 
 crystals stand at right angles to the pressure on the rock 
 in which they are forming. Sometimes, because of the 
 movements of the earth as it shrinks and cracks, the crys- 
 tals already formed in granite are crushed over on their 
 sides. Then, in course of time, they form again, but this 
 time they stand upright, with their "heads and shoulders" 
 against the burden little Atlases supporting the world ! 
 And they not only manage to get up and stand up straight 
 when re-formed under pressure, but they stand closer to- 
 gether than they did before; they close up ranks, like sol- 
 diers with serious business before them. 
 
 A crystal is made up of molecules, that is to say, little 
 parts of itself. You can't see a molecule; you just have to 
 think it. Each different thing in the world as salt and
 
 no STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 sugar, boys and bumble-bees, little girls and butterflies 
 is made up of its own kind of molecules or little parts of 
 itself. In order to grasp the idea of certain scientific facts, 
 the men of science thought of the molecules themselves as 
 being made of little bits of themselves, which the scientists 
 called "atoms." Now they find that it is necessary in 
 order to work out still further their ideas of how things are 
 made and done and changed, in this wonderful mystery 
 we call the world to imagine these atoms as made up of 
 what they call "electrons." You mustn't think, however, 
 that this is all mere fancy. We can, of course, think of 
 anything as made up of small particles or parts of itself 
 which we can call "molecules," and that these molecules 
 are made of still smaller parts which we can call "atoms." 
 But there is reason to believe that while each different kind 
 of thing is made of its own kind of molecules and their 
 atoms, all the atoms are made of the same thing elec- 
 trons or little bits of electricity. For reasons which need 
 not be gone into here, it is known that electrons actually 
 exist. These electrons are so much smaller than an atom 
 that there is as much room for them to move around in an 
 atom as there is for the planets to move around the sun. 
 
 And they do move travelling round and round. There 
 are, even in so small a thing as a grain of sand, untold 
 numbers of these circling worlds; systems like the sun 
 with its planets and other vast star systems of the sky. 
 
 And that, it is thought, may be one of the secrets of the 
 continual change of things; clay rock changing to granite, 
 granite to soil, soil to fruit, fruit to children, and so on 
 everything on the move and the electrons doing the mov- 
 ing carrying the changes, so to speak these wonderful 
 little myriad messenger boys of the universe !
 
 THE FAIRYLAND OF CHANGE in 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Don't imagine, for all I've talked so long about them, that I've 
 told you everything there is to know about the crystal fairies. 
 For example, did you know that if it wasn't for the crystal people 
 we wouldn't have any ice? (Ice.) 
 
 You will also find that if it wasn't for ice ice and the Greeks 
 we wouldn't have the word "crystal" at all. (Crystal.) 
 
 One of the most striking things in the whole conduct of these 
 clever crystal folks you will find in reading about ice. If it wasn't 
 for a peculiar a very peculiar habit the ice crystals have, all 
 the waters of the world that ever freeze at all, would freeze solid 
 to the bottom and never would thaw out ! 
 
 I'll tell you this much about it: 
 
 While everything else in the world including boys and girls 
 contracts when it gets cold, ice expands, and so becomes lighter 
 than water, and so floats. 
 
 And yet the ice crystals know how to contract as well as expand, 
 and that's why ice sometimes builds stone walls, as we will see 
 when we come to study "The Stones of the Field" in July. 
 
 Shaking still water that is cold enough to freeze but hasn't frozen 
 makes the crystal fairies get very busy in their ice factories. And 
 it looks very much as if the fairies themselves warmed up with 
 their work; for, after this shaking, the temperature of the water 
 rises ten degrees at the very same time it is freezing ! 
 
 You will also find that when the weather is cold enough ice itself 
 freezes, gets harder and harder with the cold; that ice will melt 
 ice; that two blocks of ice will grow into one if you give them a 
 chance; that ice crystals are apt to be born twins; that these twin 
 crystals are fond of gardening at least, they raise "ice flowers"; 
 that the ice crystals are so punctual in their coming and going in 
 water that they are used to help place the markings on thermom- 
 eters just right, so that we can tell exactly how cold or hot we are. 
 
 All this just about the crystals of the ice, but the work of the 
 crystal people in making snowflakes is even more wonderful. In 
 the bound volumes of St. Nicholas for March, 1882, in your Public 
 Library you will find a most interesting account of a man in Ver- 
 mont who began studying snowflakes and taking their pictures 
 when he was a boy. He's known all over the world as the great 
 authority on snowflakes. In the Encyclopedia Americana you
 
 112 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 will find a long article by him in which he tells the many interesting 
 things he has learned about the ways of the fairies of the snow 
 And how many pictures do you suppose he has in his snowflake 
 gallery now ? Over a thousand, and no two alike ! 
 
 Just to think! Some of these wonderful little people of the 
 fairyland of change sit at the table with us at every meal the 
 sugar crystals. And they are among the most interesting mem- 
 bers of the family. Under the word Sugar you will find that the 
 sugar crystals themselves eat and grow. But what do you suppose 
 they eat ? Not sugar. (You may easily guess, however, they have 
 a sweet tooth.) 
 
 Yes, and at their home table, before they come to your home 
 table, they have their regular meals, and they are not allowed a 
 second helping until they have eaten the first ! 
 
 ANSWERS TO CONUNDRUMS IN H. & S. No. 4 
 
 The east and west rivers in California were there before the 
 mountains rose and so cut their way through; while the north and 
 south rivers between the ranges owe their origin to the mountains 
 themselves. 
 
 The big twin river referred to is the Euphrates. 
 
 The greatest falls in the world are the Victoria Falls on the 
 Zambesi.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 (JUNE) 
 
 The rivers laugh in the valley, 
 Hills dreaming of their past, 
 
 And all things silently opening- 
 Opening into the Vast. 
 
 That pebble is older than Adam, 
 
 Secrets it hath to tell. 
 These rocks they cry out history, 
 
 Could I but listen well. 
 -William C. Gannet : "Sunday on the Hill-Top. 
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 
 I. IN THE BAD LAND LIBRARY 
 
 It has been said 1 that crystals are dreaming of life, they 
 act so like living things. We may imagine the crystals in 
 the granite rocks which first came into being with the 
 cooling of the fire globe, dreaming out the long procession 
 of life and change that followed them. 
 
 But what nightmares they must have had when they 
 foresaw such creatures as the one on page 23, that gro- 
 tesque, that unbelievable combination of bird and beast, 
 the cerotosaurus ! The bones of such monsters are one of 
 the most astonishing secrets of the hills. 
 
 1 John Burroughs: "The Breath of Life."
 
 U4 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 DIFFERENT KINDS OF MOUNTAINS 
 
 The Bad Lands of South Dakota, in which, as in other 
 parts of our great West, so many bones of the ancients 
 have been found, got their name because they are so bad 
 for travelling; that is to say, if you are in anything of a 
 hurry. But if you are just looking around during your 
 vacation, in June, say they are anything but bad lands. 
 They are full of interesting secrets. This secret of the 
 ancient bones is only one of them. Another thing they 
 lead us into is the secret history of the hills themselves; 
 and as this particular book is mainly about the face of the 
 earth, the story back of the landscape, as it appears to the 
 traveller, we shall give the rest of this chapter to the origin 
 
 HOW THE BAD LANDS GOT THEIR NAME 
 
 "The Bad Lands are so called because they are bad for travelling that is, if 
 you're in anything of a hurry!"
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 115 
 
 Painted by Demit Par shall. In the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 THE CATSKILLS IN A MIST 
 
 of the Hill family, using the word "hill" in its broadest 
 sense. If you have looked it up in the dictionary you 
 have found that what people call a "hill" depends a good 
 deal on where they are. The Bad Lands are really hills; 
 but in South Dakota, where these particular bad lands 
 are, they also have what they call the Black Hills, which 
 -are really mountains, because they "mounted" to get 
 where they are. 1 They wrinkled up, just as the conti- 
 nents themselves did, when they came out of the sea. 
 Most of the great mountain systems of the world were 
 made in this way, but table-lands may be so cut up by 
 streams in course of time that they look like mountains. 
 
 1 Mr. Pebble did not mean to say, I am sure, that the word "moun- 
 tain" comes from "mount," used in the sense of rising. The original 
 of the word mountain comes from the language of the People of the 
 Seven Hills, the Romans, and means a great mass of rock or earth that 
 sticks up. Translator.
 
 n6 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 The Catskill Mountains are of this type, while real moun- 
 tains may be so worn down that you would take them 
 for plains. You see, with the Hills and the Mountains, 
 as with other royal families, it isn't the importance of the 
 individual that counts, but the ancestry. 
 
 Another kind of real mountain, beside the folded-up 
 kind, is the mountain that is made where a rocky plain is 
 split up into great stone blocks by the movements of the 
 earth crust, as it settles around the shrinking centre. In 
 the settling and crushing together of the rock cover around 
 the shrinking ball within, some of the blocks drop down, 
 and the blocks that are left sticking up make cliffs. Moun- 
 tain ranges so made have long, gentle slopes on the side 
 opposite the cliffs. Then there are volcanic mountains. 
 Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, is one of these. 
 
 Mountains are also formed where the molten rock on 
 the inside of the earth is forced up under layers of rock 
 nearer the surface. This lifts these rock layers into domes. 
 In the course of time the rivers and the weather wear 
 away the overlying rocks, leaving the hard central core 
 standing out. Harder layers of the overlying rock, wear- 
 ing down less rapidly than the other layers, often stand 
 out as circular ridges with valleys in between, so that the 
 central core looks like some old ring master at a circus. 
 The Bear Paw Mountains and the Little Snowies of Mon- 
 tana are mountains of this type. 
 
 WHERE MOUNTAINS GET THEIR PEAKS 
 
 Most mountain peaks, except those of the volcanoes, 
 are remnants of hard rock which have been left standing 
 while the rivers and the weather cut away the softer rock 
 around them.
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 117 
 
 In regions of gently rolling country even small hummocks 
 are sometimes called "mountains," while out West, where 
 scenery grows so tall, the Black Hills seem to the people 
 only stepping-stones to the big Rockies. So they call 
 
 IN THE HIMALAYAS THEY MIGHT CALL THESE "HILLS" 
 
 High as these mountains are we are right on the roof of the Rockies if they 
 were in the Himalayas they might be called "hills," because there the scenery grows 
 so much taller. What does the sharpness of the peaks say as to the age of these 
 mountains? Compared with the Appalachians, for example? 
 
 them "hills." In the region of the Himalaya Mountains 
 mountains that don't think anything, you remember, 
 of climbing up 16,000 to 30,000 feet in the air a peak of 
 10,000 feet is often called a "hill." 
 
 II. HILLS THAT WERE MOVED IN 
 
 Nearly every region has hills, because every region has 
 or has had running streams and the streams have carved
 
 n8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 out the hills. But there are kinds of hills that aren't 
 home-made; they were made elsewhere and moved in. I 
 believe this is the biggest hill secret of all, speaking of 
 hills proper and not of mountains. 
 
 Almost all over the northern part of North America, 
 as well as much of Europe and Asia, there are mounds, 
 
 From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company 
 KAME SCENERY IN NEW YORK STATE 
 
 heaps, and hills of various shapes and sizes made up of 
 a mixture of pebbles, sand, and clay. In the United 
 States these heaps make a big line of hills, like a procession 
 of ancient Indian chiefs, with bowed heads and stooped 
 shoulders, plodding back to the land of their fathers. And, 
 sure enough, there they go from down East clear across 
 country to the far West and then up North, where, as we 
 know, these hill-moving giants, the glaciers, came from. 1 
 For, beginning with Perth Amboy, N. J., say, you will 
 
 1 Did you suspect the giants of this chapter were our old friends the 
 glaciers of the Ice Age, when I first began talking about them ?
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 119 
 
 find them marching on through Elmira, N. Y., skirting 
 the suburbs of Cincinnati, winding their way through 
 Indiana and Iowa up through Wisconsin to the Dakotas 
 and Montana, and so back into Canada. 
 
 When the geologists first began digging into these hills 
 they not only found them as full of pebbles as a Christmas 
 pudding is full of plums, but the pebbles were of all kinds 
 sandstone, limestone, slate, granite. 
 
 JACK FROST DIDN'T DO IT! 
 
 "These different pieces of stone didn't come from the 
 breaking up by frost of the rock beds on which we now 
 find them," said Some Wise Man, "for then they would 
 all have been of the same kind of rock." 
 
 "And besides," said Some Wise Man No. 2, "they would 
 not have been shaped into pebbles with the edges rounded 
 off, as all pebbles are by the waves of lakes or the sea or 
 the water of flowing streams. So these pebbles must have 
 come from somewhere else." 
 
 "Yes, and a long way off," remarked Some Wise Man 
 No. 3; "for look, there aren't any rock beds anywhere 
 around here from which some of these pebbles could have 
 been made." 
 
 "True enough," said Wise Man No. 4, "and I know 
 what brought these little foreigners. It was a great flood; 
 for water moves not only pebbles and clay, but, in times 
 of flood, good-sized cobblestones." 
 
 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE "DRIFT" THEORY 
 
 So, for a long time, it was believed that the material in 
 these hills was drifted in by the waters. This was called
 
 120 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the "drift" theory, and, although it is now known that 
 this theory was not the true one, such heaps of clay and 
 stones are still called "drift." 
 
 But the learned men kept on digging into the question 
 and into the hills, and finally more things were observed. 
 
 "Did you notice this?" said one. "The material is not 
 separated into layers and divided up into coarse, finer, 
 finest as the sediment of pebbles, sand, and mud is sep- 
 arated and divided when it settles along shores. These 
 pebbles, this sand and clay, are all mixed up." 
 
 "Look at this, will you?" (Here imagine a Learned 
 Somebody picking up a pebble with a scratched face 
 like mine.) "Water never scratched anything like that. 
 Here are a lot more of these pebbles, all with their faces 
 scratched." 
 
 "And just see how all these scratched pebbles have flat 
 faces," cried another of these famous grown-up boys in 
 these great field excursions. "It looks to me as if they 
 had been ground against something hard another rock, 
 say; and for a long time." 
 
 HOW THE QUESTION WAS FINALLY SETTLED 
 
 Well, to make a long story short, they found that the 
 glaciers of the Ice Age, those great bodies of flowing ice, 
 were the only things that could have brought all this mate- 
 rial together from such widely separated regions (as shown 
 by the different kinds of pebbles), and left them all mixed 
 up as they were; and the faces of many pebbles scratched 
 and flattened where they had been ground along. 
 
 And then, to put the question entirely beyond dispute, 
 they find that th"fe glaciers are carrying down pebbles and
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 
 
 121 
 
 HOW THE OLD MEN MOVED THE HILL FURNITURE ABOUT 
 
 This picture of a glacier in Alaska shows you just how the Old Men of the Moun- 
 tain moved the hills about, that time. As indicated by the white lines which, of 
 course, were added to the picture for the purpose the Alaska glacier melted back, 
 leaving just such heaps of pebbles, boulders, and soil as made certain types of hills. 
 Then from 10,10 to 1913 it advanced again, thus picking up the very hills it had 
 laid down and setting them farther along, just as the glaciers did in the Ice Age. 
 
 stuff in just this way to-day, and piling it up in hills in the 
 valleys at the foot of the mountains. Only the hills of 
 to-day are much smaller, because the glaciers themselves 
 are so small compared with the giants of the past. 
 
 HOW THE HILL FURNITURE WAS MOVED ABOUT 
 
 During the Ice Age, when glaciers were all the fashion, 
 they flowed down, and then, as we have seen, melted back
 
 122 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 a certain distance; then they flowed down again. Some- 
 times in later visits they flowed further than before, and 
 in so doing, you see, picked up some of the very hills they 
 had previously laid down and set them along somewhere 
 else. Sometimes we find different rows of hills, one right 
 alongside the other. This shows where the glacier melted 
 away toward the mountains, paused, then melted again 
 and so on, each time leaving a group of hills and not com- 
 ing back there and disturbing them any more. 
 
 Such hills as we have been speaking of njay be steep or 
 gentle, and from a few feet to more than 1,000 feet high, 
 although they are seldom as high as 1,000 feet. 
 
 And there are other kinds of hills made by the glaciers. 
 One of the most curious of these remind you of the serpent 
 mounds left by the mound builders in Ohio. These hills 
 are the deposits left by the streams, the veins inside the 
 glacier's great body. The soil in them is also apt to be in 
 layers like the deposits of other rivers. These hills wind 
 along like serpents, because they reproduce the bends in 
 the streams inside the glacier. Such hills are called "esk- 
 ers." They are seldom more than a few rods wide and 10 
 feet or so in height. They run for 10, 20, 40, 50, and 
 sometimes 100 miles. 
 
 Around Boston, and all along Cape Cod and in parts 
 of New York and Wisconsin, you will see other hills called 
 "drumlins"; and you will see plenty of them, too. It is 
 estimated that there are 6,000 in western New York and 
 5,000 in southern Wisconsin, and they are all around Bos- 
 ton. Bunker Hill is a drumlin. You wouldn't have to 
 tell an Irish boy what "drumlin" means, as they have 
 these hills in Ireland, too, and from Ireland .came the 
 name. The word means "little hill."
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 123 
 
 But while Mr. Glacier made the drumlins of the stuff 
 he brought with him, he enjoyed himself (at least let 
 us hope so) tobogganing on hills he found ready made. 
 These hills are real mountains; usually the granite heart 
 of the mountain, because only a very strong rock could 
 stand having one of these playful giants riding over him 
 and live to tell the tale. Such glacier "slides" are referred 
 to as "domes" or "round tops" or "bald mountains." 
 
 Mr. Agassiz, the great scientist who spent so many 
 years studying the motion of glaciers, could tell from the 
 height of one of these bald and rounded hills how high the 
 glacier was that rode over it. For instance, the glaciers 
 rode over what is known as Blue Mountain in Pennsyl- 
 vania, which is 1,500 feet high. "Then," Mr. Agassiz 
 would have said, "the glaciers that did that must have 
 been at least 2,000 feet thick; for a glacier can only flow 
 over a rocky mass when it is half as tall again as the rock." 
 
 You see it is the mass of it, the pressure of its own weight, 
 that boosts the glacier up the slide. It seems almost like 
 lifting oneself by one's boot-straps, doesn't it? 
 
 III. THE ANTS AND THE VOLCANOES 
 
 Beside all the hills we have mentioned there are several 
 others, well worth looking into; ant-hills, for example, not 
 only because ants are so interesting in themselves but 
 because the ants helped to answer what for a long time 
 was one of the puzzles of science, "How are volcanoes 
 made?" 
 
 When your mother's mother went to school or it may 
 have been back in your mother's mother's mother's time
 
 124 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 From a photograph. Copyright by W. P. Romans 
 
 SACRED FUJIYAMA 
 
 On the left is the famous Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, and on the right 
 thousand miles apart, the two volcanoes look as if they had been cast in the 
 
 a little girl, on being asked in the geography class, 
 "What is a volcano?" was expected to say something like 
 this: 
 
 "Please, teacher, it's a mountain with a hole in it." 
 
 THE WISE MEN AND THE ANT CRATERS 
 
 It does look it, doesn't it? But, what is still more 
 striking, it isn't a mountain with a hole in it at all, if you 
 mean, as the little girl in the geography class meant, that 
 it was once an ordinary mountain and then had a hole 
 put through it. For a long time it was thought that vol- 
 canoes were simply mountains through which fire and lava 
 from the interior had forced its way. Finally, however,
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 12 ? 
 
 AND ITS COUNTERPART THREE THOUSAND MILES AWAY 
 
 Mount Rainier in the State of Washington. Although they are more than four 
 same mould, owing to the uniform system by which volcanoes are built up. 
 
 some scientist thought perhaps of his Proverbs 6:6. In 
 any event wise as he must have been how else could he 
 have been a scientist ? he went to the ant, learned her 
 ways and became wiser. It was by noticing how the ants 
 build their little craters with the sand and clay they carry 
 from their underground homes that men got the idea that 
 volcanoes may be built up in much the same way. So 
 they set to observing Mr. Volcano's habits more closely, 
 and sure enough, the ant had told the answer ! The stones, 
 lava, cinders, and the stone dust called "volcanic ash" 
 are shot out by the explosion, and coming down in showers 
 pile around the opening, as the ant piles the pellets around 
 the entrance to her nest. As the explosions keep on the
 
 126 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 crater is piled higher and higher, and the stones, cinders, 
 and things, rolling down the sides, spread the pile out at 
 the bottom, much as the ant drops pellets over the edge 
 of her growing pile, and so both the cone-like ant-hill and 
 the big volcanic cone are built up. 
 
 WHY THE VOLCANO DOES NOT SMOKE 
 
 But here is something about volcanoes that will sur- 
 prise most people. They throw mud, they throw stones, 
 but they don't smoke. What we call smoke is the steam 
 that makes or at least helps make the explosion. It 
 often has the color of brown smoke because of the rock 
 which has been blown into dust. Neither do volcanoes 
 make " ashes." What is called "ash" is this rock powder, 
 made when the rocks are blown into pieces by the sudden 
 expansion of the water in them into steam. 
 
 WHY VOLCANOES SEEM TO FLAME 
 
 Neither do volcanoes flame, although they are supposed 
 to. Only rarely does flame issue from a volcano, and then 
 only to a moderate extent, due to the burning of the 
 hydrogen gas. What seem to be huge flames are the lights 
 from the molten lava in the crater shining back on the 
 steam clouds above; and these apparent flames rise and 
 fall and vary in brightness because of the rise and fall of 
 the lava. 
 
 But the greatest of volcanic eruptions that is, the well- 
 ing up of melted rock from within the earth have not 
 built cones. The lava spread out into vast plains in India 
 and Abyssinia and in our northwestern coast States.
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 
 
 127 
 
 Great cracks in the earth cross one another. It is at the 
 crossroads that the volcanoes are apt to form, while out 
 of the cracks leading up to these crossroads the lava spreads 
 
 "BUT VOLCANOES DO NOT SMOKE!" 
 
 This is an eruption of Vesuvius. You would think it was throwing out smoke 
 like a gigantic locomotive, wouldn't you, if you hadn't read the text? The darker 
 masses, which look so much like mingled smoke and steam, are shadows. It is 
 probably eight to ten miles high that cloud. 
 
 in sheets. Mount Shasta began at one of these traffic 
 centres. It is a big brother of the landscape which it 
 overlooks. 
 Lava, before it cools and for some centuries afterward,
 
 128 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 is the last thing you would think of farming on, perhaps, 
 but leave it to the little chemists of the water and the air 
 and it 'will decay into the richest land you ever saw. That 
 is why they raise the finest wheat and the best fruit in the 
 world right in the parts of Washington and Oregon that 
 were once covered by the lava flood. 
 
 Not only do volcanoes help to supply us with food by 
 making rich soil of the eruptions of the past, but all life 
 might disappear from the earth if they didn't go on ex- 
 ploding. 
 
 Plants must have carbon and they get it from the air, 
 
 HOW VOLCANOES BLOW BUBBLES 
 
 The surface of lava is apt to bubble like hot mush; and for a similar reason, the 
 expansion of the gases within it. (In the case of the mush it is the mixture of 
 gases we call "air.") When such lava cools you have sponge-like masses such as 
 this.
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 129 
 
 From a photograph by the American Museum of Natural History 
 
 ROCKS AND BOMBS THROWN BY MOUNT PELEE 
 
 Look at these giant rocks thrown out by Mount Pelee in 1902. Compare them 
 with the man and you will realize how big they are. The rounded rocks in the 
 foreground are volcanic "bombs" masses of lava discharged by successive out- 
 bursts of volcanic gases and given their shape by being whirled through the air 
 
 but the amount of it in proportion to their needs is never 
 large. Moreover, every bit of coal that is formed and 
 coal is being made to-day just as it was in the coal ages, 
 although not in such quantities takes carbon from the 
 air and locks it up. Every bit of limestone deposited on 
 the floor of the sea locks up more carbon. But, fortu- 
 nately, immense quantities of carbon are given back to 
 the air through the gases thrown out by volcanoes, thus 
 offsetting these losses.
 
 130 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 WHEN IS A VOLCANO REALLY DEAD? 
 
 When is a volcano dead? You never can tell. A vol- 
 cano goes off when it wants to, quite regardless of the fact 
 that it has had the reputation for a thousand years of being 
 
 WHEN IS A VOLCANO DEAD? 
 
 This is Mount Rainier with its shroud of snow, reflected in Mirror Lake. To 
 all appearances it is as dead as dead can be; but until after a volcano goes off you 
 never can be entirely sure whether it is dead or not; and then, of course, you know 
 it isn't ! 
 
 dead And the worst of it is volcanoes are like guns 
 only more so. A gun doesn't shoot any harder because it 
 wasn't supposed to be loaded; but the volcano, if it breaks 
 out unexpectedly, is violent in proportion to the length of 
 time it has been apparently, dead. This is the reason. 
 The original vent becomes plugged up with the cooled 
 lava. This plug being harder than the rest of the moun-
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 131 
 
 tain, the next outbreak is forced to take a new course, 
 and the longer the forces of explosion are held back the 
 greater the accumulation of energy and the more violent 
 the discharge. 
 
 But why do volcanoes go off at all? Why can't they be 
 quiet and well-behaved like other mountains? Nobody 
 knows for sure. On one thing all scientific men seem to 
 be now agreed; namely, that while the rocks inside the 
 earth are hot enough to melt they are hard as steel, owing 
 to the tremendous pressure of the rocks above them, and 
 one theory about volcanic eruptions is that they are caused 
 by the release of the pressure on this rock in one place and 
 a pressing down in another, as the earth's crust settles and 
 crumples around the centre. Some of this rock that on 
 which the pressure is released melts and rises under the 
 folds of rising rock, and so makes the granite hearts of the 
 greater mountains. Some of it wells up through the cracks 
 in the rock and spreads in lava fields, while some of it 
 gushes up and explodes at the points where cracks cross 
 and so make volcanoes. 
 
 This is one theory, but there are others. The latest is 
 so big that we will have to take it into the mind in sections. 
 
 THE LATEST THEORY OF ERUPTIONS 
 
 1. Imagine the interior of the earth divided into three 
 zones. The central zone, of course, is the hottest. Be- 
 tween this central zone and the zone reaching down forty 
 miles or so from the surface is a middle zone. (Think of a 
 doughnut ball inside a doughnut ring, with space between 
 the ball and ring. That will give you the idea.) 
 
 2. From what is known of the laws of heat it is assumed
 
 132 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 1 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS SHAFT OF MOUNT PELEE 
 
 In 1902, after the first explosion, Mount Petee continued its eruptions for several 
 months, and in the late stages there slowly rose, through the crater, this strange 
 shaft of red-hot lava, like a great iron beam forged by giant hammers in Vulcan's 
 famous blacksmith-shop. As it rose it crumbled and finally fell to. pieces. It was 
 forced up by the gases beneath and shaped by the crater through which it came; 
 but can you conceive of anything more weird and awesome? 
 
 that the flow of heat from the central to the middle zone 
 is greater than the loss of heat from the central to the 
 outer zone. Thus the heat income of the middle zone 
 would constantly exceed its outlay, and so it would get 
 hotter and hotter. 
 
 3. This middle zone is made up of different kinds of 
 rock that require different degrees of heat to melt them.
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 133 
 
 So some parts of this zone would melt and form pockets of 
 liquid rock, while other parts were still unmelted. 
 
 4. These masses of liquid rock would also tend to melt 
 their own way upward, especially when given a lift by 
 gases; for gases would be given off, also, in this heating 
 arid melting process, and tend to work their way toward 
 the surface, carrying with them the liquid rock. 
 
 5. Now the greater the pressure under which a thing is 
 kept the more difficult it becomes for it to flow; the less 
 the pressure the more easily it flows and the longer it 
 remains in the fluid state. So as it rose fluid rock would 
 require less heat to keep it fluid Und would have more heat 
 left over for melting its way up. Then, being joined by 
 other fluid travellers, the entire mass would finally come 
 to a crack in the earth. Finally, you see, it would be 
 only a matter of five miles or so of comparatively clear 
 track up to the land of the fresh air and the blue sky where 
 the rest of us live and where the vulcanologists (the men 
 who make a special study of volcanoes) would be waiting 
 to give it welcome ! 
 
 THE VOLCANOES AND THE SEA 
 
 If you will locate with red ink the volcanoes on the 
 world map you will notice that volcanoes, like mountains, 
 seem fond of the sea. Moreover, while a large proportion 
 of mountain chains are near sea water, and some even dip 
 their feet into it, volcanoes bob up right in the seas them- 
 selves. Not only do the land volcanoes make a great cir- 
 cle of fire 22,000 miles long around the rim of the Pacific, 
 but within this immense amphitheatre are the islands of 
 our story books "scattered in pleiads" over the ocean.
 
 134 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ft Promt or Keceot Action (Crow line! ihow known. Activity) 
 
 . ^.Generally Ancient (CrWMl show where Activity continues t,Q tie, Present) 
 Atlre Volcanoes In Oceanic Depressions I 
 
 Extinct | 
 
 ON THE FIRING-LINES OF THE VOLCANOES 
 
 These islands are simply the tops of sea volcanoes. Of 
 all the active volcanoes, the great majority are on islands 
 or along the borders of continents. 
 
 THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA 
 
 Last of all in this story of the secrets of the hills, let us 
 speak of the big brothers of the family the mountains. 
 
 You remember in the story of how the continents came 
 up out of the sea about wise old Xenophanes of Colophon, 
 who figured out that the mountains must at one time have 
 been under the sea and why he thought so, don't you? 
 (page 13). Now get your geography and come here a mo-
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 
 
 135 
 
 ment; I want to show you something else. Turn to the 
 map of North America. Where are the great mountain 
 chains? Nearly all along the borders of the sea. Now 
 look at the map of South America, and where are the 
 
 From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of 
 Ginn and Company 
 
 A BABY MOUNTAIN THAT STOPPED TO REST 
 
 A mountain, as you can readily imagine, isn't made in a day. Here is a little 
 mountain near Hancock, Virginia, that started up ages ago and then stopped to 
 rest; one of the ripples in which the great Appalachian waves died away. This 
 baby mountain has no granite mass in its centre, as big mountains have, because 
 the wrinkling didn't reach down far enough into the earth to release the pressure 
 on the molten rock. 
 
 mountains? Along the borders of the sea. Then take 
 Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and you see the same 
 thing. Usually the main mountain chains are along the 
 sea border or they stand near the borders of what was 
 once a sea; as in case of the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Why should mountains show such a fancy for salt water ? 
 It seems strange, doesn't it? I know why it is because I 
 helped make a mountain myself once up on the Canada 
 Coast it was and I learned a good deal of the mountains 
 and their ways. I will tell you about the mountains and
 
 136 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the sea a little later; after I have told you some other 
 things. First of all, this is how the Granite family helped 
 make mountains. As the great stone sides of the moun- 
 tain rise the enormous pressure on the melted rock farther 
 
 MOUNTAINS MADE TO ORDER 
 
 Of course nobody ever watched a mountain crumpling up in the way mountains 
 are believed to crumple up, the process is so slow. Yet, to try out the theory, 
 geologists in the universities make layers of different material, corresponding to 
 the strata of different kinds of stone, and then subject this composition to pressure 
 at both ends, as the earth crust is supposed to be pressed in the crumpling process. 
 The result is that these artificial strata take similar forms to those we see in moun- 
 tain rock. And that's the answer ! 
 
 Notice the similarity of the rock wrinkles in the baby mountain in Virginia and 
 these imitation mountains of the laboratory. 
 
 down in the earth is released, and is forced up under the 
 mountain as it rises. Then, cooling, it crystallizes into 
 granite, as explained on page 131. 
 
 WHY MOUNTAINS RUN NORTH AND SOUTH 
 
 Look at your relief map once more. Which way do the 
 mountains run in North America? In South America? 
 In Africa? They all run in a general north and south 
 direction, don't they? Do you see why? The fact that 
 they were made along the coasts of the oceans would make 
 them run north and south, too, wouldn't it? The same 
 thing explains why the Alps do not run north and south. 
 They were made by the sinking of a sea that runs east
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 137 
 
 and west, and so they started out to run east and west, 
 too; then they got a wrench, the particulars of which we 
 need not go into here, and were much mixed up, as we 
 find them to-day. 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE EARTH SLOWED UP 
 
 But there is another thing that may have helped to 
 make many great mountains run north and south. Bed- 
 time and sunrise used to come a good deal oftener than 
 they do now, for then the earth turned faster on its axis. 
 It turned fastest of all at the equator, just as it does to- 
 day. So the lands in the equatorial belt were pulled up 
 and the belt enlarged. Then, as the speed of the globe 
 slackened, the enlarged belt began to wrinkle because 
 there was not the same amount of centrifugal or " fly- 
 away- from- the-centre " force to make it stand out. So 
 wrinkles came at right angles to the belt, just as do the 
 waist gathers in a dress. 
 
 And now about the mystery of the mountains and the 
 sea. When we visit the rock mills of the sea along in 
 October 1 we shall notice, among other things, that the 
 rock is made along the sea border, and that the coarsest 
 sediment settles nearest the land. As a result this part 
 of the deposit is built up faster than that farther off shore, 
 and as it gets heavier and heavier it sinks. The deposits 
 farther away from the shore sink, also, but more slowly 
 because these deposits are not piled up so fast. Now, if 
 you come down on one end of a seesaw what happens to 
 the other end? It goes up, doesn't it? The effect of this 
 sinking of the rocks of the sea upon the rocks of the adjoin- 
 
 1 Chapter X, "The Autumn Winds and the Rock Mills of the Sea."
 
 138 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ing land is something like that. The rocks that make the 
 continents extend out under the sea, and the weight of the 
 newly laid stone on the sea margin end not only tips the 
 rock beds up, but, sinking in toward the continental mass, 
 wrinkles it up, as the pages of this book will wrinkle if 
 you push them from the front edge. So you get your 
 mountains along the sea border. And they are in parallel 
 ranges, because the land is crumpled up into several folds, 
 like a tablecloth pushed from one side. 
 
 "But," you say, "how about the Rocky Mountains? 
 And the Carpathian Mountains in Europe, not to mention 
 several others? They are not on the borders of the sea." 
 
 WHY SOME MOUNTAINS ARE FAR FROM THE SEA 
 
 That's no sign they weren't near a sea border at some 
 time. Let me just ask you. Suppose you found that most 
 of the great mountain chains are on the borders of seas, 
 and suppose you had figured out the reasons I have just 
 been giving, then what would you do if you found a few 
 mountains far back from the sea? You would probably 
 try to find how they got moved back, wouldn't you? 
 That's just what other men of science did. A study of the 
 rocks of the mountains themselves and other things bear- 
 ing on the question goes to show that since the mountains 
 were made the sea might have retired from regions where 
 it had previously advanced, as it did in the case of the 
 Mississippi Valley, or the land may have risen between 
 these mountains and the sea. Moreover, the down wash 
 from the mountains themselves sometimes builds wide 
 lands, which, as they extend and shut back the sea, leave 
 the mountains farther and farther away. Much of the
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 
 
 139 
 
 land extending east from the base of the Rocky Mountains 
 was made in this way. The Mississippi Valley was for 
 ages, you know (page 10) the Mediterranean Sea of North 
 America, lying in the downward fold of our continent 
 between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. 
 
 WHY SEA WAVES RISE TO GREET THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 One of the strangest, most poetic phases of the relation 
 between the great blue mountains and the great blue sea 
 is that waves, as they approach the shores of continents 
 bordered by mountain ranges, rise higher and higher; 
 and the higher the mountains, the higher rise the waves. 
 These waves are not driven by wind or tide but seem drawn 
 forward by some strange power. This power, however, is 
 no stranger than the one that makes us fall and bump our 
 noses when we stub our toes the power of gravitation, 
 according to which all masses attract each other. It is the 
 mass in the mountains that exerts a pull on the waves; 
 and the greater the mountains the greater the pull, of 
 
 ', the painting by David James 
 
 THE WAVE
 
 140 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 course. In the Indian Ocean, for example, around the 
 head of the Arabian Sea, the waves rise far above sea 
 level, largely because there is beyond them, on the land, 
 one of the greatest mountain masses in the world. 
 
 Wouldn't it give you a queer feeling if you were, say, a 
 sailor, and for the first time saw waves act like that? 
 Uncanny, almost, isn't it? 
 
 But do the mountains remember their old parent of the 
 white flowing rocks and beard, Father Neptune? They 
 act as if they did; particularly in the way in which they 
 come to imitate, in time, the shape of the waves of the sea. 
 
 Ruskin, 1 speaking to artists about drawing mountains, 
 says: 
 
 "Good and intelligent mountain drawing recognizes a 
 great harmony among the summits and their tendency to 
 throw themselves into waves, closely resembling those of 
 the sea itself; sometimes in free tossing toward the sky, 
 but more frequently in the form of breakers, concave and 
 steep on one side, convex and less steep on the other." 
 
 When you stand some day on one of the high peaks of 
 the Rocky Mountains, and look out over the great fields of 
 upheaved stone, you will notice how closely the parallel 
 ridges resemble ranks of waves making toward a shore. 
 Like sea waves also, the vast backs of these waves of stone 
 are long and sloping, while their fronts are comparatively 
 short and much steeper. Another thing that makes you 
 feel as if you were looking out upon a sea whose waves had 
 been changed to stone is the fact that these stone waves 
 are not only green but have white caps; for in the valleys, 
 and far up the sides of the mountains, are the forests with 
 1 "Modern Painters," Chapter IV.
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 141 
 
 the perennial green of their pines, and on the peaks the 
 eternal snows. 
 
 Not only is the mounting and forward drive of waves 
 repeated in mountain forms, but also the whirlpools among 
 
 "AND EVERY TOSSING OF THEIR BOUNDLESS CRESTS" 
 
 the rocks when sea waves reach the shore. Says the 
 famous French geographer, Reclus 1 : 
 
 ''The centre of the Pyrenees resembles a great whirlpool 
 around which the mountains rise like enormous waves." 
 
 Finally we might imagine that the mountains, like the 
 mountain streams, hear the call of the sea and are stirred 
 by it. For, again to quote from Ruskin's wonderful chap- 
 ter on the nature of the thing we call a mountain: 
 
 "Behold as we look farther into it, it is all touched and 
 troubled. The rock trembles through its every fibre, like 
 the chords of an ^olian harp like the stillest air of spring 
 with the echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all 
 
 141 The Earth."
 
 142 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 From Norton's -Elements of Geology" By permission of Ginn and Company 
 
 "THAT STRANGE QUIVERING OF THEIR SUBSTANCE" 
 
 This picture shows mountain-peaks carved in folded strata in the Rocky Moun- 
 tains in Montana. How well it illustrates Ruskin's grand lines. 
 
 those great mountains and through every tossing of their 
 boundless crests and deep beneath all their unfathomable 
 denies, flows that strange quivering of their substance. 
 
 "'I beheld the mountains and lo they trembled; and all 
 the hills moved lightly.'" 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Of course you saw that the Greeks meant the story of Phaeton 
 to account, among other things, for the origin of deserts, but what 
 is there in it that would lead one to believe the Greeks knew there 
 were such things as volcanoes ? Read what the encyclopedia says 
 about volcanoes and Vulcan and the physical geography of Greece 
 and the Greek islands. 
 
 Where is Mount Stromboli and why is it called "The Lighthouse 
 of the Mediterranean"?
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE HILLS 143 
 
 On which of our coasts do we have young and growing moun- 
 tains, and on which old mountains that are much worn down? 
 
 Did you ever notice, on your map of Europe, how the curve of 
 the Carpathian Mountains follows the curve of the shore of the 
 beautiful Adriatic Sea so far away ? 1 What does that remind you 
 of in the story of the relation between the mountains and the sea ? 
 
 "Yes," you say, "but if mountains are formed on the borders 
 of the sea why are the Carpathians so far from the Adriatic; and 
 the Alps so far from the Mediterranean and the Rocky Mountains 
 of America and the Altai mountains of Asia so far away from any 
 sea at all?" 
 
 Professor Heilprin 2 knew you would say that; at least I suppose 
 he did, for he has explained all this in his little book, written espe- 
 cially for young people, "The Earth and Its Story." After you 
 have read this part of the story write it out in your own words 
 and then copy it into your notebook. You might call your own 
 story, "How Mountains are Moved Back from the Sea." 
 
 What mountains do the waves of the Indian Ocean rise to salute ? 
 How do they compare in size with other mountains that you 
 know of? 
 
 How does the carbon in the gases of volcanoes get into the 
 plants? 
 
 What does it say in Proverbs 6: 6 that might remind one of the 
 fact that the ants helped solve the puzzle as to how volcanoes are 
 made? 
 
 As to the hills that were moved in, a Wisconsin writer, who has, 
 among other things, written delightfully of his companionship 
 with the rocks and hills of his State 3 tells about sinking a well 
 132 feet deep on his farm, and going through this imported scenery 
 all the way. 
 
 "Somewhere down there," he says, "if I had kept on going I 
 should have struck the original Wisconsin." 
 
 And why not be an author yourself? Start a little book of 
 science of your own and learn to make notes on interesting things 
 you have been reading about. For instance, put in it now some 
 of the different things we have learned about the wonder-workers 
 
 1 How far away is it? The scale of miles on your map will tell. 
 
 2 Professor of Geology in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 3 Charles D Stewart, "Essays on the Spot."
 
 144 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 of the Ice Age, up to and including this chapter. Call what you 
 write "The Story of the Old Men of the Mountain." At the end 
 of the part you write now you can put "To be continued," just as 
 they do in a story paper; for we are not through with the work of 
 the old men, as you will see. 
 
 How did Rome get its seven hills? (You know it was called 
 The City of the Seven Hills.) 
 
 The Bible quotation in Ruskin about the trembling of the moun- 
 tains is from Jeremiah 4: 24. How grand it sounds, doesn't it? 
 Like the music of a pipe organ. The ^ible has many references 
 to "hills" and mountains. Here are some of the most striking: 
 Psalms 114:4; Exodus 20:18; Deut. 5:23; Rev. 8:8; Micah 1:4; 
 Isaiah 54:10. 
 
 Where are the most famous of the Bad Lands of our Western 
 States? Those of South Dakota are perhaps the strangest. 
 Among other strange things is the fact that some of the hills were 
 set on fire by rain goodness knows how long ago and these hills 
 are like gigantic stoves for the cattle, who never fail to collect 
 around them on bleak days. 
 
 In the article on South Dakota in the Britannica you'll learn all 
 about how the rain started the fire. Then perhaps you will want 
 to look up "spontaneous combustion" and "iron pyrites." 
 
 Aren't those ancient monsters whose bones they find in the hills 
 comical looking creatures now that we are several million years 
 safely away from them? The comic artists (of pen and pencil) are 
 always having fun with them. Arthur Guiterman, for instance, 
 in picturing what spring must have been like in those old days: 
 
 "Go-dum, bally hoosh!" is the note of the Icthyosaurus. 
 
 " Notorum-dorando ! " the blithe Hippocampus replies. 
 " Chin-chin-orizaba-pelote ! " rings the jubilant chorus 
 
 Of sweet Pterodactyls that wing the cerulean skies. 1 
 
 1 "The Laughing Muse."
 
 A NEW ENGLAND HILL 
 
 "Great lumps of pudding the giants threw, 
 They tumbled about like rain." 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 (JULY) 
 
 They flung them over to Roxbury Hills; 
 
 They flung them over the plain; 
 
 And all over Milton and Dorchester too 
 
 Great lumps from the pudding the giants threw. 
 
 They tumbled about like rain. 
 
 The Ballad of the Boulders. 
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 
 
 In our rambles during the summer vacation season we 
 are constantly coming across boulders; in the mountains, 
 in the fields and by the sea. In the mountains and near 
 rocky headlands or at the foot of the cliffs we take them 
 for granted; they have evidently fallen from the rock walls 
 above them. But haven't you often wondered how they 
 got out on the prairies far from any rock masses? This 
 145
 
 146 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 chapter tells about that and other curious things in the 
 lives of the great Boulder family. 
 
 I. BIG CHIEF BOULDER 
 
 Even the Indians who, in those early days, had never 
 gone to school or studied geography, used to wonder how 
 these big stones had travelled to the places where they 
 found them. 
 
 Once upon a time the Indians in the wilds of Minnesota 
 found an unusually big granite boulder lying among the 
 hills. So what did they do but paint a head with eagle 
 feathers on one end of the stone. Then they put stripes 
 around its body. You see they thought of Mr. Boulder 
 as a big chief in feathered head-dress and painted for war. 
 
 WONDER THE BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 It may seem foolish to make all this fuss about finding 
 a big stone in a field. But these ignorant red men were 
 much wiser than we are if we don't wonder about it too. 
 Wonder is the beginning of knowledge; and the Indians 
 thus took the first step toward one of the great discoveries 
 of geology. 
 
 It was just such wondering on the part of scientific men 
 that led to their finding out not only how these big stones 
 got into strange lands but how certain kinds of hills that 
 we have just been reading about were made. For, as you 
 must have already guessed, the moving of these boulders 
 was one of the many jobs Mr. Glacier did for us during 
 the Ice Age. But pretend you don't know the answer. 
 It took the wise men a long time to find it and that's where 
 the fun comes in in the hide and seek.
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 
 
 147 
 
 From a photograph by Bourne & Shepherd, Calcutta 
 
 THE STRANGE OLD INDIAN OF MOUNT ABU 
 
 If those Minnesota Indians thought a boulder of the usual shape was some big 
 chief from another land, what would they have thought if they had set eyes on 
 this solemn old creature? He sits by the hour like Socrates in the market-place 
 and has sat for ages gazing down at his image in a lake at the foot of Mount Abu 
 in;India. He was carved into that shape by sands blown from the North Indian 
 desert acting on the softer parts of the rock. Most Indians, as you know, are silent 
 people, but this old chap, so I hear, never speaks at all ! 
 
 Yet some day he may, all of a sudden, take a jump ! Boulders do that sometimes, 
 as you will see before you have finished this chapter. 
 
 ON THE NORTH END OF THE WORLD 
 
 Some of the boulders seem to have belonged to Alpine 
 Clubs, for you find them away up on mountain sides; some 
 of them as high as 6,000 feet that's over a mile you know 
 above the level of the sea. And often these boulders 
 are not of the same material as the huge pieces of broken 
 rock that fall from the neighboring mountain walls. More- 
 over the blocks of stone from the mountain are angular; 
 they are not nicely rounded off as are boulders and pebbles.
 
 I 4 8 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 WOULDN'T IT MAKE YOU NERVOUS, TOO? 
 
 This picture is from a story about a little boy who had to cross a field full of big, 
 dark boulders like this at night, and how nervous it made him. 
 
 It's that way all over the north end of the world as far 
 south as the Ohio in this country and the Alps in Europe. 
 
 But there's one place in which you never will find 
 boulders, and that's in a country where there are caves 
 of any considerable size. Neither will you find such caves 
 where there are boulders. 
 
 Why shouldn't the caves and the boulders live happily 
 together just like other people? The answer is simple. 
 The glaciers of the Ice Age, with their enormous weight, 
 crushed in the roofs of caves in every region over which 
 they flowed; and it was these same glaciers that left the 
 boulders. Since the glaciers went away the underground 
 rivers that hollow out the caves have not had time to make 
 new ones. It takes ages and ages to make a nice big cave.
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 149 
 
 II. THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT 
 
 ' These widely scattered boulders furnished the students 
 of the subject with the very best evidence that there was 
 once an Ice Age. First, the geologists noticed, just as the 
 Indians did, that the boulders were of a different kind of 
 rock from that of the regions in which they were found. 
 Up in Wisconsin, running southwest from Waterloo is a 
 train (as it is called) of boulders sixty miles long. The boul- 
 ders are of a very hard rock called quartzite, while all the 
 rock deposits in that region are of limestone or sandstone. 
 In eastern Wisconsin, along with these stones, have 
 been found pieces of copper, although there are no copper 
 deposits near by. To the northeast of where the frag- 
 
 MR. BOULDER ON HIS PERCH 
 
 This is what is called a "perched boulder." Being a harder kind of rock than 
 that on which it was left by the glaciers, it has 'held out against the winds and 
 weather, while the stone under it has been worn away.
 
 150 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ments of copper were found are the great copper deposits 
 of what is now Michigan, and from this region the glaciers 
 brought the copper and scattered it about as they moved 
 south and southwest. So these mysterious stones and 
 other things kept pointing toward the north, in a kind of 
 dumb show. 
 
 In mountain rain storms you can see the torrents driving 
 great stones before them, so one of the first theories about 
 the stranded boulders was that, at some time in the earth's 
 history, there had been great floods covering whole con- 
 tinents, sweeping away rocks from the mountains and 
 carrying them here, there, and everywhere. That theory 
 also accounted for the rounded shape of the boulders, for 
 if you have a volume of water big enough and swift enough 
 you can roll boulders wherever you like. 
 
 WHAT A QUEER HOBBY-HORSE! 
 
 But why should the boulder trains all lead to the north ? 
 And how could water carry boulders right across a deep 
 mountain valley and pile them high up on the mountains 
 on the other side? How could water perch one boulder 
 on another or on a flat ledge of rock or on the summits 
 of the cliffs? Boulders so perched are very common, and 
 often they are so nicely balanced that a man can set them 
 rocking; and sometimes a small boy can do it. Every 
 young man who goes to Dartmouth College knows about 
 the rocking stone some half mile east of the college. In 
 the town of Barre is a big boulder with a small boulder 
 on its back, and the small boulder can be set rocking like 
 a child's hobby-horse. 
 
 The only thing that could handle boulders in this way,
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 
 
 HOW THE MOUNTAIN TORRENTS HELP SHAPE THE BOULDERS 
 
 so it turned out, were the glaciers. By following up the 
 boulders to their homes in the mountains they found on 
 the backs of the glaciers of to-day stones just like those 
 in our fields, and they found them thickly scattered over 
 the ground where the glaciers melted back during the sum- 
 mer months. The glaciers not only pick up boulders from 
 the mountain torrent beds, as they move along, but them- 
 selves pluck rocks from mountain sides. Huge blocks of 
 rock, dislodged when water freezes in the cracks of the 
 mountain walls, also fall upon the glacier. It was the 
 boulders held underneath the ice that left their autographs,
 
 152 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 HOW THEY KNOW THE OLD MEN DID IT 
 
 Here is one of those heaps of boulders, pebbles, and soil that the glaciers of the 
 Ice Age brought and left behind them. They know those ancient glaciers did 
 this, because just such heaps are found under the edges of glaciers to-day. 
 
 deep grooves on the native bed-rock in the regions into 
 which the glaciers of the Ice Age came. 
 
 These great ice rivers filled the mountain valleys, and 
 reaching far up on the mountain sides carried boulders 
 to those heights. Sometimes the glacier left the stones 
 standing on a narrow point on top of other rocks so mak- 
 ing the rocking stones. 
 
 III. LEAVES FROM THE FAMILY RECORDS OF THE 
 BOULDERS 
 
 What I have said so far of the Boulders is mainly about 
 their travels into foreign lands and how they were received 
 by intellectual people. But there are many other interest-
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 
 
 153 
 
 ing things to be found in their family records that you 
 will want to know about, I am sure. 
 
 HOW THE BOULDERS RODE ON THE WATER 
 
 One of these is how they came to ride on the water, when 
 I said just a little while back that only ice could carry them 
 across mountain valleys, and pile them up on the moun- 
 tain sides. That was all true; yet, under certain circum- 
 stances, boulders have ridden on the water. As the glaciers 
 melted away finally in those early days the water, as 
 you know, helped make rivers and lakes. Then, from the 
 front of the glaciers icebergs broke off and floated away 
 down the rivers or across the lakes. In these icebergs boul- 
 ders were often imbedded, and so were dropped wherever 
 the iceberg carried them before it dissolved. 
 
 HOW THE BOULDERS RODE ON THE WATER 
 
 This is a scene in August in Glacier National Park. It illustrates how boulders 
 of the Ice Age travelled by water, when icebergs containing them broke from the 
 glaciers and floated away on rivers and lakes.
 
 I 5 4 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Ice helps handle boulders in still another way; but be- 
 fore I tell you what it is I want you to imagine you are 
 an Indian, away back in the days before Indian schools, 
 and see if you wouldn't be as superstitious as they were. 
 Just suppose then that you are a red child of the forest, 
 and that along a certain lake you saw near the shore a lot 
 of boulders scattered about in a disorderly way. This, 
 say,- was in the fall. But when you came back the follow- 
 ing spring you found them all piled up into a wall along 
 the lake, and you positively knew no member of your tribe 
 or of any other had done the piling. Wouldn't it make 
 you feel a little superstitious? 
 
 HOW MR. WINTER BUILDS BOULDER WALLS 
 
 It was Mr. Winter that built these walls. With the 
 spring break-up on lake shores big cakes of ice, blown by 
 stiff gales, pry up the boulders along shore, and force them 
 further up the bank. Then another gale and another push, 
 and more stones are crowded up on top of the first course, 
 and so there is built a rude wall. Some of the stones may 
 be crowded together side by side. This makes what is 
 called a " boulder pavement." But even this isn't all of 
 nature's engineering in the handling of boulders. Here is 
 another example. Ice is formed on lakes early in the win- 
 ter when the air is but little below the freezing point of 
 water. Under these circumstances ice expands. Then, 
 with the first severe cold spell it contracts and so cracks. 
 Water, rising from below, fills these cracks, and is itself, 
 in turn, frozen to ice. Then comes a warm wave, these 
 ice wedges swell, and so the ice sheet expands, pushes up 
 along the shore and, if there are any boulders there moves 
 them about; or sometimes drives them deep into the bank
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 155 
 
 so that the following spring it looks as if somebody had 
 been shooting at the bank, using boulders for bullets. 
 
 The sun shapes boulders somewhat as the blacksmith 
 shapes iron, but instead of striking with a hammer it strikes 
 with its rays. Rock is a poor conductor of heat, so the 
 heat from the sun only goes into the rock a little way. The 
 result is that the surface expands and so loosens itself from 
 the rock beneath and in course of time falls off. With 
 the cooling of the atmosphere at night just the opposite 
 thing takes place; the surface cools off first and so, con- 
 tracting, loosens itself from the body of the stone. It seems 
 to be a regular tug of war between the heat of the day and 
 the cool of the night. First of all the corners and sharp 
 edges break away because, being thinner, they are heated 
 and cooled more quickly. The boulders owe their rounded 
 shapes most of all, however, to the fact that they were 
 ground together in the body of the glaciers as those great 
 ice sheets flowed along. 
 
 GOOD TALKS BY LEARNED BOULDERS 
 
 Of course, the boulders, like other people, differ in their 
 tastes as you can tell by their talk. The granite boulders 
 have the most to say about travel because they are so hard 
 that they can take longer journeys than weaker rocks, 
 and so have more to tell. But there is another branch of 
 the family that is still more "bookish" as you may say. 
 These are the "pudding stone" boulders conglomerates. 
 In that most interesting biography, "The Story of a Boul- 
 der," Professor Geikie describes a stone that was not only 
 made up of a variety of pebbles, but in which there was a 
 section of sandstone. The sandstone and the conglomerate 
 had been neighbors in some rock ledge just as the pebble
 
 156 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 section and the smooth sand section are always neighbors 
 where the shores descend into the sea. So when the rock 
 mass, which was finally rounded into a boulder, broke 
 
 WHERE THE SEA HELPS SHAPE THE BOULDERS 
 
 away it included portions of both sandstone and conglom- 
 erate. 
 
 The upper part of this boulder the sandstone had 
 in it stems and leaflets of plants of the Coal Age, changed 
 to coal. The pebbles below were fragments of more ancient 
 rocks made at a time when frogs as big as the oxen of to- 
 day lived in the marshes. 
 
 "They must have had a croak like a fog-horn," said 
 the High School Boy. 
 
 In this story of the boulder, Professor Geikie says: 
 
 "I had here a quaint old black letter volume of the 
 Middle Ages giving an account of the events taking place 
 at the time it was written and containing in its earlier pages 
 numerous quotations from the authors of antiquity."
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 157 
 
 WHICH DO YOU SAY? 
 
 The "quotations from the authors of antiquity," were 
 the pebbles, of course, once parts of older rocks. 
 
 I have spoken of the boulders as authors. You will also 
 be interested in their relations with artists. Boulders add 
 much to the picturesque effect of the shores of lakes and 
 seas and mountain ravines, as they appear to the traveller, 
 and as artists reproduce them in pictures. They also 
 add to the beauty of streams, by forming rapids. These 
 boulders that are piled in so thick as to make rapids are
 
 158 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 brought in by smaller but swifter tributaries that flow 
 into larger but more sluggish streams. Rapids are favorite 
 topics for landscape artists. They are characteristic of 
 the work of Ruysdael, for example, with whom you have 
 become well acquainted in your picture studies in school. 
 Of the drawing of stones in general Ruskin says: 
 "There are no natural objects out of which an artist, 
 or any one who appreciates the form of things, can learn 
 more than out of stones. A stone is a mountain in minia- 
 ture. The fineness of Nature's work is so great that into 
 a single block a foot or two in diameter she can compass 
 as many changes of form and structure on a small scale 
 as she needs for her mountains on a large one, using moss 
 for forests and grains of crystal for crags." 1 
 
 WHY BOULDERS SOMETIMES TAKE A JUMP 
 
 Boulders sometimes jump up, all of a sudden, as if they had sat on a pin. They 
 do this when an earthquake wave passes straight through the globe; from Ecuador, 
 say, to Borneo: Such waves, called "waves of transmission," travel "incog" as 
 it were, not causing any disturbance until they reach the surface again. Then if 
 there happens to be a big rock on the spot, up it jumps the funniest thing you 
 ever saw ! 
 
 Harry Furniss, the famous English cartoonist, made this picture just for a joke. 
 
 1 "Modern Painters."
 
 THE STONES OF THE FIELD 159 
 
 On page 157 you will find two pictures of stones by two 
 famous landscape artists, Claude and Turner. Of the 
 stones in one picture Mr. Ruskin says, "they are massy 
 and ponderous as stones should be"; while the stones in 
 the other picture are "wholly without weight." 
 
 In which of the pictures would you say the stones are 
 "massy and ponderous," and in which are they "wholly 
 without weight?" 
 
 Now look at the "Hide and Seek" notes below and see 
 if you and Mr. Ruskin think alike. 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 A boy scout, as you know, is expected, among other things, to 
 be an Indian (a good Indian, of course); to keep his eyes wide 
 open as he goes about in the woods and fields. In that way he is 
 always coming across things to wonder over, such as the big stone 
 the Indians found. 
 
 It's just such boys that great men are made of. All the great 
 scientists began in that way. 
 
 Take the case of Hugh Miller, for example. In the encyclo- 
 pedias you will meet him as a famous geologist, along with great 
 artists and inventors and statesmen and other fine company; but 
 at first he was only a boy, like the rest of us. And he had very 
 little chance to go to school, but he went anyhow; went to school, 
 like Lincoln, to all the good books he could get hold of and also 
 to the stones of the field. After a while he got so he could write 
 books himself, and they are among the most readable books you 
 ever saw. You just read his story of "The Old Red Sandstone," 
 and if you don't open your eyes ! 
 
 The encyclopedia will tell you a great deal about the boy him- 
 self and about "Uncle Sandy" and "Uncle James," and how they 
 helped him. But the start of it was this: 
 
 One day a mason in Scotland l broke off a piece of stone he was 
 building a wall at the time and inside of the stone he found 
 what do you think ? A fish ! Inside of the stone, mind you ! 
 
 Of course you won't be surprised to hear that it was a queer, out- 
 1 Hugh was a Scotch boy.
 
 160 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 landish sort of fish, and that it was dead. In fact, it had been 
 dead so long that it also had turned to stone. In short, it was a 
 fossil. But no Pharaoh in his huge pyramid ever became more 
 famous than did that little fish in his tomb of stone. 
 
 Yet, would you believe it? neither the mason nor his fellow 
 workmen thought much about it. They frequently came upon 
 these fossils and, beyond being idly curious at first, paid little 
 attention to them. 
 
 This day, however, among these workmen was Hugh Miller, 
 who was also a stone-mason by trade. Hugh got as excited over 
 this fish as a boy. (He was only seventeen at the time, I believe.) 
 
 "The story of this queer fish," he said to himself, "must be as 
 good as Sinbad the Sailor, and the Yellow Dwarf, and Jack the 
 Giant Killer, that I used to like so well when I was a little lad;" * 
 and he determined to find out all he could about it. He found 
 from the geology books that there was much yet to be learned 
 about such fish, and so he proceeded to study the stones. He 
 opened the stones with his hammer as you open a book. He put 
 in all his leisure time at this work, with the result that he not only 
 became one of the world's famous geologists, but he wrote books 
 in which he made it a point to tell these curious stories of ancient 
 life in the sea, so that people -.vithout any previous scientific knowl- 
 edge could read and enjoy them. 
 
 Besides "The Old Red Sandstone" he wrote "Footprints of the 
 Creator," "The Testimony of the Rocks," "My Schools and 
 School Masters," "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland," 
 and a book of poems. Not all the conclusions he came to are 
 accepted to-day for geology, like all the sciences, is always grow- 
 ing but the history of its growth and how men reasoned things 
 out is quite as interesting and profitable as the facts themselves, 
 and Hugh Miller has a particularly attractive way of telling things. 
 
 So you see those Indians who painted up old Big Chief Boulder 
 were on the right track; they were deeply interested in it and its 
 being there as a great and mysterious work of nature. They 
 named it "Waukon," an Indian word meaning "mystery." 
 
 Oh, yes, and about boulders in art, it's the stone in the upper 
 of the two pictures that Ruskin considers "massy and ponderous" 
 and hence true to nature. Turner painted it. 
 
 1 He had read all these stories and a lot more, so my old Chambers' 
 Encyclopedia says.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 (AUGUST) 
 
 In the parching August wind 
 Cornfields bow the head. 
 
 Christina G. Rossetti. 
 
 Over the sea-like, pathless, 
 Limitless waste of the desert. 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 August is usually such a hot, dry month that it ought 
 to be a good time for talking of deserts. We can realize 
 better what a desert is and what an interesting region it 
 must be to those who spend their lives there the Arabs 
 and the camels, for instance. In fact, there are so many 
 strange and striking things to be seen and learned in deserts 
 that whole books including many stories have been 
 written about them, and I'm sorry we can give the subject 
 only one chapter. 
 
 I. THE FACE or THE DESERT 
 
 I sometimes think it was no wonder the old Sphinx got 
 to asking conundrums. Always looking toward the desert 
 and its mysteries, how could he help it? The desert is 
 just full of conundrums. For instance: 
 
 Where is it that rains fall without reaching the earth ?
 
 162 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 From the painting by Elihu Vedder 
 
 THE QUESTIONER OF THE SPHINX 
 
 Where is it that there are lake beds without lakes, river 
 beds without rivers, and rivers without mouths? 
 
 Where do you see stretches of water that aren't there, 
 and men and animals walking and trees growing most of 
 them upside down? 
 
 Where are the roses of the land and the waves of great 
 inland seas made of sand and where does the wind always 
 blow the mountains away? 
 
 Of course you would probably give the right answer at 
 once "the desert" because you know I am talking 
 about deserts. And the "water that isn't there," and the
 
 THE DESERT 163 
 
 trees and people and things that are upside down you 
 probably know that's the mirage; and that the inland seas 
 with their waves of sand are the dunes; that the rivers 
 without mouths are those that, like the Tajunga in Cali- 
 fornia, lose their waters in the sand. 
 
 Most people who have gone to school know all these 
 things. Most people also think of the desert as just a sea 
 of sand and all tawny, like a lion's skin; but this is wrong. 
 The Romans used to call the African desert "the panther's 
 skin," because of the tawny stretches spotted with the dark 
 palms of the oases, but the sands are not all tawny, and 
 the desert isn't all covered with sand. 
 
 If we could arrange to get on the back of any one of 
 the great birds of the Sahara say an eagle or his big 
 cousin the vulture and sail with him on his way to din- 
 ner, the scenery would unroll beneath us something like 
 this: 
 
 On the northern border the Atlas Mountains, with preci- 
 pices of wild beauty and ranges of bare, pink rock outlined 
 against the blue of the morning sky; then dune waves 
 stretching for miles and miles with valleys between them, 
 so wide that it takes the camels from breakfast time until 
 noon to lumber their way across. The crests of some of 
 these dune waves go spinning off in spray with every fresh- 
 ening breeze. Little dunes often dissolve away in the 
 wind as the caravan moves toward them. 
 
 GAUNT OUTLINES OF THE HUNGRY HILLS 
 
 Then we come to more mountain ranges running right 
 across the desert's face, their bare rocks shivered and 
 shelving down into broken fragments at their feet; then
 
 1 64 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 j 
 
 AN OASIS 
 
 sharp-edged, jagged hills not rounded, plump, and well- 
 fed hills, such as we have at home. They are the bones 
 of the hungry landscape showing through. Then we come 
 to bare tablelands and the empty beds of rivers and lakes 
 that long ago went dry; valleys scattered with boulders of
 
 THE DESERT 165 
 
 all sizes and in every imaginable position; and so on over 
 into the Arabian desert, with its flats of white sand closed 
 in by high cliffs, and vast stretches of black and red gravel. 
 
 THE DARK HILLS AND THE FIGURES IN WHITE 
 
 "The Baths of the Damned," the superstitious Arabs call the region of the 
 Northern Sahara in which you come upon these strange white figures. The fear- 
 some name was suggested by the fact that the figures slowly rise from some hot 
 region inside the earth. In reality they are mounds of carbonate of lime deposited 
 by the water of hot springs heavily charged with dissolved limestone. Similar 
 springs in our Yellowstone Park spout up in the form of geysers and form "geyser 
 basins" huge stone tubs. Here in the desert the water doesn't spout; it bubbles 
 up slowly and so builds the mounds. In the background you see black masses of 
 volcanic rock, for this, like Yellowstone Park, is a volcanic region where the under- 
 ground rocks haven't cooled off. 
 
 More of the sand and gravel of the desert is red than yel- 
 low; but some of it is white and some of it is black. 
 
 A CHAOS OF COLOR IN THE ROCKS 
 
 The desert wears rocks and stones of as many colors as 
 the jewels of Oriental kings. It also runs much to solemn 
 black in its heaps of volcanic rock with cold limestones on
 
 1 66 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the heights; but you can see blue-grays, browns, ochres of 
 every shade gleaming in the sun, the reds of the rusting 
 iron in them staining the precipices and the walls; and 
 there are purples and pinks and dark greens and violets. 
 These colored rocks are often fantastically mixed together, 
 like the colors on an Easter egg. 
 
 THE SKELETONS OF THE DEAD RIVERS 
 
 And here we come upon one of those skeletons of dead 
 rivers that I spoke about. There they are, the river val- 
 leys and the river beds, full of sand and gravel, and with 
 boulders along the banks, and branch valleys running into 
 them; a river system all complete but for one thing water. 
 It's just as if the main valley and the branches had been 
 made all ready but the river never came; or as if there had 
 been rivers there once but they couldn't stand the climate ! 
 Of course, when a cloudburst comes along it helps itself to 
 these ready-made river-beds; but for the most part they 
 stand as empty as the ruins on the desert's edge in which 
 
 . . . the lion and the lizard keep 
 The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep. 1 
 
 Not only do the size of the river-beds show that there 
 used to be more frequent rains in these regions of desola- 
 tion, but right at the edge of the northern Sahara are the 
 remains of immense aqueducts; great troughs built of 
 stone and carried on bridges from the source of a water 
 supply to a city. When the Romans owned the earth 
 including the Sahara desert they were famous builders of 
 these aqueducts. 
 
 1 "The Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam.
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 167 
 
 WHY DYING RIVERS MULTIPLY BY TWO 
 
 Director Hornaday, of the New York Zoo, took this picture while in the arid 
 regions of the great Southwest. It shows a little stream dying away in the desert 
 sands. Now just notice how a little knowledge of nature's methods as a land- 
 scape artist makes the most commonplace scenery interesting. All streams as 
 they go dry have a tendency to spread out arms like that; sometimes two, some- 
 times four or more, but always in twos or multiples of two. The reason is that 
 as the water evaporates the stream becomes weaker and so is obliged to drop a 
 part of its load. The heaviest part of the load the most pebbles, sand, and soil 
 is carried in the middle of the stream, owing to the current being stronger, relieved 
 as it is from the friction of the banks. So bars of sand, gravel, and such stuff are 
 built up that finally divide the water into two branches. Then if the water keeps 
 on flowing, each of these branches divides by two, and so on. You see the same 
 thing in the mouths of deltas.
 
 1 68 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 "But what about the roses made of sand? That's a 
 conundrum you didn't answer." 
 
 Oh, yes, we must get down closer to the desert to see 
 these. We can't see them in the bird's-eye view we have 
 
 ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME 
 
 Children in the primary grades have here told us, with their clever little fingers, 
 about life in Africa immediately south of the big desert, the part of Africa where 
 they have rain and to spare. 
 
 been taking. The desert sand has a great deal of gypsum 
 in it, and when the sand gets a wetting from a cloud-burst 
 this gypsum crystallizes and forms what are called "sand 
 roses." These "roses" are of various sizes and forms; 
 some look like camelias and some like a cluster of pearls. 
 They are not common and you have to hunt for them. 
 
 II. How THE DESERT MAKES ITS SAND 
 Most of the sand of the desert, as you may imagine, is 
 home-made; and it is very curious to notice the different
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 169 
 
 HOW THE ARAB FARMER GATHERS HIS DATES
 
 170 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ways in which it is manufactured. The desert sun and 
 the cloudless nights have a great deal to do with it. 
 
 Think of the hottest day in August you ever saw, and 
 then multiply by two. That will give you an idea of how 
 hot a desert gets in the day-time something like 200 
 degrees; and 212 degrees boils eggs, you know! But how 
 cold do you suppose it gets at night? Fifteen minutes 
 after sunset the temperature drops to freezing. The rea- 
 son of this is that there are no clouds over the desert to 
 keep the heat of the sand wastes and the burning rocks 
 from passing off rapidly into space. The days are so hot 
 and the nights are so cold that the rocks get a kind of fever 
 and ague, which makes them pull themselves to pieces. 
 
 THE "GOOSE-FLESH" ON THE ROCKS 
 
 It is the same process we have just read about in the 
 story of the stones of our fields, only it goes on much faster 
 in the desert on account of the more rapid changes of tem- 
 perature. You know how your skin will pucker up into 
 goose-flesh when you are cold. The desert rocks do some- 
 thing similar. Because rock is a poor conductor, the heat 
 of the day and the cold of the night penetrate only a little 
 way only through the skin of the rock, as it were; so this 
 skin, stretching in the day-time and puckering up at night, 
 becomes loosened and shells off bit by bit. Then it is 
 blown about and in time ground into sand by the desert 
 winds. 
 
 Some rocks have an additional way of getting picked to 
 pieces. Granite is one of these. It has several different 
 kinds of mineral in it, and some of these minerals contract 
 and expand faster than others; some more than others.
 
 THE DESERT 171 
 
 As a consequence, the particles of the rock keep pulling 
 and hauling at each other. This helps to break it up into 
 little pieces, which soon become sand. The darker the 
 rock, other things being equal, the greater the changes, 
 
 Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permis- 
 of Ginn and Company 
 
 HOW RAIN-DROPS HELP SPLIT BOULDERS 
 
 A big boulder in western Texas split, just as you see it here, by rain-drops, with 
 the help of the sun, and under the conditions described in the text, sat for this 
 photograph. A friend of mine who has been all over that country says that on 
 blistering-hot days you can see little pieces pop put of the granite boulders, like 
 chips from an invisible chisel struck by an invisible hammer. This is why: We 
 Granites are made up of particles little bits of several different minerals, and 
 some of these minerals expanding much faster than others pop themselves out. 
 
 because anything dark a suit of clothes, for instance 
 absorbs heat faster than a light object. 
 
 The great mountain rocks of the desert, bare of all pro- 
 tecting soil and verdure, are always crumbling as a result 
 of all these causes, and so the winds are constantly blowing 
 them away, piece by piece. 
 
 HOW LITTLE RAINDROPS SPLIT BIG BOULDERS 
 
 As if everything in the desert were in the sand-making 
 business the very rain-drops help make sand. The rain- 
 d r ops do this in much the same way that the farmer breaks
 
 172 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 big boulders in his fields, so that he can more easily haul 
 them away, piece by piece. He builds a fire against the 
 boulder, gets it as hot as he can, then rakes the fire away, 
 dashes water on the stone, and bang ! It cracks as if old 
 Thor had struck it with his hammer. 
 
 You see why this is, don't you, after what we have been 
 saying about why the rock's skin chips off? The water 
 suddenly cools the highly heated rock, and the parts 
 shrinking pull away from each other with a bang ! bang ! 
 bang ! The hot desert rocks, dashed by the torrents of a 
 cloudburst, break apart just like that, and you can hear 
 them. Stones twenty-five feet across are often broken into 
 many pieces after a downpour. Then the finer pieces of 
 rock that are made in this continual splitting, and by the 
 chipping that goes on day and night, the fierce winds grind 
 against each other; so manufacturing sand. And the 
 fiercer winds also drive coarse sand against crumbling rock 
 surfaces, thus grinding them away and making more sand. 
 So the winds, using sand to make sand, put the sand out 
 at interest, you may say. 
 
 And on all its sand, .made in these various ways by 
 wind and rain and heat and cold, and the crystal fairies of 
 the land of change the desert puts its special trade-mark, 
 just as a manufacturer puts his trade-mark on his goods. 
 If you should take some desert sand and some sand from 
 the shores of the sea and show them to a man who knows 
 about such things, he would say (after he had put them 
 under a microscope, of course) : 
 
 THE DESERT'S TRADE-MARK ON ITS SANDS 
 
 "This sand came from a desert, or from some place 
 where it was much blown about by the winds; while this
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 173 
 
 sand is from the shores of the sea, or of a lake." The sand 
 grains of the seashore, although they are always being 
 tumbled about by the waves, as the desert sands are by 
 the winds, are protected from each other by the water 
 
 
 A DESERT SIMOOM ON ITS TRAVELS 
 
 A traveller in the Sahara took this snap-shot of a simoom from the outside and at 
 a safe distance. You can see that it must be quite a distance from where we are 
 standing, for the trees in the foreground are still. The vast cloud of sand looks 
 quite dark because of the shadows cast by the sun, which it hides from view. 
 
 between them. These little water cushions prevent the 
 sand grains from rubbing together; so they keep a good 
 many of their sharp edges. They are not rounded like 
 the sands of the desert. The winds keep the desert sands 
 grinding against each other, at the same time turning them 
 over and over, so wearing them away pretty evenly on 
 all sides. It also grinds them against the desert rocks. 
 
 It is as if there were cut upon the sea sands, "Father 
 Neptune: His Make"; while the genii of the desert, jealous
 
 174 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 for the desert's reputation, had engraved on their own 
 product: 
 
 "Genuine Desert Sand. Look for the Trade-Mark and 
 Accept No Substitutes!" 
 
 III. THE PLANT PEOPLE OF THE DESERT 
 
 Although it doesn't look a bit homey to us there are 
 quite a few people living in the desert, when you come to 
 count them all four-legged people, and six-legged people, 
 and two-legged people, and big and little people with 
 wings, and the people of the plant world. 
 
 THE WATER BOTTLE OF THE DESERT 
 
 One of the most curious of the plant people is the cactus, 
 particularly the one known as the "desert water bottle." 
 Like many two-legged people it has a rough, unsociable 
 exterior, but a kind heart. Let a traveller come upon 
 one of these bristly cactuses, after long, thirsty hours, and 
 he will realize what this means. Inside this cactus he will 
 find what will seem to him the most delightful drink he 
 ever tasted. While it isn't as cool as it might be, neither 
 is it as warm as you woujd expect, and it has a pleasant, 
 sweet taste. 
 
 The fact that you can get a drink in this way, just when 
 you want it most, all comes of foresight on the part of the 
 cactus. After they get down from two to four inches in 
 the ground the roots of this cactus spread out in every 
 direction and for a long way. They collect every bit of 
 moisture in the soil, and they make the most of every drop 
 of rain that falls within their reach. Then they hide all
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 175 
 
 DRAWING WATER FROM THE BARREL CACTUS 
 
 This cactus, so far as shape is concerned, really belongs to the barrel family, as 
 you can see, besides performing one of the most useful functions of a barrel in hold- 
 ing good drinking water for thirsty travellers in the desert. My, how thirsty you 
 get ! You drink, drink, drink from sunrise to sunset about two gallons a day. 
 But sometimes the supply you are carrying gives out because you miscalculated or 
 you've lost your way, or the barrel leaks. Then, oh, how you welcome the sight 
 of a barrel cactus among the rocky foot-hills ! Director Hornaday, in the delightful 
 book from which I have already quoted says: "You get a gallon of water surprisingly 
 cool, and in flavor like the finest raw turnip. The object on the ground is not a 
 circular saw, but the inverted top of the cactus, and the whiteness is that of the 
 white meat that contains the water. With a stick the meat is pounded to a pulpy 
 mass, and the water oozes out, forming a little pool. Then the man with the clean- 
 est hands washes them cleaner with some of the pulp throwing this pulp away, of 
 course then squeezes the water out of the rest of it into the barrel." 
 
 Another interesting thing about this cactus is that it enables you to get candy 
 right in the desert; for here and there, through its thick skin, it oozes out a secretion 
 called "cactus candy," which is very delicious. You are always sorry there is so 
 little of it.
 
 176 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 this moisture away and cling to every precious drop. 
 Most plants, you know, evaporate a great deal of water 
 through their leaves. But the cactus, living in a world 
 where rains are few and far between, just can't afford to 
 do any evaporating to speak of; so it has practically no 
 leaves, you see, only little bits of things that you almost 
 have to take a microscope to find. But what it lacks in 
 leaves it makes up in spines, which defend it against the 
 attacks of most thirsty animals, although it is believed the 
 desert mice know the secret of getting at this water, in 
 spite of the spines. 
 
 One kind of desert plant you have no doubt met face to 
 face, for it is used to make printing paper. It grows in 
 the deserts of Libya and other parts of North Africa, and 
 is called esparto grass. Like hemp, it has stems which 
 are full of strong fibres. These stems are gathered in huge 
 bundles, which are carried by camels to the sea, where 
 they are sent by ship to the English paper mills. 
 
 HOW THE "ROSE OF JERICHO" GOES TO SEA 
 
 But there is a member of the desert plant family called 
 the "Rose of Jericho," that doesn't wait for anybody to 
 come after it and carry it to sea; it just picks up and sets 
 sail for itself. It is a bush about six inches high, a native 
 of the wastes of Northern Africa, Palestine, and Arabia. 
 It bears a little four-petaled flower. When blossom time 
 is over the leaves fall off and its branches, loaded with 
 seeds, dry up, and, curling inward as they dry, form a 
 ball. Its roots also let go of the soil, so that the strong 
 desert winds easily pull it up and it goes bowling away 
 toward the sea, When it gets there it tumbles in.
 
 THE DESERT 177 
 
 Then this bold little traveller^ who is very sensitive to 
 moisture although he has had so little of it in his bringing 
 up, promptly unfolds his arms and scatters hjs handful of 
 
 THE CACTUS-WREN AND HER LITTLE FRONT DOOR 
 
 Speaking of cactus spines, do you know how many of those wicked little spines 
 the cactus-wren had to work with and tug and twist about in building that nest? 
 About two thousand ! These spines not only make the nest but defend it. You 
 can't be too careful about your front door in Desertland. Such neighbors 1 
 
 seeds on the water; which is precisely the thing he took all 
 that journey to do ! For the seeds are carried far by the 
 currents of the sea. Thus the family to which this plant 
 belongs keeps sending out colonies into new lands. This 
 seems to be one of the chief missions in life of plants as of 
 other peoples.
 
 178 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 The plant of which we have just been speaking is called 
 the "Rose of Jericho," although it looks so little like a 
 rose that quaint old John Gerard, an English doctor who 
 loved and studied plants over three hundred years ago, 
 says: 
 
 "The coiner of the name spoiled it in the mint; for of 
 all plants that have been written of not any are more 
 unlike unto the rose." 
 
 THE WIND WITCHES OF THE STEPPES 
 
 Our own tumbleweeds and the Canada thistle have the 
 same trick of bowling before the wind. There is a relative 
 of these tumblers living on the Russian steppes that the 
 Cossacks call the "wind witch." At the end of the season 
 the branches dry up into a ball and then by the hundreds 
 these witches go skimming over the plains, driven by the 
 loud autumn winds. They are as light as a feather, and 
 they go so fast that sometimes even the Cossack horsemen 
 cannot catch them, as they often try to do in sport. Part 
 of the time they move along with a short, quick, hopping 
 motion, and then, caught by an eddy, rise a hundred feet 
 in the air. 
 
 Often dozens of them get locked together, join hands 
 like the real witches of our fairy tales, and the whole com- 
 pany goes dancing away before the howling blast. 
 
 Eery creatures ! 
 
 IV. THE AUTOGRAPHS IN THE SAND 
 There are certain very interesting people of the desert 
 that you don't often find at home, not because they aren't 
 there, but because they don't want to be found. Snakes,
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 179 
 
 THE COYOTE'S NOCTURNE 
 
 In addition to what he tells so cleverly in the picture about the night song of 
 the Coyote, Dan Beard your Dan Beard of the Boy Scouts says the animal is a 
 ventriloquist; can throw his voice so that it sounds as if he were a mile off, then 
 startle you with the noise of a full pack at your heels and all the time be sitting 
 watching you from behind a stone not fifty yards away ! 
 
 lizards, rabbits, and ground squirrels slip quietly out of 
 your way in the early morning, and by the time the hot 
 sun is high, beast and bird seek the shadows of the canyons, 
 or of big rocks, shelving banks, or caves. 
 
 But they all leave word. In the lava beds of the Ari- 
 zona desert, where not even the cactus will grow, you can 
 make out the tracks of the quail and the linnet, and of a 
 peculiar desert bird called the road-runner. There, also, 
 are the tracks of the coyote and the wildcat, the gray 
 wolf, and sometimes the mountain lion. If about day- 
 break you saw what seemed to be a long, lean, hungry 
 dog, trotting away slantwise with a cautious eye to the 
 rear, it was probably a gray wolf a little late in getting 
 home. Like the coyote, the wildcat, the owl, and many 
 other desert people, that old gray wolf belongs to the
 
 i So STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 world's great night shift and is usually back in his moun- 
 tain home by sunrise. Even when you see him at all 
 which is seldom he is hard to make out; for, like the 
 coyote, he wears a rusty, sunburned coat, which blends 
 with the sand and the yellow rocks. 
 
 The coyote is a smaller member of the wolf family, to 
 which both the dog and the fox belong. He has much of 
 the same cunning, and like Br'er Fox is fond of chicken. 
 But his home is usually so far from modern conveniences 
 he has few chances to visit poultry yards, and lives from 
 paw to mouth, as it were, catching a jack-rabbit when he 
 can the desert rabbits seem to sleep with both eyes open 
 and lizards when he can't get rabbits. At the worst he 
 will make out on "prickly pears," the pods of the mesquite 
 bush, which are full of seeds. 
 
 THE WINGED PEOPLE OF THE DESERT 
 
 Although you will not realize it at first there are a 
 good many birds in the desert. Some are transients, just 
 passing through, and stopping for a rest and a bite or two 
 on the way. Others, such as the linnet and the wrens, 
 have nests tucked away among the spines of the cactus, 
 and there's a finch singing from the top of that bush ! In 
 flower time in the Arizona desert (of which we are now 
 speaking) there are humming-birds, but their colors are 
 not so bright as those of our humming-birds. Feathers, 
 like hair, have the natural color burned out of them in the 
 desert sun. Only the insects keep their bright clothes. 
 Turn over a stone and away will scamper golden beetles, 
 silver beetles, turquoise blue beetles, beetles in bronze; a 
 whole boxful of jewels on six legs.
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 181 
 
 
 From McCook's "Nature's Craftsmen." Copyright Harper and Brothers 
 THE LIFE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT 
 
 The late Harry Fenn, who did everything so well, drew this picture of one of 
 the incidents of the life struggle in the desert. It represents the desert wasp, known 
 as the "tarantula killer," pursuing its prey. The tarantula of the Southwest is 
 the giant among our native spiders, but it cowers before the wasp, and hurries off 
 as fast as it can; but usually it can't, and is soon laid away in Lady Wasp's nest 
 as food for her solitary baby when it comes out of the egg which the mother wasp 
 lays in the spider's body. 
 
 INSECTS, LIZARDS, SPIDERS, AND OTHERS 
 
 And there are gray lizards, yellow lizards, and lizards 
 called "skinks," with tails as blue as indigo; and the gila 
 monster, a lizard in dull orange and black, with an ugly 
 disposition and poison in his lower jaw. Another big 
 lizard of the Arizona desert is called the chuckwalla. The 
 Arizona Indians are very fond of him. They say he tastes 
 like chicken.
 
 182 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Most of the spider family are represented in Arizona, 
 including the trap-door spider, who hides and waits for 
 his dinner in a hole with a wonderful trap-door that he 
 made himself. This door he slams tight when he gets you 
 inside, if you're a fly or anything like that. He also shuts 
 this door in the face of his enemy, the centipede, a flat 
 worm a foot long, with loads of legs and feet. His name 
 means "hundred footed." He has poison daggers in his 
 feet and his two-branched tail. 
 
 WHAT A WONDERFUL FLYING MACHINE HE is! 
 
 But what's that away up in the sky ? A flying machine ? 
 Yes, one of the most wonderful flying-machines in the 
 world a vulture. There he goes, sweeping in wide cir- 
 cles, as he hunts along the mountain range, mile after 
 
 A DESERT BEETLE AND HIS GYMNASTICS 
 
 This desert beetle is called by the Indians "The-Bug-that-Stands-on-His-Head." 
 At first I thought he was taking stomach exercises, for beetles have wonderful 
 digestions, as you may learn from Fabre's book on "The Sacred Beetle." But Mr. 
 Howard, Chief of the Bureau of Entomology at Washington Uncle Sam's great 
 authority on bugs tells me this is an attitude many beetles take on the approach 
 of an enemy, the object being to discharge a kind of -poison-gas which is intended to 
 drive him away; and usually does.
 
 THE DESERT 183 
 
 mile, closely scanning the base of the cliffs for the bodies 
 of unfortunate creatures that have fallen over. Vultures 
 will keep in the air in that way whole days at a time, fol- 
 lowing the cliffs and canyons for hundreds of miles. But 
 for all that it is sometimes a week or two between meals 
 with a desert vulture. 
 
 How does the vulture soar so wonderfully? Nobody is 
 quite sure about it. Often for hours there is no motion 
 of the wings, as far as anybody has been able to make out, 
 and a soaring vulture seems to be able to move as easily 
 against the wind as with it. You'll not be surprised to 
 hear that it takes time to learn to fly like that a whole 
 year. And even after the . first year the young vultures 
 stay for a good while under the instruction of their parents, 
 going out hunting with them every day and sleeping with 
 them in the nest on the cliffs at night. 
 
 V. A DAY IN THE SAHARA 
 
 How would you like to spend a day in the famous Sahara 
 desert with the camels and the people and the dogs; and, 
 I was going to say, the flies? But the flies can't stand it. 
 They stay in the villages on the borders. Only a few are 
 ever bold enough to start with a caravan and these soon 
 turn back. 
 
 When a desert Arab and his family start on a journey 
 the tents, the sleeping-rugs, the scanty provisions, and 
 the women and children are piled on the camels, the dogs 
 take their places at the end of the procession and the men 
 at the head, and the caravan starts. 
 
 As the chieftain throws the end of the burnoose (his
 
 1 84 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ALL IN THE DAY'S WORK! 
 
 This looks to me like the beginning of a simoom; if so, we'd better wrap our 
 shawls about our faces as the Arabs are doing. Notice how the rising wind picks 
 up and twirls the sand about the camels' legs and sends it stinging into the faces 
 of the men. Maybe it will die down as quickly as it came; maybe it will increase 
 into a choking sand-storm that will last a week. 
 
 hooded cloak) across his shoulder and, with his carbine 
 in the hollow of his arm, stalks in advance of all, you feel 
 that if you were an Arab boy you would be as proud as 
 he is to have a father like that. What a splendid figure; 
 what a strong, grave, handsome face, and utterly without 
 fear ! All his poor possessions would hardly pay a month's 
 rent in a fine city apartment, but he has the proud bearing 
 of a king. He looks as if he had just stepped out of a pic- 
 ture in a Bible story-book. 
 
 And how keen those dark eyes must be; and what a 
 memory for the look of things ! At the beginning of the
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 185 
 
 day's journey he is guided, as sailors are at sea, by the 
 stars. But soon the winds begin to rise, as the desert farther 
 away is warming under the sun, and the fine sand drifts 
 and shifts like snow, filling up our own tracks as fast as 
 they are made; so, you may be sure, it is leaving no guid- 
 ing tracks made by previous travellers. But this man 
 has known every hill, every dune, and every rocky gully 
 along the way since he himself was a little boy, and went 
 over this same route sitting on the camel with his mother 
 while his father stalked on before. 
 
 Presently we come across another little group of travellers 
 going in another direction. They are on their way north 
 to the summer pastures; for you see they have a little 
 
 A CARAVAN ON THE MARCH 
 
 Here is a caravan lumbering along over what appears to be a pretty well-beaten 
 roadway in Algeria where many improvements to facilitate travel have been made 
 by the French. It must be about 8.00 A. M. or 4.00 P. M. Shouldn't you say so, 
 from the shadows?
 
 1 86 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 THE FORLORN LITTLE RAT OF THE DESERT SANDS 
 
 If you've read Roosevelt's books on Africa you've met this little creature before. 
 But isn't he the rattiest-looking rat you ever saw? He has only a hair here and 
 there on his yellow skin; and no eyes to speak of. He can hardly see at all, spend- 
 ing most of his time, as he does like the sightless creatures of caves in the pitch- 
 dark of his underground burrow. Yet, I suppose, like that desert boy it tells about 
 at the end of this chapter, he thinks there's no place like home ! 
 
 flock of sheep and goats and two donkeys. And there are 
 two men. These people are probably two families travelling 
 together. But they are not so well-to-do as our Arab. 
 They have no camel to carry the women and children. So 
 dogs, donkeys, men, women, children, and the sheep and 
 goats all tramp along together. 
 
 They are not worried because they are poor; for listen, 
 they are singing! It's a melancholy kind of song, as we 
 think. It reminds us of the queer sound the sand grains 
 make when the desert winds are beginning to blow. But 
 to the Arab it is music. What a lot of verses it has all 
 just alike and sung over and over again. 
 
 But what's the matter now? All of a sudden they stop 
 singing and begin to shout and fire off their guns. You'll
 
 THE DESERT 
 
 187 
 
 laugh when I tell you why. They heard something talk- 
 ing back to them; repeating all their words. It was only 
 an echo made by the rocks of the mountains that we have 
 just reached. But these superstitious people of the desert 
 don't know what an echo is. They think echoes are the 
 voices of evil spirits mocking them, and the shouting and 
 the firing of the guns is to frighten these mockers away. 
 
 Life for everybody in the Sahara and the Arabian desert 
 is very much what it is for the animals in the Arizona wastes 
 a constant struggle for food. In the Arizona desert every 
 living creature puts in all its time trying to get something 
 to eat without being eaten. The wildcat is fortunate if 
 he gets a meal once in two or three days; and while the 
 coyote is trying to slip up on a rabbit, ten to one there's a 
 panther slipping up on him. A traveller in northern Africa 
 
 Lai^B Tree 
 
 Small Creosote 
 Bush 
 
 Length shown. 10 CMC., 
 
 Abandoned holes rt Q 
 
 Holes m uat 
 
 W.T,H. 
 
 THE PACK-RAT'S FORTRESS 
 
 This is a diagram of the fortress of another little citizen of mountain rocks and 
 desert places, known out West as the "pack" rat because he is always packing off 
 other people's things and hiding them in his burrow. The "fortress consists of 
 several burrows, the roads leading to which are carefully protected by the prickly 
 bayonets of the cactus joints which the rat drags there for that purpose.
 
 1 88 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 tells how, when his caravan halted for dinner at an inn 
 for the French soldiers quartered in that region, he saw 
 a lean and hungry cat eying him from around the corner 
 of a near-by hut. To borrow from Victor Hugo's descrip- 
 tion of the hungry cat at the Spanish inn, 1 this cat of the 
 desert looked at the traveller "as if it would have asked 
 nothing better than to be a tiger." When the guest of 
 the inn had finished the piece of chicken he was eating he 
 tossed the bone toward the cat which pounced on it fiercely. 
 Instantly a dog, which had been watching proceedings, 
 rushed forward and took the bone from the cat. Just then 
 an Arab, who happened to be passing, fell upon the dog 
 and wrenching the bone from his mouth began eagerly 
 gnawing it himself. 
 
 It's a hard life ! 
 
 And yet if you should bring an Arab boy to London or 
 New York to live and give him three good meals a day 
 he's not always sure of one at home and nice clothes to 
 wear and a real bed to sleep in, and shady parks to play 
 in, do you suppose he would be happy? No indeed. The 
 thing has been tried. He says this kind of life is all right 
 for those who like it, but it isn't the desert. 
 
 And you have to admit it ! 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 Not at all dry, are they these deserts when you get down 
 into them? And I haven't told you half there is to tell about 
 them. 2 
 
 1 "Hugo's Letters to His Wife." 
 
 " John C. Van Dyke, for one, has written a wonderfully interesting 
 little book just about the American desert. It's called simply "The 
 Desert."
 
 THE DESERT 189 
 
 To begin with, what does your geography say about deserts 
 about how they are made? 
 
 How do mountains help make deserts? 
 
 In and near what zone does your geography locate the great 
 deserts of the world? 
 
 How does the Sahara desert compare in size with the United 
 States? (You see, the Sahara is practically a whole United States 
 gone dry !) 
 
 Yet, the soil of much of the Sahara is very fertile and with water 
 would yield wonderful crops. But where is the water to come 
 from? Where do we get the water that has made our deserts 
 bloom? Has the Sahara any such sources of supply? 
 
 Is it true that the Libyan desert was once covered by the sea, 
 as it was in that story of Phaeton, the boy who set the world 
 afire? 
 
 And speaking of that story, was there a Jupiter and a Jupiter 
 Pluvius, too? 1 
 
 Wouldn't you say the addition of "Pluvius" to the name of their 
 chief god meant the ancients recognized rain-making as a very 
 important and difficult business to manage? 
 
 But what is it, really, that brings our rains? What has the 
 sea to do with it? And the winds? And the mountains? Your 
 geography answers all these questions briefly. You will find a 
 full treatment of the whole subject of the weather and of how the 
 weather man, "the man with a hundred eyes," manages to be so 
 clever, in "Pictured Knowfedge." 2 
 
 From what general direction do the winds come that bring the 
 rains in North America? In South America? Why the differ- 
 ence? 
 
 How many inches of rainfall are enough for raising good crops? 
 
 Nevertheless, they raise fine crops in many parts of the United 
 States where they have hardly any rain at all. How do they 
 manage it ? I mean how do they store up the water and distribute 
 it, and everything? (Irrigation.) 
 
 In reading up on deserts in the encyclopedias alone you will find 
 
 1 "That was a good deal like asking if there was a George Washing- 
 ton and a President Washington too," said the High School Boy, after 
 he had looked it up. 
 
 2 In the article in the Nature Department, "What is the It that 
 Rains?"
 
 i go STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 many such interesting things as the following, and in other books 
 particularly books of travel much more: 
 
 How long the commercial caravans are (such great freight trains 
 as those that cross the Sahara between Morocco and Timbuctoo) ; 
 how many camels one driver takes care of; how fast the camels 
 travel; how many days they can go without a drink. 
 
 If you're going to cross with one of these caravans (or just pre- 
 tend to cross) I must tell you one thing: 
 
 You've got to look out for lions I 
 
 From what you have learned in your geography about African 
 lions, where would you say you were likely to come across them ? * 
 
 What do these caravans bring back from Central Africa ? (What 
 is produced in Central Africa that the civilized world wants?) 
 
 The ostrich is a most interesting citizen of the desert that I 
 didn't have room to talk about. There's enough for a whole 
 chapter in your note-book just about ostriches and their ways. 
 
 Among other things, I wish you'd find out for me if the ostrich 
 really does bury its head in the sand and imagine that it is thereby 
 hiding itself. (I'll warrant you it's only book ostriches that do 
 this; not real ostriches.) 
 
 One of the most curious things about Mrs. Ostrich is how she 
 and her neighbors work together. It's like an old-fashioned quilt- 
 ing bee, for all the world; although, to be sure, the ostriches don't 
 make quilts they make nests. 2 
 
 Speaking of ostrich nests naturally suggests eggs and very big 
 eggs, of course, including the roc's egg in the "Arabian Nights." 
 .They do have real rock's eggs in the desert, only this kind of a 
 roc's egg is spelled with a "k." You just turn to the chapter on 
 deserts in Hobb's "Face of the Earth," and you'll find not only 
 that there are such eggs, but how the desert sun uses salt in cook- 
 ing them and what the crystal people have to do with it; and how, 
 like a cat in a hen-house, the desert winds suck these eggs, leaving 
 only the hollow shell. 
 
 1 Have you read Roosevelt's "African Game Trails"? or his "Life 
 Histories of African Game Animals"? 
 2 "Romance of Animal Arts and Crafts."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 (SEPTEMBER) 
 
 MORNING 
 
 The summer dawn's reflected hue 
 To purple changed Loch Katrine blue. 
 
 Scott: "Lady of the Lake." 
 
 EVENING 
 
 Now folds the lily all her sweetness up 
 And slips into the bosom of the lake. 
 
 Tennyson . " The Princess." 
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 
 
 If we really had spent the month of August in a desert 
 what a relief it would be to find ourselves, as we do now 
 at the very beginning of the golden autumn time, in the 
 lands of the lakes with their cool, fresh breezes, the whis- 
 per of leaves and the glint of waters dancing in the sun. 
 The best of it is that the deserts are just as delightful as 
 the lands of pleasant waters, if you only visit them in 
 imagination as we have been doing; and they make the 
 lakes all the more attractive by way of contrast. 
 
 I. How THE LAKES ARE BORN 
 
 But where are the lands of the lakes? I may say to 
 start with, it's no use looking for many lakes in the lands 
 of the big caves. Caves and lakes don't seem to get on 
 together any more than do caves and boulders. 
 191
 
 192 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 When this story of the lakes was first told to a certain 
 group of young people some of the youngest of whom had 
 not forgotten the giants or the language of their fairy 
 tales, I put it in this way: 
 
 'The rains and the rivers, with the help of some other 
 things, have made all the lakes in the world. One of these 
 helpers is a bright-eyed creature with two legs; another 
 a little creature with four legs and a third a great big thing 
 with no legs at all!" (I said it like this: "G-R-E-A-T 
 B-I-G T-H-I-N-G," and opened my eyes wide for the 
 benefit of the younger members of our "pebble parties," 
 as these little gatherings came to be called.) 
 
 The great big things, as you have already guessed, were 
 the glaciers of the Ice Age. We have had specimens of 
 their work in the story of how the Great Lakes were made. 
 
 The four-legged lake makers are the beavers. They 
 live on the margins of quiet, shallow ponds really little 
 lakes which they make for themselves by gnawing down 
 trees and building dams. 
 
 And the bright-eyed creature with two legs can't you 
 guess who he is? If you never helped make little lakes 
 of your own by damming up a brook or a roadside rivulet, 
 you have missed a lot of fun. 
 
 WIDE RANGE OF SIZE IN LAKE FAMILY 
 
 But you must have made them; what boy hasn't? And 
 those little ponds or puddles were lakes; while they lasted, 
 just as much as the great Lake Superior is a lake. Even 
 lakes that are called lakes and get their names (and often 
 their pictures) in summer resort folders, differ in size, rang- 
 ing from little affairs that are not much larger than the
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 193 
 
 THE GREAT LAKES OF TO-DAY AND THE GREATER LAKE 
 OF YESTERDAY 
 
 The farmers of Canada and the Dakotas now sow their harvests and reap their 
 golden grain on the bottom of the great inland, sea of the Ice Age, Lake Agassiz. 
 It was larger than all the Great Lakes of to-day put together. It is known how 
 big this lake was from its old beaches, which can easily be made out all around the 
 margin shown on the map. 
 
 pond in the meadow, to Lake Superior, with its 31,000 
 square miles; and in depth, from a few feet to 5,618 feet 
 in the deepest part of Lake Baikal. You see if you touched 
 bottom there you would have to keep going for over a 
 mile. 
 
 "And there's all the way back!" said the High School 
 Boy.
 
 194 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 THE BLUE LAKE IN THE VOLCANO'S MOUTH 
 
 In the mouth of a dead volcano lies one of the most beautiful lakes in all the 
 world, the chief attraction of Crater Lake National Park. This model of its basin 
 tells how nature did the work. The steep sides and the glacial valleys show that 
 the top fell in when the lava that helped build the volcano sank back and so left 
 it without support. If the top had blown off, as volcano tops sometimes do, the 
 valleys would have been filled with debris. Later there was another outbreak, 
 but so small that it only built that little volcano in the big volcano's mouth. No- 
 tice the tiny crater? This baby volcano rises above the waters of its mimic ocean 
 and makes an island, just as so many volcanoes of the great Pacific make the far- 
 flung islands of the Southern Seas. 
 
 Even the water ouzel, that wonderful diver of the moun- 
 tain lakes and waterfalls, might hesitate at a dive like that. 
 Those remarkable old men of the mountains, the glaciers
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 195 
 
 of the Ice Age, were the greatest of all lake-makers. Al- 
 though for size the Great Lakes were their masterpieces, 
 they made lakes of all sizes and no end of them. They 
 fairly sowed the landscape with lakes. Look at the map 
 
 LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE TO WIZARD ISLAND 
 
 There you see is the top of that little volcano right across the lake. It is 
 known as "Wizard Island." The lake is 4,000 feet deep. Its walls are 1,500 
 feet high; in some places over 2,000 feet high. In spite of the fact that they, as 
 you see, slope a good deal, owing to the crumbling down of the weathered rock, 
 the banks are still so steep it has taken us several hours of careful climbing to get 
 down where this picture was taken, and we shall be-all the rest of the forenoon 
 climbing back again. 
 
 of the lake regions of America and Europe and then turn 
 back to the map picture of the great ice invasion (page 
 21). Don't you see the lake regions and what was once 
 the ice regions cover practically the same territory? 
 
 In addition to making lakes in their Great Lakes manner 
 the glaciers had other methods. A glacier coming into a 
 dry mountain valley would supply it with a river by melt- 
 ing, and at the same time dam up the river with stones
 
 196 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 and soil brought down from the mountain and so make 
 a lake. Then the water would run over the brim of the 
 dam, and the thing was complete; a beautiful little lake 
 with one river running into it and another running out. 
 
 LOOKS AS IF IT HAD RAINED LAKES ! 
 
 You just go through Wisconsin or Minnesota or Maine, 
 and right and left you'll see lakes and lakes and lakes: 
 and then more lakes ! Of course most of these lakes are 
 small; otherwise it wouldn't have been possible to work 
 so many of them into the same landscape. In Wisconsin 
 you find these small lakes in what are called the ''Kettle 
 Ranges." The low hills and their valleys form what the 
 early settlers called "kettles," and in these kettles are the 
 little blue-eyed lakes. 
 
 It was the glaciers that not only made the kettles but 
 often filled them with the lakes. In many of the mounds 
 of pebbles and clay that we read about in "The Secrets 
 of the Hills," the glaciers left big blocks of ice. Then, 
 when this ice melted, two things happened: (i) The cover- 
 ing of the ice sank down, much as the sawdust sinks in 
 an ice-house when a block of ice is taken out, thus mak- 
 ing the kettle; (2) the big ice cake in the hill of pebbles 
 melted, so filling the kettle with a lake. 
 
 But what broke off these big blocks, these land icebergs 
 that made the basins for the kettle lakes? They were 
 left by the glacier when it began to retreat; that is to say 
 when the supply of snow back at the gathering ground 
 became insufficient to keep pushing it forward as fast as 
 the front melted away. Melting most rapidly in those 
 huge cracks called crevasses, big blocks were finally sepa-
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 
 
 197 
 
 rated entirely from the main body and left behind as the 
 rest of the glacier slowly melted back toward the moun- 
 tains. 
 
 If the glaciers were thus responsible for most of the lakes 
 of the lowlands you may be sure they had a hand in mak- 
 
 ONE OF THE KETTLE LAKES OF WISCONSIN 
 
 ing the lakes of the mountains, right where they themselves 
 live. John Muir, who spent his life in loving study of the 
 mountains of the West and of everything connected with 
 them, found mountain lakes in every stage of existence 
 up the mountainsides; empty stone bowls that showed 
 by the work of the waves on the rocks that they had once 
 held lakes; above these, in the same chain, lakes growing 
 shallow; and, still higher, brand new lakes in stone bowls 
 with the edge of the glacier that had carved out the bowl 
 and filled it with blue water, still bordering it on the upper 
 side.
 
 198 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 And this is why, like fruit on a tree, the youngest lakes 
 are found at the top. Since the glacier melted from the 
 foot of the range upward the lower lakes were the first 
 to be born and the first to pass away; while the lakes higher 
 up on the mountain were the last to be born and the last 
 to pass away. 
 
 II. THE MOODS OF THE LAKES 
 
 Lakes are like the rivers and the sea; they have their 
 moods. In sunshine and storm, in wind and calm, and 
 from season to season they show many changes. As we 
 already know they are great sleepy heads. To Ruskin 
 mountain lajkes seemed both to sleep and to dream. But 
 their longest sleep, like that of Br'er Bear, is taken in the 
 winter. Of this long sleep Mr. Muir says : l 
 
 "The highest (mountain lakes) are set in bleak, rough 
 bowls, scantily fringed with brown and yellow sedges. 
 Winter storms blow snow through the canyon in blinding 
 drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are 
 these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint 
 of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink 
 and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the daisies bloom in turn 
 and the most profoundly buried of them all is at length 
 warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream." 
 
 EVEN THE DUCKS OVERLOOK THESE LITTLE LAKES 
 
 But possibly these lakes are not asleep after all ! They 
 
 may be only playing possum; or hide and seek. There 
 
 are mountain lakes that play hide and seek. That is to 
 
 say, they hide and you seek; and often you don't find ! 
 
 1 "The Mountains of California."
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 
 
 199 
 
 They are so small that, surrounded as they are by trees, 
 tall and thickly set, even the ducks pass them by. The 
 glaciers that made them seem to have hidden them, as the 
 robins did the babes in the wood. The glaciers did this, 
 
 A LITTLE GIRL'S PICTURE OF A FAMOUS SWISS LAKE 
 
 This picture of the lake of the Great St. Bernard was taken by Phyllis M. Pul- 
 liam, who sent it to St. Nicholas with a long, enthusiastic letter, such as only school- 
 girls know how to write. Among other things she met a great St. Bernard dog 
 that had saved more than fifty lives. 
 
 not by heaping leaves over them, but by piling up stones 
 and soil around them. They are encircled by moraines, 
 and on the moraines grow the trees that hide the lakelets 
 even from the sharp eyes of the ducks. 
 
 Mountain lakes are usually as clear as crystal, and, like 
 perfect mirrors, reflect the outlines and coloring of the 
 clouds and the neighboring peaks. They are apt to con- 
 tain mica and feldspar ground out of the granite rock by 
 the glacier that made their basins. Then the sunlight
 
 200 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 falling on these rock particles gives them the color of jade 
 or Nile green, or dark green like a peacock's tail. They 
 are constantly changing color with the changing angles 
 of the light from morning until sunset; and under the 
 passing clouds and the rippling of the winds. The deeper 
 lakes are dark blue in the deepest parts, turning to green 
 in the shallow waters near shore where the yellow of the 
 sun rays and the sand mixes most with the blue of the 
 waters. 1 
 
 THE MYSTERY IS IN THE SECRET PASSAGE 
 
 In Florida there are sister lakes so sympathetic that 
 their waters rise and fall together. One responds to the 
 mood of the other as promptly as your right eye waters 
 in sympathy when you get a grain of dust in the left. The 
 reason for this goes back to the days when the corals helped 
 build Florida. They did this by leaving their "bones" 
 on the coral reefs when that part of North America was in 
 the making. These remains formed limestone. Then, 
 in this limestone, "sink holes" were formed on the surface 
 leading to underground passages, just as they do over the 
 land surface in the cave regions of Kentucky. These sink 
 holes often fill with water and form little lakes. These 
 lakes, being connected by the underground passages, rise 
 and fall together. It looks very strange, even when you 
 know the secret of it; and still stranger when you don't. 
 
 Yet I shouldn't be surprised if a bright boy or girl seeing 
 two lakes rising or falling together would suspect the under- 
 ground connection; for, of course, we all know about springs 
 and their underground channels. But what would you 
 say to this: 
 
 Wan Dyke: "The Mountain."
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 201 
 
 A lake that, a moment before, was as smooth as glass 
 suddenly begins to shiver all over as one shivers in a sudden 
 draught. But there is no breeze stirring ! A moment later 
 the water rises and falls along the banks; an inch, two 
 inches, a foot, two feet. Then, in the course of a couple 
 of hours, the sky, which before was without a cloud, begins 
 to grow black and there follows a terrific storm. 
 
 A KIND OF NATURAL BAROMETER 
 
 The cause of the rising of the water is the heavier pres- 
 sure of the air at the farther end of the lake, the region 
 of the coming storm. The water, being forced down at 
 one end of the basin, you see, rises at the other. Then 
 as the storm advances toward you the pressure is released 
 and the water falls again; but for a while it rocks to and 
 fro as water will do in a basin if you tip it up at one end 
 and then let it down again. 
 
 THE TIDES IN A TEACUP 
 
 But, besides these imitation tides made by the unequal 
 pressure of the wind, lakes have real tides just as the ocean 
 does; and from the same cause, the attraction of the 
 moon. In fact, there are tides in a teacup, and the tea 
 rises toward the passing moon as does everything liquid 
 on the face of the earth. In the teacup the rise is so small 
 you can't see it as you do when the great mass of the 
 ocean waters is moved in the same way. Even in the Great 
 Lakes the tide only amounts to three inches or so. 
 
 And, in addition to their tides, there are many other 
 things about lakes that have led the largest of them to 
 be referred to as "inland seas." Says Reclus: 1 
 1I( The Earth."
 
 202 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 "Lakes are indeed seas. They have their tempests, 
 their swells, their breakers. It is true the waves are neither 
 so high nor move so rapidly as those of the sea because 
 they do not move over such great depths. They are short, 
 compact and choppy, but for this very reason they are 
 more formidable. And the water being fresh and there- 
 fore lighter than that of the ocean is more readily agitated. 
 The wind has scarcely begun to stir when the surface is 
 covered with foaming billows." 
 
 Not only are lake storms especially dangerous for the 
 reasons just given by the great French geographer but 
 lakes in mountain regions are subject to an additional 
 danger; for their storms are most apt to come at night, 
 just as described in the story of the storm on Galilee in 
 the New Testament. You remember it says the storm 
 came "down." l 
 
 "Now it came to pass on a certain day that Jesus went 
 into a ship with his disciples; and he said unto them, Let 
 us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they 
 launched forth. 
 
 "But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down 
 a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with 
 water and were in jeopardy." 
 
 Macgregor, in his "Rob Roy on the Jordan," draws the 
 following vivid picture of his own struggles with one of 
 these tempests: 
 
 HOW THE STORM CAME DOWN ON GALILEE 
 
 "just as the Rob. Roy passed below Wady Fik a strange, 
 distant hissing sounded ahead where we could see a violent 
 1 Luke 8:23.
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 203 
 
 ON THE BORDERS OF THE SEA OF GALILEE 
 
 You can see this is in a desert, mountainous country, and, from the dress of the 
 man, that it is in the Orient. The beach is wide for so small a lake because of 
 those frequent and severe storms that drive the waves, loaded with sand and 
 pebbles, far back from the shore. 
 
 storm was raging. The waves had not time to rise. The 
 gusts had come down on calm water and they whisked long 
 wreaths of it up into the sky. This torrent of heavy, cold 
 air was pouring over the mountain crests into the deep 
 caldron of the lake below. Just as it says in Luke 8:23. 
 'There came down a storm upon the lake.' " 
 
 This peculiarity of squalls among mountains is known 
 to all who have boated much on lakes, but on the Sea of 
 Galilee the wind has a singular force and suddenness. This 
 is no doubt because the sea is so deep in the world that the 
 sun rarefies the air in it enormously and the wind, speeding 
 swiftly over a long and level plateau, suddenly comes upon 
 this huge gap in the way and tumbles down into it.
 
 204 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 III. How LAKES GROW OLD AND PASS AWAY 
 
 But, however formed, lakes, of all the features of our 
 landscape, are the soonest to pass away. Because of the 
 sediment brought into them by the rivers they keep getting 
 more and more shallow and at last, in the course of time, 
 are quite filled up. The waves of the lakes themselves 
 help to bring this about by cutting material from their 
 shores and washing it into the water. 
 
 So the time will come when all lakes now in existence 
 will have passed away. But the people of those times will 
 not be without their lakes. New lakes will probably be 
 made by the same causes which produced the lakes of to- 
 day; for Nature's great processes do not change. 
 
 WHY LILIES COME TO THE DYING LAKES 
 
 Meanwhile how beautifully they pass, these lakes; par- 
 ticularly the little lakes like that in Rousseau's painting. 
 First, on the margin of a dying lake the lilies gather. Lilies 
 grow only in quiet waters and these they find in the shallow 
 margins of lakes that are filling up. 
 
 LAST OF ALL COME THE TREES 
 
 Next after the lilies come the sedges, grasslike herbs 
 that grow in marshy places. And after they are well 
 established they get things ready for the next arrivals ; for 
 these plants come in a regular procession. The dense tufts 
 of the sedges make mats on which soil gathers. In this soil 
 shrubs begin to grow. From the decay of all this vege- 
 tation more soil is formed in which the seeds of spruce and 
 tamarack spring up. Then come willows, then poplars
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 
 
 205 
 
 and maples, and last of all the oaks and nut-bearing trees, 
 which march into new lands slowly because they must 
 depend on their heavy seeds to move them forward, while 
 
 From the painting by Rousseau 
 
 HOW LAKES GROW OLD AND PASS AWAY 
 
 This picture, called "The Lake," is from a painting by Rousseau, a great French 
 landscape artist, and illustrates the beautiful way in which lakes grow old, as de- 
 scribed in the text. Already, as you see, Father Oak and his family have arrived. 
 
 the little seeds of maple, willow, poplar, and pine are easily 
 carried by the wind. 
 
 But while fresh-water lakes and their surroundings are 
 so beautiful and poetic, and never more so than when the 
 lakes are passing away, there are dying lakes, whose sur- 
 roundings are the very pictures of desolation. These are 
 the lakes which have become bitter with salt because their 
 waters are evaporated by the sun faster than fresh water 
 comes in. The most famous of these salt lakes is the
 
 206 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Dead Sea of the Holy Land, into which the Jordan flows. 
 Lying in a rock-bound pit, in the deepest part of a vast 
 trench, it is like a caldron into which for eight months of 
 every year is poured the heat from a burning sun in a 
 cloudless sky. Although Palestine, as you can see by the 
 map, is in the temperate zone, the thermometer here often 
 registers 130 degrees, because cooling breezes never come 
 down into this pit except in those occasional storms due 
 to the sudden rush of cooler and therefore heavier air from 
 the surrounding heights. 
 
 THIS IS HOW THE DEAD SEA DIED 
 
 As shown by the wave-cut terraces on the surrounding 
 rocks this lake was once a part of a great body of water 
 that extended clear from Mount Hermon to the Red 
 Sea. Then, by a series of heaving movements, widely 
 separated in time (as shown by the depth of the beach ter- 
 races) the bottom of this greater sea was uplifted into the 
 two parallel chains of limestone mountains which flank 
 the Jordan Valley. At the same time a great block of 
 earth crust between them settled down, step by step, and 
 made the long trench running clear to Africa, one end of 
 which is the Jordan Valley, in which the Dead Sea lies. 
 
 Later, during the different Ice Ages, as it is supposed, 
 there was plenty of moisture, for the rock records show 
 that the Sea of Galilee and what is now the Dead Sea were 
 once parts of the same body of water. Then the climate 
 gradually changed, the land went dry, and the Dead Sea 
 water became far saltier than that of the ocean so salty 
 that all life died out of it. To-day the water tastes like a 
 mixture of epsom salts and quinine, and any unfortunate
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 
 
 207 
 
 THE DEAD SEA 
 
 fish swept into it by the fresh waters of the Jordan, in 
 which fish are abundant, gives a few desperate gasps and 
 dies. 
 
 While it is not true, as the ancients believed, that birds 
 drop dead in flying over it, neither birds nor beasts make 
 their homes in the choking pit; and on its shores, always 
 gray with a mixture of mud and salt, of course no green 
 thing can grow. Indeed, there is little plant life anywhere 
 
 ITel of Mediterranean 
 
 HOW THE DEAD SEA DIED
 
 208 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 round about, but as if in mockery there grow nearby what 
 are known as apples of Sodom or Dead Sea fruit. This 
 fruit looks like an orange, but it is bitter to the taste and 
 filled only with fibre and dust. 
 
 The official report of Lieutenant Lynch, of the United 
 States Navy, who headed an expedition sent out by the 
 government to explore the Dead Sea and the surrounding 
 regions, is full of word pictures which might well have sup- 
 plied material for the imagination of Dante. 
 
 LIKE A VAT OF MOLTEN METAL 
 
 The sea, yellow from the large amount of phosphorus 
 in the water, is overhung in the early morning by a dense 
 mist. This mist is made by the water steaming in the 
 intense heat. It looks, however, like smoke above a great 
 vat of molten metal "fused but motionless." After dark, 
 when the night winds come down from the heights and go 
 moaning through the gorges, the scene changes. 
 
 "The surface becomes one wide sheet of phosphorescent 
 foam, and the waves, as they break on the shore, throw a 
 sepulchral light on the white skeletons of dead trees which 
 have been washed from the woody banks of the Jordan 
 and, lying half buried in the sand, are coated with gray 
 salt from the muddy spray." 
 
 On a portion of the land now covered by the lake, 
 according to tradition, were the wicked cities of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah, and after their destruction these bitter 
 waters flowed in and forever buried the scene of their 
 wickedness from the sight of men. , 
 
 It seems probable that the region did once support a 
 larger population. We know this to be true of other parts
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 209 
 
 of the Orient which have since become desolate owing to 
 the ravages of war, the change of climate, and the decay 
 of Oriental civilization. And when we recall how the 
 sinking of the great earth block that carried this land so far 
 below the level of the sea forced lava up through the earth 
 cracks, we can account for "the fire from heaven" that 
 poured down upon the cities of the plain. 
 
 Professor Huntington, who headed the Yale Expedition 
 into Palestine in 1909, speaks of visiting the ruins of 
 Suweim south of the Dead Sea and picking up bits of lava 
 (the whole region abounds in evidences of volcanic action) 
 while the sheik who acted as guide told the story of Sodom 
 as the story of Suweim. The name Suweim, Professor 
 Huntington thinks, may be a corruption of Sodom. Con- 
 tinuing, he says: 1 
 
 "The place is much greener than the other side of the 
 valley, and in the days of Lot may have been 'like the 
 garden of Jehovah' 2 ; for in those times, as our studies of 
 old levels of the Dead Sea quite clearly indicate, the cli- 
 mate of Palestine was probably decidedly moister than it 
 is now. 
 
 "And not two miles from Suweim we found a little vol- 
 cano of very recent date geologically, and an eruption 
 may have wrought havoc in a town located near Suweim." 
 
 In one part of the valley he also found a cave among 
 the mountains, hewn out of the limestone above a spring. 
 
 Now turn to your Bible, Genesis 9: 30: 
 
 "And Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the moun- 
 tain, in a cave, he and his two daughters." 
 
 1 " Palestine and Its Transformation." 
 
 2 Genesis 13: 10.
 
 210 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 In short, the geography of the region such is the con- 
 clusion of Professor Huntington's careful study " sup- 
 plies all the elements of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah 
 in exactly the location where the Biblical account would 
 lead one to expect them." 
 
 But the native Arab goes further. Not far from the 
 borders of the Dead Sea is a mountain of salt called Jebel 
 Usdem, which "the early and later rains" in the course of 
 ages have dissolved into many fantastic shapes. Among 
 these strange figures is a pillar tapering toward the top, 
 on which is a wide cap of stone, such as that shown on page 
 60 and such as are often seen on detached and pillared 
 rocks. 
 
 But this gaunt remnant of grisly gray, although it is still 
 obviously a part of the mountain and cannot be less than 
 forty feet high, your Arab friend insists was once the wife 
 of Lot ! 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 If you were hunting for mountain lakes where would you expect 
 to find the most, in high mountains or in low? 
 
 Rivers sometimes make lakes by using the same stuff the small 
 boys do, just plain mud. Look at Lake Pontchartrain in the 
 map of Louisiana and you can see one of the ways in which this 
 is done. Remember that all the land around this lake is part of 
 the delta of the Mississippi. The river deposits have simply 
 enclosed a portion of the shallow sea. 
 
 Or this is another way in which rivers make lakes by building 
 mud walls a river emptying at right angles into a narrow gulf 
 may build a dam clear across it. The rich Imperial Valley of 
 southern California was cut off from the Gulf of California in this 
 way. Look at the map and you can see just how this was done. 
 
 One of the puzzles about mountain lakes is how frogs got into 
 them. The frogs never climbed up there, you may be sure. Muir
 
 IN THE LANDS OF THE LAKES 211 
 
 thinks maybe the ducks did it. How do you suppose? See if 
 you can imagine and then see what Muir says about it. 1 
 
 In connection with what was said about lakes playing they are 
 oceans not these little mountain lakes, of course, but great big 
 lakes you will be interested in what Lord Bryce says in his 
 "Travels in South America" about why lakes may even look 
 larger than the ocean. 
 
 In the Britannica and other books that you may not yet be old 
 enough to read you will find many more curious things about 
 lakes. I can't tell which one of my readers you are, you see, but 
 if you belong to the "younger set," father, mother, or some other 
 member of the family can do the looking up and then tell you 
 about it. 2 In the Britannica will be found such interesting things 
 as this: 
 
 How certain kinds of mountains and lakes are made at one and 
 the same time by the same movement. 
 
 How even the wind may make lakes. 
 
 Why lakes are to the land what lands are to the sea. 
 
 Then if you will turn to page 75 of that fascinating little book 
 we have already dipped into several times 3 you will find what the 
 fact that lakes are to the land what islands are to the sea has to 
 do with a peculiar beetle in the Shetland Islands (where the ponies 
 come from) and the famous tailless cat of the Isle of Man. 
 
 One of the quaintest little bits of real life in Lakeland is how the 
 baby gulls of the Great Lakes worry their papas and mamas by 
 going swimming before they are old enough; how their parents 
 give them a spanking and send them back home; and how kind 
 all the lady gulls are to the little gulls of neighbors that come to 
 their houses to play with their children. 4 
 
 1 "The Mountains of California." 
 
 2 I don't know of anything that is more fun, of an evening, than 
 looking up things in an encyclopaedia except looking them up in two 
 encyclopaedias. 
 
 3 "Colin Clout's Calendar." 
 
 "The Bird, Our Brother," by Olive Thorne Miller.
 
 DROWNED VALLEYS ON THE MAINE COAST 
 
 Wherever you see very irregular shores, as along the coast of Maine, you may 
 infer that the shores have sunk so that the waters of the sea came up into the river 
 valleys, and the hills and long tongues of high land became islands and peninsulas. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 (OCTOBER) 
 
 To-night the winds begin to rise 
 
 And roar from yonder dropping day; 
 The last red leaf is whirled away, 
 
 The rooks are blown about the skies. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS AND THE ROCK MILLS OF 
 THE SEA 
 
 Nothing looks more aimless, more unorganized, perhaps, 
 than the long turmoil of the waves of the sea which begins 
 in late autumn and continues through the winter months. 
 If, with your nose well over the edge of a cliff, you look 
 straight down, you will see something like this: With 
 every forward leap of the surges the waters are divided 
 and entangled among the rocks, and division after division 
 is beaten back by the upright wall in front and the broken
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 213 
 
 blocks of stone on this side and on that. On-coming waves, 
 met by those recoiling, rise into mountainous, struggling 
 masses of wild fury. The whole affair seems to be as clear 
 a case of wasted energy as a Mexican revolution. 
 
 But if you watch the waves carefully and study them a 
 little you will see underlying and controlling this apparent 
 anarchy the wonderful engineering by which the machinery 
 of the sea works out its appointed tasks. It is when the 
 earth has gathered its harvests and laid down to its winter 
 rest that the sea begins gathering harvests of its own, 
 grinding up the rocks for food for the plants in its gar- 
 dens, for new clothes for its shell-fish, and new soil for 
 earth harvests in millenniums yet to be. 
 
 I. THE DESTROYER 
 
 On the face of it the case looks bad. The sea's chief 
 business seems to be that of eating us Up, or at least the 
 lands on which we live. And this idea of it we find run- 
 ning through all literature and art. A very large number 
 of the pictures of the sea, probably the majority, show it 
 in wind and storm. And this is still more true of the 
 famous sea pictures of literature. Shakespere, for exam- 
 ple, makes some three hundred references to the sea, and 
 nearly always, where he gives it a character, it is that of 
 a monster, always hungry and never satisfied, a "wild, 
 rude sea," a sea "raging like an angry boar" and so 
 back to Homer and forward to Kipling. 
 
 That the sea is constantly eating away the land cannot 
 be denied, and to an extent that is delightfully alarming if, 
 as did the little boy listening to the tale of the giants, we 
 "like to be made nervous." It is said that England still
 
 214 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 rules the waves, but where she fronts the sea on the east 
 the coast is being cut back at the rate of two to four yards 
 a year, in spite of all that modern engineering skill can do. 
 In the course of a thousand years the losses on all fronts 
 have amounted to over 500 square miles. Each year car- 
 
 Courlesy of" The Scientific American" 
 
 SEA-CLIFFS IN THE SCHOOLROOM 
 
 These dizzy cliffs and the wide sea beyond were made in the schoolroom in the 
 same way that the glacier and the iceberg were made in Chapter II. 
 
 ries off 1,500 acres more from the king's domains, to add 
 them to the Empire of the Sea, "and he calls to us still 
 unfed." On the east coast the blows dealt by the waves 
 in severe storms are such that the land trembles for a mile 
 back from the shore. "The earth," said Emerson, 1 speak- 
 ing of the industrial greatness of England, "shakes under 
 1 "English Traits."
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 215 
 
 the thunder of its mills." So for ages it has shaken under 
 the thunder of the mills of the sea. 
 
 This apparent war of the sea upon the land is a war of 
 machinery whose workings are curiously like the ancient 
 war machinery of men. Without tools the sea is almost 
 
 Courtesy of " The Scientific American" 
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES 
 
 as helpless as man himself; and, as in man's history, its 
 use of tools begins with the Stone Age. Where there is 
 no stone-strewn beach or underwater shelf extending out 
 from a cliff, the waves do little damage. They give only 
 a muffled and (to the poetic ear), a baffled roar. But a 
 sloping shelf along a rocky shore not only makes a kind 
 of scaling ladder on which the waves can climb to great 
 heights, but these waves are pitched forward with terrific
 
 2i6 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 force as they reach it from the open sea. As they come 
 on they seize huge stones which they hurl against the cliffs. 
 Even amid the wild voices of tempests one hears the boul- 
 ders crashing against the walls. In storms of sufficient 
 energy rocks of three tons weight are driven forward like 
 pebbles. The action against the upper part of a cliff may 
 be compared to that of one of those great stone-throwing 
 engines of the Romans, while on the lower portion the 
 drive suggests the battering-ram. 
 
 WHAT NEPTUNE KNOWS ABOUT WEDGES AND 
 PNEUMATIC TOOLS 
 
 Where the waves strike into narrowing crevices in the 
 rocks they act as wedges, prying the walls apart. In this 
 form of the sea's destructive work we find also an applica- 
 tion of a motive power which has come to play so important 
 a part in modern engineering; namely, compressed air. 
 Waves strong enough to handle big rocks not only dash 
 them against the cliff, while the waves themselves drive 
 into the crevices like wedges, but in so doing they force 
 air into the crevices and compress it. This air, expanding 
 as the waves fall back, forces out great blocks of stone 
 which, in turn, are also used as weapons of assault. 
 
 And, as we look back in the history of the sea, we find 
 that he long ago the deep-laid schemer ! planted enemies 
 within our very walls. Waves, even when armed with 
 the heaviest missiles, can do comparatively little damage 
 to walls in which there are no crevices. But there are few 
 such walls. Usually even the hardest rocks have running 
 through them those cracks which the geologists (with a 
 fine sense of humor) call "joints"; or they have "bedding
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 217 
 
 planes," the divisions between the rock beds. Both of 
 these weaknesses in our defensive walls are, in a large de- 
 gree, the handiwork of the sea; the bedding planes because 
 rocks are so laid .in the sea mills, and the joints because 
 the wrinkling up and consequent cracking of the land rocks 
 is the other end, as we learned in Chapter I, of the down- 
 wrinkling of the rocks under the weight of the sea. 
 
 In the very body of the rocks also is hidden a secret 
 enemy; the salt left when they were made. And more 
 salt is constantly being forced into the surface pores as 
 the waves strike. This salt helps to dissolve and weaken 
 the rock under the chemical action of the air, and the rains 
 and the mechanical expansion and contraction of the sur- 
 face with changes of temperature. 
 
 PLANING MILLS OF THE WINTER SEA 
 
 All the Great Powers of nature, "on land, on sea, and 
 in the air," seem to be in open conspiracy against our peace. 
 The evidence seems especially plain in late fall and winter, 
 when the sea, contrary to the usual practice in war, carries 
 on its most vigorous campaigns. Then come the winds 
 for the great drives; then come the frosts that change 
 the water wedges into expanding blocks of ice that, almost 
 with the force of exploding shells, tear the walls apart. 
 In winter are formed the great ice-fields that help in two 
 ingenious ways to further the destructive action of the 
 storm waves. In bays and smaller recesses in rocky shores, 
 the ice has embedded in it fragments of stone which the 
 sea has battered down. The constant plunge of the waves 
 breaks up these ice-fields into sections which, with the 
 embedded stones, become rude planing mills. Where a
 
 218 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 headland is sloping, these planers, driven back and forth by 
 the waves, chisel the rock away as a planer chisels down 
 a piece of steel upon which it has been set to work. 
 
 HOW STONES ARE CARRIED OUT TO SEA 
 
 A no less curious feature of sea engineering is the use 
 of ice-fields as "conveyors." During the spring, summer, 
 and autumn the masses of stone which the sea brings down 
 from the cliffs on its occasional busy days that is to say 
 on days when the winds are high pile up and so form a 
 kind of bulwark against further attacks. But when in 
 winter these stones become embedded as above described, 
 strong offshore winds carry the ice-fields, stones and all, 
 out to sea. Then, on shore, wind and wave take up their 
 work again unchecked. All along the rocky shores of the 
 Atlantic, as far south as New York State, beyond which 
 no rock walls come down to the shore, all these interesting 
 things may be seen by the traveller. 
 
 Another phase of this team-work of natural forces in 
 feeding the land to the sea is that steady advance of the 
 waters upon certain shores. As if science herself had 
 joined literature and art in giving the old sea dog a bad 
 name, these advances are called in the language of geol- 
 ogy, "transgressions of the sea." These transgressions 
 are caused in part by the gradual sinking of the land and 
 in part by the rising of the waters. It is not possible 
 always to tell which agency is at work. Often both may 
 be. One thing about the rising of the waters themselves 
 might be looked at as particularly alarming. The rivers, 
 which, of course, are parts of one great water system, whose 
 centre and prime mover is the sea, are not only constantly
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 219 
 
 wearing the land down toward sea level but raising the 
 sea level by the inpour of vast quantities of ground-up 
 land. Even as matters stand, the amount of water in the 
 sea bowls is so great that if all lands were at the present 
 sea level they would be covered everywhere to a depth 
 of two miles. Wind-borne dust from the surface of the 
 land and from volcanic explosions also, in time, amounts 
 to a pretty sum; and, of course, helps makes the waters 
 of the sea rise upon the land. 
 
 WEARING DOWN THE LAND AND FILLING UP THE SEA 
 
 Already the sea has advanced a thousand feet or more 
 upon the coasts of Maine, to take one instance; and the 
 whole ragged outline of Europe is due to the same cause. 
 Let this sort of thing go on and it is easy to see that it will 
 only be a question of a few millions of years when New 
 York, London, and other centres of busy life will be buried 
 like the wicked cities of the plain. 
 
 And if, to help complete this picture of desolation, we 
 for a moment forget what we learned about the life insur- 
 ance carried by the continents, we can imagine how they 
 too will disappear. And the Last Man thus: 
 
 For now I stand as one upon a rock 
 Knvironed with a wilderness of sea, 
 Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave 
 Expecting ever when some envious surge, 
 Will, in his brinish bowels, swallow him. 1 
 
 To make the thing seem doubly sure, let us reflect with 
 Mr. Burroughs that the world is now probably in a time 
 of spring, following the latest of the Ice Ages. If so, the 
 1 Shakespere: "Titus Andronicus."
 
 220 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 water now locked up in snow-fields and glaciers among 
 the mountain peaks will, before this summer of the cen- 
 turies is over, all melt back into the sea. This alone will 
 be good for a rise of some thirty feet in sea level. 
 
 Then, still later, we shall no doubt have another Ice 
 Age, and the only thing that may save us from being 
 frozen to death is the fact that we have previously been 
 drowned ! 
 
 II. THE BUILDER 
 
 But it's all a bad dream; a delusion of the mind, and 
 of the eye. We see these things the destruction of the 
 land, the invasions of the sea but we do not see them 
 as they are because we do not see far enough. Looked at 
 broadly, and reading the story of it to the end, we learn 
 that the whole relation of the sea to the land and its life 
 and beauty is that of a builder and fatherly provider. Far 
 from being the savage creature he has been pictured, Father 
 Neptune seems to have the kindly disposition of old King 
 Cole combined with the wisdom of King Solomon. Every- 
 where is evidence not only of the highest intelligence but 
 of good will toward man and his brother tenants of the 
 waters, fields, and woods. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SEA IS THIS 
 
 To begin with you remember it was the sea that helped 
 put the world on the map. Of course, if we had not 
 already learned in the story of how the continents came 
 up out of the sea, that there is no cause for alarm, we might 
 imagine that having been lifted up they might, by a reversal
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 221 
 
 of the process, be lifted down again. Indeed, I find a writer 
 in a popular periodical dealing in science stating that "every 
 part of the sea floor becomes, in its turn, the shore line 
 and is subjected to the wear of the waves." But, as a 
 
 HARBOR ENGINEERING OF THE RIVERS AND THE SEA 
 
 In the mouths of certain rivers emptying into the sea the tides come rushing up 
 in a roaring wave like this. When the tide goes out the water flows back again. 
 This back-and-forth motion helps to broaden the harbor made by the river's mouth, 
 as in the case of New York Harbor, which is the mouth of the Hudson. Owing 
 to this tidal action the water of the Hudson backs up clear to Albany. 
 
 matter of fact, we know that the continents have finally 
 got their land legs; that for ages the transgressions of the 
 sea have been mainly confined to the continental margins; 
 and that unless the earth's shrunken centre should, from 
 some unimaginable cause, swell back to its old size, it is 
 mechanically impossible for the entire bottoms of the vast 
 reservoirs of the sea to be raised.
 
 222 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 A GOLDEN GATE FOR FRISCO 
 
 The famous Golden Gate of San Francisco (so called because of the golden sun- 
 sets shining through), and its splendid harbor, made by the sinking of the land. 
 The gate was originally cut by the waters of those two rivers that join and flow 
 into the bay. What rivers are they? 
 
 HOW THE SEA HELPS MAKE GOOD FARMS AND BIG CITIES 
 
 Moreover the rivers, in the very act of wearing down 
 the land and with it filling up the sea, help keep the land 
 from being flooded, as it would be if something were not 
 done. For, as we learned in the story of why the moun- 
 tains border the sea the sediment poured in by the rivers 
 helps raise the mountains and the land along the sea 
 border. It is during the downward movement of the con- 
 tinental margins that most sediment is spread from the 
 inpouring rivers because the dip of the land is greater 
 and the swifter current not only cuts down the land faster, 
 but carries the sediment farther out from shore. Here 
 the new rock is made from old worn-out soil, and, since 
 these new rocks when brought to the surface will in time 
 decay, fresh soil is thus prepared for future generations. 
 More immediate benefits of this sinking of shores and ad- 
 vance of waters are the harbors which have made great
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 
 
 223 
 
 cities like New York and London, on or near the seacoast. 
 These harbors are all the results of "transgressions," com- 
 bined with the digging action of wave and tide. 
 
 TAKING A HINT FROM THE SEA'S SHORE ENGINEERING 
 
 But the sea builds shores as well as eats them. Its chief 
 work in this line is the widening of the continental shelf 
 by building it up with rock made of the sea's own grist 
 from its shores, and the sediment poured in by the rivers. 
 This work is not "delivered," so to speak, for millions of 
 
 Copyright by Underwood fir Underwood 
 STONE TERRACES FOR THE GANNETS 
 
 This picture shows what the rising of the land and the architectural engineering 
 of the sea did for the gannets on the coast of Canada.
 
 224 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 years, when the sinking shores begin to rise again, but the 
 sea, in its wave work, does shore building of another kind 
 that shows above the waters in the generation in which 
 it is done. On wide, shallow beaches, storm waves break 
 
 THE DROWNED RIVERS THAT HELPED MAKE ENGLAND GREAT 
 
 Her fine harbors have helped to make England the great commercial nation that 
 she is. Notice here the relation of her largest cities to the bay-like mouths of the 
 drowned rivers and to the drowned valley north of the Isle of Wight. 
 
 some distance from the shore, and, so losing their force, 
 drop the sediment which they have stirred up, after carry- 
 ing it forward only a little way. As a result of this repeated 
 dumping, an embankment forms, broadening seaward in 
 the middle and bending shoreward at the ends. A por- 
 tion of the sea itself is finally cut out and enclosed by this
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 
 
 HOW THE SEA TAUGHT SHORE ENGINEERING TO MEN 
 This is a salt marsh at mid-tide. How the sea itself adds such regions to the 
 dominion of the land, and how human engineers, taking the hint, have put the sea 
 to work, you will learn in this chapter. 
 
 embankment, thus forming a lagoon. Finally this lagoon 
 is filled with material, washed from the land and by sedi- 
 ment brought in from the sea at high tide. Human en- 
 gineers, taking the hint, now put the sea to work on similar 
 undertakings of their own. An embankment is built en- 
 closing an area of the sea; then the tides and the land 
 wash do the rest. 
 
 The sea also works with the busy little corals in build- 
 ing reefs and islands. Corals can only live and build where 
 the water is kept in constant and vigorous motion by cur- 
 rent and wave. From the air imprisoned in the bubbles 
 by the stirring and turmoil of the waves and particularly 
 from the air in the white foam of the crests these little 
 people get their oxygen. At the same time they absorb 
 out of the water the food on which they grow. The sea 
 not only feeds these little wards of its bounty during their 
 busy lives, but extends their usefulness after death, either 
 by cementing to the reef the coral, ground up by the waves,
 
 226 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 or in storms scattering it over wide areas, to be made later 
 into the finest of limestone; and still later into the best of 
 soils. 
 
 We know also that the sea makes coal as well as stone 
 in its rock mills; that the pressure of the overlying rock 
 
 FATHER NEPTUNE FEEDING THE CORAL PEOPLE 
 
 See that line of breakers just below the horizon? That shows where Father 
 Neptune is serving the little coral people with food and fresh air, as explained in 
 the text. 
 
 was in large part the source of the heat that changed the 
 vegetation of the swamps, first into charcoal and then into 
 coal. 
 
 The subject of what the sea has done and is doing for 
 us is almost as endless as the seas themselves; and no doubt 
 the reason the sea is never still is because it has so much 
 to do. Nothing in earth's animate or inanimate nature 
 exercises an influence to be compared in importance to 
 that of the sea, not only upon the land, but upon the whole 
 life which land and sea support; and even in what seem 
 to be the most aimless of its movements it in reality acts 
 with the precision of a machine. 

 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 227 
 
 III. THE ARTIST 
 
 And in the making of the rock in its presses under the 
 water, as well as in the grinding which takes place along 
 the shores, the sea evidently has an eye to beauty as well 
 as use. As originally formed, the conglomerates or "pud- 
 ding-stones" are always laid nearest the shore because 
 there the retiring waves and the rivers emptying into the 
 sea drop the heaviest part of their load, including the 
 pebbles. Next is dropped the sand which is pressed into 
 sandstone and beyond this the finest particles of all, the 
 ground-up soil, which becomes slate rock. Still beyond 
 the zone of slate is deposited the lime from the shells of 
 sea creatures who can live only in this clearer water, away 
 from the muddy waters nearer the shore. These deposits 
 make limestone. The result of this natural sorting process 
 is that all the four kinds of sedimentary rock are always 
 laid down in just this i, 2, 3, 4 order and no other: (i) 
 pudding-stone; (2) sandstone; (3) slate; (4) limestone. 
 
 Then, as a result of the transgressions of the sea, what 
 was once a region of conglomerate may be later found far 
 out under the sea and there is thus laid down over the con- 
 glomerate beds, strata of sandstone, slate, or limestone, 
 depending on how far the sea advances. So we find rocks 
 with all sorts of neighbors above and below; limestone 
 above conglomerate, conglomerate above slate. These 
 changes take place over vast regions and from the original 
 uniformity in the arrangement of the rocks there neces- 
 sarily results a similar uniformity in the results of this 
 "shuffling," and no matter what changes may be made 
 afterward by raising them up into shore cliff and moun-
 
 228 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 tain and by other earth movements, and by the endless 
 reshaping by weather and wave, there still remains that 
 underlying harmony which, with variety, gives to rocky 
 shores their picturesque beauty. 
 
 Harmony and variety are necessary in all forms of art 
 pictures, literature, music and the conditions govern- 
 ing harmony and variety are always found hand-in-hand 
 in the art work of the sea and its helpers. The difference 
 in texture in different kinds of rock, for example, and in 
 different parts of the same rock, cause them to yield in 
 different ways and degrees to the action of wave, wind 
 and weather; so there is sure to be great variety in the 
 shapes they take as they are worn away. 
 
 HARMONY, VARIETY, AND THE ART WORK OF THE SEA 
 FAMILY LIKENESS IN ROCK FORMS 
 
 Yet, with all their differences, the shapes rocks take 
 sandstone compared with granite, for example are so 
 characteristic that one" soon learns to tell a long way off 
 what kind of rock a distant landscape is made of. There 
 is inevitably a certain type resemblance, since all sandstone 
 is of the same general texture and weathers in the same 
 way. 
 
 NATURE'S BUILDING BLOCKS AND THE SEA 
 
 Then take the natural division into blocks made by 
 joints in the rocks to which cliffs like the famous Castle 
 Head at Bar Harbor owes its striking form. These blocks 
 are so nearly true that you feel sure they must have been 
 cut by stone-masons, and yet they have the variety which 
 art demands; they have not the monotonous sameness of
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 229 
 
 shape of the bricks in a wall. This is mainly due to the 
 differences in the strains which cracked the original rock 
 mass. So, from the beginning a sea-wall built by nature 
 is more picturesque than a sea-wall built by man. And 
 it goes on taking more and more picturesque shapes under 
 the hammers of the waves. For the force of the waves, 
 the angles at which they strike, the size and shape of the 
 rock fragments with which they strike, these vary in- 
 finitely. 
 
 ETCHING, SCULPTURE, AND LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
 
 Equally true is this of other natural forces that shape 
 the rocks; such as the daily and seasonal changes of tem- 
 perature that chip away the mountain peaks and the faces 
 of the cliffs, and the character and number of plants that 
 grow on rocks where they can get a foothold and dying 
 and decaying generate acids which help to etch the rocks 
 away. Trees growing on rocks search out the cracks with 
 their roots and, pushing in and prying them apart, help 
 to change their form. And there is sure to be variety in 
 the arrangement of the wild trees growing on rocks in the 
 mountains and by the sea, since the seeds, being carried 
 by the winds or by running water or by birds or four-footed 
 creatures, fall in an endless variety of groupings. So of 
 the shadows cast by the trees. These shadow masses, so 
 different in shape, owing in part to the irregular arrange- 
 ment of the trees and in part to the differences in shape 
 of the trees themselves, protect portions of the rock, to a 
 certain extent, against changes in temperature, while the 
 bare rocks are fully exposed to it, so there results a cor- 
 responding variety in the result of the sun's work upon
 
 230 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the rock. At the same time they help on the acid etching 
 process, because in these shadowed spots there is more 
 moisture and therefore more rapid decay. 
 
 The form of whole continents follows the same law. 
 Take, for example, Europe. "The geological history of 
 Europe," says Geikie, 1 "is largely the history of its 
 mountain chains"; and the mountain chains, for all their 
 picturesque variety, have also, and necessarily, a certain 
 uniformity, because in the wrinkling of the rocks which 
 made them the vast areas over which they now extend 
 were all subjected to the same force a big push from one 
 side which crumpled up the earth's outer crust as a table- 
 cloth is crumpled up when pushed forward against a book 
 lying on it. 
 
 HOW THE VERY SCENERY PLAYS MANY PARTS 
 
 The ancient history written in the rocks, in the present 
 relative positions of the strata, shows that four times a 
 great mountain system has thus been raised across the 
 face of what is now Europe; that three times large portions 
 of these mountain ranges have been sunk under the sea 
 and new rocks deposited over them; and that the moun- 
 tains of to-day the Alps, the Carpathians, and the rest 
 are the survivors of the fourth time up. Here we have 
 another striking example of the fact that on the great 
 stage of life the very scenery has its exits and its en- 
 trances ! 
 
 But remember that in all these changes of scenery in 
 the crumplings and the foldings, and new rock deposits 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica: article on Geology.
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 231 
 
 and the carving by the rivers and the frosts and the winds 
 and the waves of the sea we have certain similar ma- 
 terials, similarly arranged, stretching over vast areas, and 
 the consequence is a certain uniformity and rhythm in 
 the ups.and downs of the landscape and in the changes 
 worked in the walls of stone "where time and storm have 
 set their wild signatures upon them." 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 What would you think of seeing the leaves all out and the trees 
 in bloom on Christmas Day? That happens right along, and the 
 people who live in the lands where this occurs don't think any- 
 thing of it, because this is in the Southern Hemisphere during the 
 vacation season of the sea. 
 
 One peculiar thing about this spring and summer in the winter 
 time in Africa is that when the leaves first come out they are not 
 green at all. They are brown, red, and pink. Later on they 
 turn green just as any well-behaved leaf is supposed to do. 1 It's 
 as if they got mixed in their dates and thought at first it was 
 autumn and then woke up and said: 
 
 "Oh, yes, to be sure, this is spring! What are we thinking 
 about?" 
 
 Anyhow they turn from the autumn browns and reds to the 
 appropriate green of spring, and the flowers come out and the 
 birds begin to sing in the very season when our winter winds are 
 loudest and the rock mills of the sea are roaring at their work. 
 
 In which Hemisphere, the Northern or the Southern, do the 
 sea mills have most land to work on? 
 
 In Shakespere's "Tempest" you will find a description of a 
 storm at sea that will take your breath away. Almost the whole 
 of Scene 2, Act I, is in that terrible storm. In fact, the whole 
 play, as the title of it indicates, is full of storm. 
 
 While you are looking for storms in Shakespeare see what you 
 can find in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Twelfth Night," "Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," and "The Merchant of Venice." 
 
 Speaking of the sea still being in the Stone Age what do you 
 1 Livingstone's "Expedition to the Zambesi."
 
 232 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 i 
 
 know about the kind of tools man used in the Stone Age and how 
 he got along? 1 
 
 (You'll find that the story of the development of man, as dealt 
 with in connection with the Stone Age, is part of the strangest 
 story of all the strange stories of science. You will get a brief 
 outline of it in this story of mine, in the last chapter.) 
 
 How much more do you know about pneumatic tools than 
 Father Neptune does? No doubt you've used a "pneumatic" 
 tool of a sort yourself more than once a tool for making a noise. 
 Guess what. A pop-gun ! Look up pneumatic tools, and you will 
 find that the same thing that makes the pop-gun pop helps to build 
 skyscrapers, locomotives, and steamships, and do a lot of other 
 wonderful things. 
 
 In connection with the water wedges made by the sea you must 
 remember that curious trick ice has when it freezes (page 154); 
 otherwise you can't understand how it could act like a wedge. 
 
 Yes, and wedges, simple as they look, are almost as wonderful 
 as levers; and you know what Archimedes said he could do with 
 a lever. 
 
 The whole subject of machinery and particularly of "automatic" 
 or so-called self-acting machinery 2 is fascinating. Find out about 
 planing mills and how they work, particularly why they stop 
 planing just when they are told to. 
 
 In connection with how the sea sometimes helps make harbors 
 think of as many great harbors as you can, and then look on your 
 geography map and see how many you have missed. 
 
 What character in "Titus Andronicus" says that about the 
 man standing on a rock and watching the sea come to eat him up ? 
 
 Your geography has a good deal to say about continental shelves; 
 and with pictures. Do you remember? 
 
 Speaking of lands sinking under the sea you'll run into a world 
 of interesting things if you look up the story of the Lost Island of 
 Atlantis; about the Egyptian priest who first described it to Solon, 
 
 1 Interesting books on this subject are: Starr's "First Steps in 
 Human Progress" (Chautauqua Reading Course) and Clodd's "Child- 
 hood of the World." Osborn's "The Men of the Old Stone Age" is the 
 latest and most comprehensive work on the subject. 
 
 2 As a matter of fact, the only machinery that is really automatic is 
 the machinery of nature, of which what we have called "the" machinery 
 of the sea" is an example.
 
 THE AUTUMN WINDS 233 
 
 the Greek lawgiver, as an earthly paradise where all the laws and 
 everything else were just right. 
 
 And if you're of High School age you'll enjoy reading what 
 Plato 1 and Homer 2 say about this ideal land. 
 
 Isn't it a striking thing how the big sea that can look so fierce 
 takes such tender care of the little coral people? And what ex- 
 traordinary folks these coral people are ! Any gopd article about 
 them will tell you worlds of interesting things. For instance, you 
 will find the people of whole villages living together with only 
 one backbone. I mean not one backbone apiece but one backbone 
 among them all I 
 
 And they have the queerest way with their stomachs, a kind of 
 co-operative digestion, of co-operative housekeeping. (Your mother 
 will be particularly interested in this because it shows the "com- 
 munity kitchen" idea has been thoroughly tried out and it works! 
 If you don't know about "community kitchens" among human 
 housekeepers ask mother to tell you, and then you tell her what 
 you found out about these strange little housekeepers of the sea.) 
 
 x Timaeus. 2 The Odyssey.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 (NOVEMBER) 
 
 It is a noble thing for men ... to make the face of a wall 
 look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon; or 
 even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the 
 play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how 
 many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time 
 and storm will set their wild signatures upon it. 
 
 Ruskin : The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 
 
 One of the most interesting things in this whole won- 
 derful story of the life history of the world is how men 
 were first able to read it at all. For we know they didn't 
 find it written out in plain print as we have it now. Neither 
 was it told in any one language so that getting hold of the 
 thread of the story they could unravel it all, as other learned 
 men did the picture writing of the Egyptians and the 
 wedge-shaped marks on Assyrian bricks. 
 
 We know already how they learned that rivers open their 
 own gateways through the mountains; how they know 
 rocks are made over in the fairyland of change; how they 
 know the ancient glaciers scattered the boulders over moun- 
 tainside, valley, and field; how they know the mountains 
 are children of the sea. 
 
 All this and more we have been reading in the written 
 language of the rocks, but there are other things in this 
 234
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 235 
 
 A WALL THAT VULCAN BUILT 
 
 I've said it several times before, but I can't help saying it here again, how much 
 more wonderful the ways of Nature are than was ever dreamed of even in the won- 
 der tales of the Greeks ! Take this great iron wall, for example a wall of the iron 
 rock called "lava" and who would suppose that it was made by natural forces? 
 It was driven in a molten state into a crack in overlying rock. After it cooled, the 
 rock above and on either side of it, being of softer material, was worn away. This 
 wall is near Spanish Peaks, Colorado. It is 100 feet high and some 30 feet wide. 
 Colorado boys, on their vacations in that region, run along the top of it for miles. 
 
 rock script that I have kept for this last but one of our 
 pleasant talks, so that they might serve as a kind of sum- 
 mary and remembrance of all that has gone before. 
 
 I. THE MYSTERIES IN MARBLE WALLS 
 
 Take a piece of marble for example, such as you see 
 along the walls of our great modern buildings. There's 
 a story for you ! Why, if half the things it tells had just 
 happened, or even just been discovered by some enter- 
 prising reporter, we should see pages and pages about it 
 all in every newspaper in the land.
 
 236 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 HOW MARBLE RETELLS THE WORLD HISTORY 
 
 In that piece of marble alone you have a pretty full 
 review of the earth's history; of many of the most impor- 
 tant things we have seen and heard about since we all 
 started out together in Chapter I. It tells of strange life 
 in ancient seas; of being buried deep in the earth under 
 immense pressure, and where it could feel the intense heat 
 of the rock at the centre, and of coming up again com- 
 pletely changed; transformed from the substance of a 
 dead sea creature's shell to a crystallized stone beautifully 
 colored and of many patterns; of the chemistry of the 
 world underground and the laboratories in which its lovely 
 coloring were made and blended; and solid rock threaded 
 through rock with a skill that no worker in mosaic has 
 ever equalled; drawn out and fixed in mere films of white, 
 fading into the rich dark of the marble around them like 
 white clouds shredded by the winds. 
 
 THE STRANGE STORIES THAT MARBLE TELLS
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 237 
 
 Those broader lines bending and turning, rising and 
 falling, tell of the work of the giant forces that lift the 
 mountains into place and of the great earthquakes that 
 accompany mountain building. When those little quaver- 
 ing lines were being made, away down in the earth where 
 the limestone changed to marble, mountains were slowly 
 rising into the sky on the earth's surface far above. The 
 quaverings in the marble are pictures, "line drawings" 
 of the mountain story. And beside these lines that you 
 can read so plainly there are others so small that you need 
 a magnifying glass to see them; echoes, away down in 
 the fairyland of the microscope, of the doings of the giants 
 of Mountainland far above. 
 
 In following the lines of the earth's great walls of rock 
 over a wide extent they are found waving sharply up and 
 down in one section, rising and falling like ocean swells 
 in another, in forward sloping folds in another, and some- 
 times even with folds doubling over, as if the great moun- 
 tains which these folds made were trying to stand on their 
 heads. 
 
 WHY LINES IN MARBLE REPEAT MOUNTAIN FORMS 
 
 All these rock folds which, with the help of the sculp- 
 turing of the elements, produce the infinite variety of 
 beauty in mountain scenery are, speaking generally, re- 
 peated in the lines of the marble. But they are repeated 
 only in miniature, because the rocks deep in the earth are 
 under such pressure that while the rocks on the surface 
 are free to rise in big and comparatively simple waves 
 those beneath are doubled up into smaller and much more 
 crumpled folds. Take several sheets of paper lying free
 
 238 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 on the table and press them from the ends. They will rise 
 in simple arches as most mountains do. Now lay a book 
 on these sheets and press from the ends again. You see 
 
 HOW MOTHER NATURE MAKES HER Z'S 
 
 These Z-shaped rock folds were made by the crumpling up of the crust as the cen- 
 tre, cooling, shrank away. They are to be seen near the east end of Ogden Canyon, 
 Utah. The black lines were added to the photograph in the offices of Uncle Sam's 
 big department of geology at Washington, to show clearly just where the rock runs. 
 
 they crumple up a great deal more; the larger wrinkles 
 themselves doubling into smaller ones. 
 
 You may often have noticed a banded effect in marble. 
 My, what power it took to do that ! Pressure we can't 
 realize. Pressure from above so great that it made this 
 marble spread; moulded it like clay in the hands of the 
 potter; the same kind of force that flattened out the peb- 
 bles referred to in Chapter V. This is called "rock flow,"
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 239 
 
 and how plainly the marble shows the flowing movement. 
 I always think what the weather people call "stratus" 
 clouds, look as if they were made by long strokes of a 
 painter's brush; and this marble has the very same flow- 
 ing lines. Such cloud pictures in marble are made where 
 deposits of other kinds of rock have been interlaid with 
 the deposits of limestone which afterward changed to 
 marble, and it is where these bands are folded or bent that 
 we have set down for us the story of the mountain folds. 
 Those gossamer effects and the little white clouds spin- 
 ning out and fading into the general mass of the marble, 
 how delicate they are ! Yet it took a force that made the 
 earth quake to put them there. The more we know of 
 the strange and fearful things that happen in times of earth- 
 quake the more we can read between these filmy lines. 
 They tell of the sides of mountains tumbling down and 
 spreading their valleys with a chaos of broken stone; mak- 
 ing cliffs where there were peaks and peaks where there 
 were cliffs; changing the course of rivers; shifting whole 
 forests on the mountainside and replacing them with grim 
 walls and bastions of barren stone all in the twinkling 
 of an eye ! 
 
 THE EARTHQUAKES AND THE DELICATE FILMS 
 
 It is by the crushing movements that made the earth- 
 quake that rocks are broken into confusions of cracks such 
 as you often see in a thick glass window that has been 
 broken. Then into these cracks come dissolved minerals 
 from other rocks and harden into stone. In the marble 
 one set of veins often runs right through another as if they 
 had been inlaid. Then there may be other veins that cross
 
 240 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 4w^^wlfMvMlV^!l^^ 
 
 7e ?"-" "" ~**~~ UMPW ^M^^U^MAVW-^WvAMvv v 
 
 WHEN THE EARTHQUAKE TAKES ITS PEN IN HAND 
 
 These are, so to speak, the autographs of earthquakes the records earthquakes 
 themselves make on an instrument called the "seismograph," using a stylus, as 
 the ancients did, as you will see by looking up "seismograph" in the dictionary or 
 encyclopaedia. After an earthquake starts it seems to stop for breath or for want 
 of the right word -just like people ; for you notice portions of the lines are almost 
 straight. These were made when the earthquake was comparatively quiet. Then, 
 when it got excited again as in the second record from the top the stylus fairly 
 jumped up and down; and there where the waves are long and close together the 
 shocks were particularly severe and followed each other rapidly. 
 
 both of these no end of criss-crossings. The different 
 sets of veins usually differ also in color and in grain, and 
 even have different kinds of mineral in them. With a 
 good hand-glass you can see this difference in texture. 
 
 II. How VULCAN DROVE HIS AUTOGRAPH INTO THE 
 ROCKS 
 
 But there is another kind of handwriting on the walls 
 that was made with such a vigorous stroke that it also 
 made the earth shake. Of course we might expect Vulcan
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 241 
 
 to write a rather vigorous hand Vulcan, forger of thun- 
 derbolts for Jove. The ancients thought volcanoes be- 
 longed to the kingdom of Vulcan, so in scientific language 
 everything connected with volcanic action comes under 
 the head of "Vulcanism." These queer letters we are 
 talking about are called "dikes." They are made of lava 
 that was driven into cracks in the rocks and afterward 
 cooled into rock that is as hard as iron. Lava is often 
 largely made of iron. 
 
 VULCAN'S FAMOUS CASTLE ON THE HUDSON 
 
 spots . 
 
 really belongs to medieval architecture, for it was built in the Middle Ages of earth 
 long history.
 
 242 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 THIS IS THE HAND OF VULCAN, TOO 
 
 Were you ever down by the seashore in a storm? If 
 so you remember how the ground under your feet shook 
 when a great wave rushed into some narrow passage or 
 crevice in the rocks, and was tossed high in the air in spray. 
 Then just imagine molten lava, which is many times heavier 
 than water, driven into a crack in a rock with the force of 
 a cannon-ball. That's how it happened. That's how those 
 dark strokes in the rock with their heavy shading were 
 made. 
 
 This was done in the depths of the earth; not on the 
 surface where you see these rocks now. They used to have
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 
 
 243 
 
 piles of other rocks above them, but these in course of time 
 have been weathered away. This is known, not only from 
 the marks of the wearing but from the fact that these dikes, 
 as well as the rock into which they have been driven, are 
 crystallized, wholly or in part. Such crystallizing, as we 
 know, takes place away down in the earth. 
 
 Dikes are very common. In some places you find the 
 rocks fairly laced with them. The picture of the dikes in 
 the granite shores at Marblehead also shows (in the hori- 
 zontal plan) many "faults" or slips of the rock since the 
 dike was made, and each slip probably gave rise to an 
 earthquake. So you see there's the story of a terrible 
 time written on those quiet old residents by the sea. 
 
 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 
 
 Here is a still more striking example of the formation of columns in lava the 
 Giant's Causeway. Here are 40,000 columns, packed like the cells of a honeycomb, 
 and they slope to the pavement in the foreground that gives the mass its name. 
 That bees should make their little honey-jars in such regular form is wonder- 
 ful enough, but think of lava shaping its own self into columns like that !
 
 244 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 DID MR. VULCAN USE A STEAM PILE-DRIVER? 
 
 Just what power Mr. Vulcan used to drive the dikes 
 is not known for sure, but I'll tell you how it is supposed 
 to have been done. Remember that all rocks that are 
 deep down in the earth contain water, shut up in their 
 pores. Then remember how hot it is down there and how 
 this heat would make steam right in the rocks. Then let 
 the rock above be. cracked by the movements of the earth 
 crust, and this crack extend down to where these hot rocks 
 are, the pressure, being released along that crack, the 
 melted rock (lava) would rush up, as it does in connection 
 with the eruptions of volcanoes, and the exploding steam 
 would help drive it. 
 
 III. ANCIENT WEATHER RECORDS TURNED TO STONE 
 
 So much for the literary remains of Mr. Vulcan. Now 
 let's see how much we can make out of the handwriting 
 of the waters and the winds on these walls of time. 
 
 What does the picture at the top of page 245 look like? 
 Rain-drops in the dust. And so you see they are; but the 
 rain fell so long that the pits made in the dust have turned 
 to stone. Think of the autograph of a rain-drop older than 
 the Pharaohs; older than the pyramids these Pharaohs 
 built to perpetuate their names. 
 
 And this is how such rain-drops immortalize themselves; 
 this is the interpretation of their handwriting on the walls. 
 Along the dry shore of an ancient sea when the tide was 
 out, rain-drops fell on the sand and dust. Tides often 
 come in with a rush, in wild waves driven by the wind, but 
 when there is no wind and no waves rolling in from far
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 245 
 
 RAIN-DROP AUTOGRAPHS OLDER THAN THE PHARAOHS 
 
 distant storms the tide may overspread such delicate things 
 as the imprint of rain-drops with a thin protecting film of 
 mud. This was what happened to our little rain pits. Later 
 tides overlaid them deeper from day to day, and in course 
 of time both the layer containing the rain-drop prints and 
 the overlying layers of sediment turned to stone. Often 
 the heat of a summer sun will bake these rain-drop designs 
 and this you see helps; it holds the impression until the 
 tide can come in and spread its protecting film. Many 
 imprints of rain-drops and of the feet of reptiles are found 
 in the sandstone underlying the coal seams in eastern 
 Pennsylvania, and they are always, I am told, covered 
 with a fine powdery material, which was once the slime 
 and mud of the tide. Such rain marks are often found 
 also in slate. Wouldn't you like to have a slate with one 
 of these rain-drop autographs on it?
 
 246 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Here, by the way, is a very important thing these rain- 
 drops tell. Says Professor Shaler: 
 
 "They tell us that the ordinary machinery of the at- 
 mosphere was operating in those days very much as it is 
 to-day, and that the climate was much the same." 1 
 
 So, he argues, the great Ice Age couldn't have been due 
 to change of climate, but to the other things that we read 
 about in Chapter II. For they even know in what ages 
 different records of rain-drops were made because they are 
 found in rocks laid down in different periods; and one of 
 the periods in which they are found was that in which the 
 North Pole ice and its neighbors came down and made 
 us those long visits. 
 
 STORY OF A STROLL IN THE RAIN 
 
 Another story found in museums is written in slate 
 not by a rain-drop but by a living creature. The slate 
 shows the track of a reptile with feet like a bird. Evi- 
 dently he was strolling along in the rain; for there you see 
 the marks of the rain-drops right among the marks of his 
 feet, and in the footprints themselves. Being a reptile who 
 spent much of his time in or near the water he no doubt 
 enjoyed these little pats of the rain-drops as he went along. 
 
 BUT THIS STROLL WAS TAKEN IN THE SUN 
 
 In another of these museum specimens we see written out 
 just as plainly the story of a stroll in the sun. There are 
 
 1 This quotation is from Doctor Shaler's "Nature and Man in Amer- 
 ica," a book you should read, as you should all of Doctor Shaler's 
 books. No one has observed so many interesting things in the field 
 of geology and few have written about them so simply or reasoned 
 about them so well.
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 247 
 
 "THEN THERE CAME A LONG DRY SPELL" 
 
 This shows how the cracks in dried-up mud are preserved in stone. The process 
 is the same as in the case of the stone imprints of rain-drops, the imprints being 
 protected by successive deposits of mud by quiet tides, and afterward turning to 
 stone. 
 
 the imprints of Mr. Reptile's feet, and there are the sun- 
 cracks in the mud showing that the sun was shining or 
 at least that it had been shining for several days or weeks, 
 for it takes a little time to make sun-cracks in mud. This 
 story, we might suppose, was written so that it could be 
 read by the blind; the cracks, as well as the footprints, 
 are brought out in raised lettering. Sun-cracked mud, 
 after a long dry "spell," will bake so that the cracks will 
 not be washed out by the returning tide but instead be 
 filled by other material, and this material will go on build- 
 ing up to a certain extent; so making those ridges. 
 
 THE STONE AUTOGRAPHS OF GENTLE BREEZES 
 
 On still other stones you will find written the story of 
 gentle breezes that stirred the water and made ripples 
 on long-buried shores. First the breezes rippled the shallow 
 waters near the shore. Then the waters rippled the sand,
 
 248 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 and the sediments of the tide preserved these ripple marks 
 as they did the rain-drops and the footprints. 
 
 But the wind alone, without the help of water ripples, 
 can write its name in the sands of time. And when you 
 get to know the handwriting of wind and wave you will 
 not mistake the one for the other. You are likely to find 
 wind ripples on any big heap of sand. Have a good look 
 at them and then go down to shallow water on a sandy 
 shore and compare the two kinds. That's the way the 
 great men of science do; they notice every little thing. 
 
 WEATHER RECORDS ON THE MOUNTAIN WALLS 
 
 From a scientific standpoint little things may be just 
 as big as big things. For example, in this matter of old 
 weather records these rain-drops and ripple stones are just 
 
 From Norton's " Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company 
 THE STORY OF BIG ROUND TOP AND LITTLE ROUND TOP 
 
 One story of Big Round Top and Little Round Top your history tells, but long 
 before the battle of Gettysburg these two mountains had age-long battles of their 
 own with the winds, the rains, and the frosts, and in these battles lost their peaks 
 and their sharp outlines of jagged rock, and became rounded down to the forms we 
 see before us. Those rocks in the field were probably broken off in these battles, 
 as the rocks of high mountains are to-day, and carried down by roaring torrents.
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 249 
 
 WEATHER RECORDS ON THE WALLS OF TIME 
 
 What is now the Great Salt Lake used to be a much greater lake that wasn't salt 
 at all. That vast flight of steps up the mountainside shows how wide it spread. 
 As the big lake dried up, and grew smaller and smaller and saltier and saltier, its 
 shores were bounded successively by those wave-cut cliffs. 
 
 as interesting as other weather records written large on 
 mountain walls; such as those which tell that what is now 
 the Dead Sea was once part of a much larger sea that wasn't 
 dead at all. You may never get to read these records on 
 the mountain walls of Palestine, for they are a long way 
 off, but here in our own country we have a similar story 
 told on mountain walls in the region of another dead sea 
 the Great Salt Lake of Utah. From Salt Lake City 
 you can see on the mountain surrounding the desert of 
 the Great Basin the marks of old shore lines; where the 
 waves cut into the rock. These marks show that this Basin 
 once held two great lakes, and the one in the eastern por- 
 tion dried up into what is now Great Salt Lake.
 
 250 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 IV. STORIES WRITTEN ON THE PEBBLES 
 
 Sometimes when a geologist picks up a pebble and looks 
 at it a moment he can hear the roar of mountain torrents 
 and of lowland streams in flood. If the pebble is round 
 it shows that it has been carried far and rolled about by 
 streams. If it has pits in it this shows that its water jour- 
 neys were rough, because such pits are made by knocking 
 against other pebbles and sharp stones in the struggle and 
 confusion of the rushing waters. You see these little dots 
 are a kind of shorthand, for we pebbles are stenographers 
 too! 
 
 THE PERCHED BOULDER IN BRONX PARK 
 
 This is one of the interesting things to be seen when you visit Bronx Park in New 
 York City. Of course, you know how that old boulder got there, and how he drew 
 those straight lines in the rock-bed beneath, but many visitors to the park do not.
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 251 
 
 HOW PEBBLES TELL OF THEIR TRAVELS 
 
 Other great stories in small space are told on glacial 
 pebbles. Scientific men can often tell from the look of a 
 pebble whether it was shaped by rivers, by the sea, by the 
 sand blasts of desert winds, or by the glaciers. Not only 
 
 From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company 
 
 ONE PEBBLE IN ITS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS 
 
 Here are pebbles faceted in different ways by glaciers. No. i has six facets. No. 
 4, originally a rounded river pebble, has been rubbed down to one flat face. Nos. 
 3 and 5 are battered little travellers faceted on one side only. Notice how No. 5 
 got his face scratched just as I did. 
 
 that, but, if it is a glaciated pebble, on what part of the 
 glacier it was carried; whether in the middle of its back, 
 or on the sides, like the passengers in an Irish jaunting- 
 car; or whether it rode underneath, like a tramp stealing 
 a ride on the bumpers. The stones in the middle of the 
 glacier's back naturally keep their sharp edges longer than 
 stones on the side, ground as the side stones are by the 
 moving ice mass against the mountain walls. And the 
 stones on both top and sides would lose less of their edges 
 than the stones underneath the ice.
 
 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 PEBBLE FACETED BY WIND-BLOWN SAND 
 
 You remember how the glaciers ground flat faces or facets on the pebbles, don't 
 you? Here is another example of Nature's lapidary work, but here she has used 
 wind and sand instead of ice. 
 
 V. A GREATER C^SAR AND His COMMENTARIES 
 
 Well, there he is again, you see, Mr. Glacier of the Ice 
 Age. He's always turning up, everywhere you go in earth 
 history. As Shakespere's Mr. Cassius said of Mr. Julius 
 Caesar, "he bestrode the world." And, like the Roman 
 Caesar, this Caesar wrote the story of his own exploits; but 
 although a vastly greater conqueror than the famous Ro- 
 man, he was even more modest. Caesar and his Commen- 
 taries, our High School friend will tell you, nearly always 
 refers to himself in the third person; but in his commen- 
 taries on his travels and exploits the Old Man of the Moun-
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 253 
 
 tain didn't even use his own name. He left the editors 
 of his manuscript to find out who he was. 
 
 HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE TIPPED UP 
 
 One of the most striking things he did, of which he wrote 
 the record on the walls, was to tip up the Great Lakes. 
 You remember just how he made them. Well, it seems 
 that as he started back home he tipped them up. Sup- 
 pose you could pick up the vast stone bowls that hold these 
 lakes and tip them toward the north as easily as you can 
 tip a bowl of water, what would the water do ? It would 
 fall lower along the south shores of the lakes and rise along 
 the northern shores, wouldn't it ? Then suppose the lakes 
 were kept tipped up in this way for ages, and summer wind 
 storms and winter tempests dashed waves against their 
 shores, what would happen? Stone walls rising above 
 the shore would have terraces cut into them, and the line 
 of these terraces would tilt toward the north. There are 
 terraces just like that on rocks bordering the Great Lakes, 
 and the explanation of their 'tilt is that the lakes them- 
 selves were tipped up, and that the Old Man of the Moun- 
 tain did the tipping. The rock crust of the round earth 
 bends under great weight like an arch. So when the enor- 
 mous weight of the glaciers of the Ice Age was on a por- 
 tion of the arch it bent down. Then, as the glaciers re- 
 treated, the weight of them was shifted northward all the 
 time. Finally when the glaciers in the region of the lakes 
 had melted quite away the arch slowly rose into place 
 again and lifted the terraces above the water line as we see 
 them to-day. 
 
 Throughout regions the glaciers visited you find rocks
 
 254 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 SCENE ON THE COAST OF NORWAY BY A. GLACIER 
 
 You know the fiords. You've met them in your geography. 'This is a fiord 
 on the Norway coast. Notice how smooth the walls of the mountains are. They 
 were trimmed down by the ice, which also plowed off their soil. We are here look- 
 ing up what was once a river valley, but the glacier cut it down below sea level, and 
 this is sea water. Notice in the openings of the mountains all the way up the valley 
 where the tributaries of the ancient river flowed in then as now. 
 
 polished like mirrors; in other cases they are scratched, 
 and in others deeply grooved. 
 
 HOW THIS MR. C^SAR IS TRANSLATED 
 
 No one scratch can be followed far. The composition 
 is, like Caesar's, in short sentences, whole episodes in a 
 word: "Veni, vidi, vici." But a series of scratches all 
 run in one general direction north and south. To get 
 at the meaning just as in construing Caesar you must 
 take the context; .what goes before and after.
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 255 
 
 The sides of the valleys of the Alps from 1,000 to 2,000 
 feet above the surface of the glaciers of our own time are 
 scratched and furrowed in the same way. Here we catch 
 Mr. Glacier almost in the very act of writing. 
 
 THE HANDWRITING OF THE TWO C^SARS 
 
 To do this writing, our Caesar, like the Caesar of the High 
 School, used a stylus. Mr. Glacier's stylus, as we know, was 
 made of stone held fast in his icy grip (page 121). And 
 here is another curious resemblance between the manu- 
 scripts of Mr. G. Caesar and Mr. J. Caesar. They both wrote 
 in straight lines. The reason Julius Caesar and other Roman 
 gentlemen wrote in letters made of straight lines was that 
 they scratched these letters on tablets covered with wax, 
 using a sharpened piece of iron or ivory. You can see it 
 would be much easier with such writing tools and material 
 to form letters in straight lines than to write in flowing, 
 rounded and connected lines as we do so easily with a nice 
 flexible pen on a smooth surface. 
 
 HOW THE OLD MEN CHANGED A "v" TO A "u" 
 
 Here is something else about the story of the Old Men 
 of the Mountain that is a curious reminder of the Romans 
 and their letters. The Romans had no letter U in their 
 alphabet and so V had to do a double duty; it had to be 
 a V and then when asked, had to take its place in line and 
 pretend to be a U. For instance, a Roman who wanted 
 to write the word " number" would do it in this way: 
 "NVMERO." After a while, in the history of the growth 
 of our alphabet, the V that was intended for U was rounded 
 at the bottom.
 
 256 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 Now, curiously enough, the writing of the Old Men of 
 the Mountain has gone through the same process. River 
 valleys in mountain regions, as elsewhere, are originally 
 V-shaped, but where glaciers flowed down these valleys 
 
 ON THE AGGER WALL 
 
 w ... . 
 
 \AlivH 
 
 Cf+ 
 
 THE HANDWRITING OF THE GLACIERS AND THE ROMANS 
 
 Here is an interesting relic of ancient days that will enable you to compare the 
 chirography of the Old Men of the Mountain with that of the Romans. These are 
 marks left by the masons on Roman walls. They show just what part each mason 
 laid, so that if the wall proved defective the authorities would know who was re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 they not only made them wider but rounded out the bot- 
 toms so that they became U-shaped. Look at the valley 
 in the Wind River range in Wyoming shown in the geol- 
 ogies. You notice the farther your eye goes up into the 
 mountains the more V-shaped the valley becomes. Back 
 toward antiquity, you see, when they had nothing 
 butV! 
 
 All quite striking, isn't it, this strange kind of writing 
 on the walls of time? As if, among the ruins that are all 
 there is left of the fallen Roman Empire, we should in some 
 heap of dust and crumbled stone find one of the very tablets 
 on which Caesar wrote his commentaries and there en- 
 graved in Caesar's own hand:
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 
 
 THIS STYLE IS CALLED FLUTING 
 
 Looks like moulding, doesn't it? This is a piece of rock, and it was carved in 
 that way by the glaciers with their tools of embedded stone. The deeper grooves 
 were made where the rock was softer or where the glacier's chisels were of a par- 
 ticularly hard quality, such as flint or granite. 
 
 "Caesar, maximis bellis confectis, in hiberna exercitum 
 deduxit." 
 
 Can you translate that for us ? (This to the High School 
 Boy.) 
 
 "As easy as anything," says he. "Caesar, on comple- 
 tion of these great wars, led his army into winter quar- 
 ters." 
 
 And that same phrase might serve in Mr. Glacier's Com- 
 mentaries too. For the glaciers of the Ice Age, after their 
 great work was done, also went into winter quarters; melt- 
 ing back to the present snow-line in our mountains and 
 the regions of eternal ice around the pole.
 
 258 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 One of the most interesting stories of men's handwriting on the 
 walls and how scholars, many centuries afterward, learned to read 
 it, you will find in encyclopaedias, histories, and other books under 
 such headings as Egypt, Assyria, Rosetta Stone, and most of all 
 under Hieroglyphics ; a big word, but full of meat when once you've 
 cracked the shell. 
 
 Among other things, you will find that if it hadn't been for the 
 Egyptians and other clever people of the long ago we would not have 
 had our written language to read at all; on walls or anywhere else ! 
 
 If you had been an Egyptian, say 4,000 years ago, how many 
 letters do you suppose you would have had to learn before you 
 could have read well ? About a thousand ! But it wouldn't have 
 been so hard as you think, for the Egyptian letters talked, so to 
 speak. They told their own story much as did the picture words 
 that told so much to the little Greeks. These Egyptian words, 
 however for they were words, or several words in one, rather 
 than letters were real pictures, and very good pictures, too. 
 (See Chambers under "Hieroglyphics" for the little pictures.) 
 
 Some of them were very simple. It wasn't hard to learn. 
 
 But now suppose you were an Egyptian and you wanted to 
 write a letter telling somebody how pleased you were about some- 
 thing a nice new book an uncle had sent you, for instance the 
 proper picture- word to use would be a lady beating a tambourine. 
 She is pleased that's why she is beating the tambourine, just as a 
 small boy claps his hands when he says, "Oh, goody, goody!" So 
 this picture- word came to be used to express "joy" or "pleasure" 
 over anything. 
 
 These are just some samples to show you what interesting 
 things even such formidable words as "hieroglyphics" are when 
 you make friends with them. But now, to get back to Nature's 
 handwriting and the nature myths connected with it, what do 
 you know about this Vulcan, who left so much of his manuscript in 
 the rocks? 
 
 The ancients thought of him as a worker in metals. Don't you 
 think they would have, been quite sure of it if they had known 
 about the dikes and the palisades of the Hudson, and Fingal's 
 .cave, with their remarkable iron-like columns of cooled lava? But 
 he was an artist in metals, too, and a mechanical engineer, it 
 seems. Do you remember about those two statues of beautiful
 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS 259 
 
 women that he made of pure gold, and how they walked about 
 with him wherever he went ? And the brazen-footed bulls of /Etes, 
 that filled the air with their bellowings and from their nostrils 
 blew flame and smoke ? l 
 
 The Greeks probably didn't know about such "art metal" work 
 as the palisades certainly they didn't know about the Hudson 
 River or Fingal's Cave but they had Vulcan (Hephaestus they 
 called him) doing all sorts of other art-metal things. There was 
 the famous shield he made for Achilles, for instance. Homer takes 
 several pages just to tell about the different figures on it and what 
 they meant. 2 
 
 Why do you suppose a temple was erected on Mount Etna? 
 (What kind of a mountain is it ?) 
 
 Wouldn't it be strange if we could make hard coal out of soft? 
 Vulcan does that sometimes with these dike strokes of his. 3 
 
 The International will also tell you why dike rock is usually so 
 solid and tough, and what the crystal people have to do with 
 making it so. 
 
 The Britannica (28: 188) tells how, in the walls of volcanoes 
 Vulcan wrote out the hint for making re-enforced concrete which 
 is so important a feature of modern architectural engineering. 
 
 Look about on the rockbeds in the stone quarry and see if you 
 can't find some of the writing of that Older Caesar with his queer 
 stone stylus. Probably the men in the quarry will have won- 
 dered how these scratches came there and you can tell them. 
 
 There is one style of Mr. Glacier's hand-work that even the dogs 
 and the horses notice, and that is the "mirror rocks." Muir tells 
 about them in his "Mountains of California." 
 
 1 I wonder if Vulcan could have been thinking of locomotives what 
 we sometimes call "iron horses" when he made those bulls. Do you 
 
 suppose 
 
 2 The Iliad. 
 
 3 The International Encyclopedia.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 (DECEMBER) 
 
 "A fire-mist and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jelly fish and a saurian 
 
 And caves where the cavemen dwell; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty 
 
 And a face turned from the clod 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 And others call it God." 
 
 William Herbert Carruth. 
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 So the Ice Ages and their glaciers and the Romans and 
 their Caesars melted away. We know them only by the 
 marks they left on the walls of time. But why this con- 
 stant doing and undoing of things ? We have seen it going 
 on from the very beginning; rock crumbling to dust, dust 
 changing back to rock; rocks raised up into mountains, 
 mountains worn down to plains; then more mountains, 
 and on through the same cycle of endless change; as if 
 always starting the whole thing over again. 
 
 What is it all about? Are we getting anywhere? If 
 so, where ? 
 
 Ever since men looked out upon the world around them 
 
 and began to think, they have puzzled not only about the 
 
 causes but the purpose of this endless drama of creation 
 
 and decay. Some said one thing ; some said another. The 
 
 260
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 261 
 
 Persian poet who wrote those fine lines about the lion and 
 the lizard in the ruins of the palaces meant to say that's 
 all that everything comes to; all things, men included, 
 return to the elements of which they were made and 
 that's the end of them. So, said he, what's the use of 
 bothering one's head about it? There's nothing to be 
 learned. One verse of his famous song reads like this: 
 
 "Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
 Doctor and saint, and heard great argument 
 About it and about; but evermore 
 Came out by the same door wherein I went." 
 
 But Science, as we shall now see, has a better answer. 
 
 I. NOTHING HAPPENS 
 
 In the first place you must have noticed as we came 
 along through this little book that nothing happens in 
 this world of ours; everything is under a government of 
 laws. Not only did it turn out that there was method in 
 the apparent madness of the sea but we found method 
 everywhere. It was not chance that made our worlds, 
 whether they were born full-grown or grew up piece by 
 piece. And we see the same forces at work in small things 
 as in the great. The force that keeps the earth in its orbit 
 is just as careful to catch and plant the tiny seeds of the 
 grasses and the pine-trees drifting forward in the wind, 
 so keeping the world clothed with life and verdure. 
 
 ALL NATURE UNDER A GOVERNMENT OF LAW 
 
 So with the seasons with all that they mean in the life 
 of the world; spring never fails to follow winter. Little 
 things happen that make spring "late," as we say; but
 
 262 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 spring itself never fails to come and always in its right 
 place in the procession of the year. All this because the 
 earth stays in its orbit and spins on its axis. Watches 
 break their mainsprings, clocks run down. These things 
 "happen"; but we never think of saying that the main- 
 spring or the wheels "happened," or that they "happened" 
 into their places in the watch. The worlds not only make 
 their appointed round as regularly as the wheels of a watch 
 but they never run down, and the power that keeps them 
 going and in their places never breaks. If it ever occurred 
 in any other way if we should hear of a world flying out 
 of its orbit and going banging around among the other 
 worlds, we could talk of "happening." 
 
 NATURE'S ACCIDENT INSURANCE SYSTEM 
 
 We might call these laws that make it so certain that 
 nature's business will go on as usual, rain or shine, the 
 Accident Insurance of the Universe. We have nothing 
 quite like it in human insurance systems; for these only 
 make it up to you the best they can after some acci- 
 dent has happened. Nature's insurance system, on the 
 other hand, makes it certain that nothing will happen to 
 change the main course of things. The protective insur- 
 ance of the universe is woven right through Nature itself. 
 The continents, for example, were bound, in due course, 
 to rise in their places, because it is the nature of cooling 
 masses to shrink and for the outside to cool the faster 
 and to harden and to wrinkle up. It doesn't matter whether 
 the cooling mass is a little baked apple or a big hot earth. 
 
 Nor was it an accident that the continents in their orig- 
 inal iorm grew larger with the fat of the land that was
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 263 
 
 THE CLOCK OF THE AGES 
 
 By representing the great geologic periods of time in the form of a clock-face a 
 writer in the Scientific American enables us to form a rough conception of their dura- 
 tion, their distinguishing features, and their relations to one another, according to 
 ideas associated with the theory of La Place, but which have been considerably 
 modified in the light of later reasoning and investigation. The view now generally ac- 
 cepted, for example, is that the Azoic era was longer than all subsequent time. But, 
 taking the picture as it stands, each "hour" represents 3,000,000 years. For a quar- 
 ter of the total period up to the very recent appearance of man "there was darkness 
 upon the face of the deep." Next after the Azoic was the Laurentian Period, when 
 "the dry land appeared." Later came the dawn of life, and this life, like the in- 
 animate matter which preceded it, kept rising and continues to rise, as the ages 
 pass, to higher, more beautiful, and nobler forms.
 
 264 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 added to them under the action of the chemistry of the 
 air. You see Nature must understand chemistry or things 
 wouldn't come out right in the laboratory, as they always 
 do if you have made no mistakes. Ever think of that, 
 Mr. High School Boy ? 
 
 II. THE STRANGEST THING OF ALL THAT DIDN'T 
 HAPPEN 
 
 But the strangest thing of all that didn't happen in this 
 history of the world and its making I'm going to tell you 
 about now. 
 
 KINSHIP OF KITTENS AND APPLE-TREES 
 
 You remember what I said of the apple-tree in Chap- 
 ter V (page 93), how nobody who didn't know it to be true 
 would believe that little Miss Greenleaf and old Mr. Root 
 and rough Mr. Bark and lovely Miss Blossom were not 
 only born under the same roof but were as closely related 
 as a pussy-cat and her nest full of kittens. I didn't men- 
 tion the kittens then, but just suppose I had done so; and 
 then had gone on to say that kittens are relations of the 
 apple family and that all birds are related to all kittens, 
 and that both are kindred of that terrible Mr. Cetiosaurus 
 that we met in the Bad Lands of Dakota. 
 
 Would you have believed it? 
 
 No ? Well, I don't wonder. It was quite a while before 
 the wise men of science believed it. Now not only is this 
 idea of the origin of all living things animal and vegetable 
 universally accepted by men of science, but every ed- 
 ucated person is supposed to know about it. It is always, 
 and as a matter of course, put into the school-books deal-
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 265 
 
 ing with the history of nature; just as in all histories we 
 are sure to see Columbus landing in 1492 and George 
 Washington being inaugurated April 30, 1789. 
 
 Most people, including the scientists, used to think 
 that each kind of plant and animal was given its present 
 form in the first place and that this form had never changed. 
 This was known as the "special creation" theory; while 
 the idea that the various kinds of plants and animals we 
 now know gradually developed from quite different forms 
 is called the theory of "evolution." Among the curious 
 facts that finally led educated people everywhere to believe 
 this strangest of all the strange fairy tales of the land of 
 science were these: 
 
 AS WE READ THE ROCKS FROM THE BOTTOM UP 
 
 The remains and imprints of plant and animal life of 
 long ago which we find in the rocks show successions of 
 related but different forms in the rocks of different ages. 
 At the beginning in the lowest rocks the forms are much 
 alike, but grow more and more unlike as we climb these 
 stairs of time. At first there are no animals with back- 
 bones; then there come animals with backbones that re- 
 semble each other in general build; and finally such wide 
 varieties of backboned creatures as fish, birds, horses, and 
 men. And so with endless varieties of birds and beasts 
 and creeping things and the trees and the grasses of the 
 field. 
 
 Sometimes the differences between these apparently 
 related forms, as we find them in the rocks, are very great; 
 but everything goes to show that this is because there are 
 missing pages, so to speak, in the great stone book. When
 
 266 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 you remember how long it takes to make one of these layers 
 of stone, and what they go through in cracking and twist- 
 ing and wearing down on their way back to dust and the 
 sea, and how quickly the remains of big animals to say 
 nothing of plants and insects are destroyed, you must 
 agree that the wonder is that we have any records at all. 
 Yet so enormous has been the number of plants and ani- 
 mals that have died in the course of the world's history 
 that there have been found hundreds and thousands of 
 these remains and imprints between the layers of stone. 
 In all cases the fashions in form change from age to age; 
 and the longer the time, as shown by the thickness of the 
 rock, the greater the change. 
 
 THE RABBIT THAT TURNED INTO A HORSE 
 
 The horse, which has been such a faithful carrier for man 
 since man and horse arrived from the lower ranges of life, 
 also brought with him on the way up one of the most com- 
 plete of these strange autobiographies that our brother 
 animals have recorded with their bones. The most of this 
 story of the horse was found in the rocks of our Western 
 States, but the first chapter of it saw the light about forty 
 years ago in England. When the bones were found in 
 the rock deposits of that country known as London Clay 
 they looked so unhorselike that a famous paleontologist 
 (as the students of these ancient anatomies are called) 
 gave it a name which means " rabbit-like beast." But in 
 rock of the same age in Wyoming they afterward found 
 the bones of an animal that looked a little more like a horse, 
 but plainly a close relation of the rabbit-like beast. They 
 went on rinding different forms, through thirteen succes-
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 267 
 
 sive stages of rock history, and with each new period the 
 form kept getting larger and more horselike until they 
 came to a horse with three toes; and finally to one with 
 the single big toe which we call a hoof. Instead of the 
 other two toes there were those two little lumps that you 
 can feel in any horse's foot just above the hoof. These 
 are the ends of two small splintlike bones that are all there 
 is left of the other two toes. 
 
 So there have been found in the rock records more or 
 less complete serial stories of thousands of plants and ani- 
 mals. In the case of man, not only do we find that there 
 were once human beings on earth like the caveman with low 
 forehead and huge jaw, but nothing has ever been found to 
 indicate that there were any higher types of human beings 
 in existence in his day. And both the caveman and the 
 handsomest human beings of to-day the captain of our 
 football team, for example have essentially the same 
 bodily framework as the monkey tribe. This does not 
 mean that man even so low a creature as the caveman 
 descended from monkeys, any more than the fact that he 
 has a backbone means he descended from humming-birds. 
 But the backbones in humming-birds, monkeys, and men 
 show that all are descended from older types of backboned 
 creatures. As monkeys and men are much more alike 
 than men and birds they are evidently more closely related. 
 
 We might suppose, to be sure, that men and all other 
 forms of life which they resemble in any way were so made 
 from the beginning; that is, if we hadn't learned from 
 the records of the rocks that they weren't so made from 
 the beginning. Yet, even after that, we might go on sup- 
 posing that each species was created separately, but that
 
 268 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the form was changed from age to age. But in that case 
 what are you going to say to this: 
 
 In man's body are several organs that are useless and 
 often harmful. Other animals, also, contain among useful 
 organs some that are "out-of-date," as we would say if 
 we were speaking of some old machines in a machine-shop. 
 Why, in making a brand-new species, shouldn't Nature 
 have all the latest improvements from the start, just as 
 man does in building a brand-new home? If each species 
 was separately created it is hard to understand why these 
 useless or harmful organs should be kept; but if one species 
 grew out of another, by gradual improvement, just as cities 
 grow out of villages, this is exactly what we might expect. 
 
 One of these useless organs in man is called the "vermi- 
 form appendix." It is always getting its name in the papers 
 by giving trouble to some prominent man. Now this ap- 
 pendix, while a perfect nuisance to human beings, is just 
 the thing for cows and other grass-eating animals. In 
 them it is very large and of great use in digestion, while 
 in the case of man and the monkey family it has shrunk 
 into a little affair that puts in all its time either doing 
 nothing or getting out of fix. 
 
 III. UPWARD; ALWAYS UPWARD 
 
 These are some of the reasons why the various varieties 
 of animals are supposed to have descended from common 
 ancestors and to have undergone endless changes of form; 
 changes as strange as anything that was ever written into 
 a fairy story or acted out in a Christmas pantomime. There 
 are other things quite as convincing and even more thrilling
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 269 
 
 to read about, such as the little theatre in the chicken's 
 egg where strange, changing shadows re-enact the drama 
 of ancient life; but these I am here passing by because 
 my pages are running out and I want the rest of them to 
 speak of what seems to me to be the greatest lesson of this 
 whole book; the greatest and most useful and happiest 
 lesson Science or any kind of book can teach; namely, 
 that not only is the universe governed by Laws and Mind, 
 but that all these laws act together as one Great Law and 
 are working out one general result, the constant advance 
 of all things toward a higher life. 
 
 HOW MAN HAS RISEN AS HE DESCENDED 
 
 As there was a period in human history when there were 
 no human beings on earth higher than the cave-dweller, 
 so there was a time when the highest forms of animal and 
 vegetable life were minute creatures and plants consisting 
 only of a single cell. It is such low forms of vegetable life 
 that make the scum on the still waters of a pond. Step 
 by step, in both the animal and vegetable world, rose the 
 higher forms. The descent of man from lower forms of 
 life used to be considered by many people as a thought 
 that degraded humanity, but it is the most promising fact 
 in all nature. The striking thing is, not that we are re- 
 lated in some way to the apes and the cavemen but that 
 such a creature as an ape or a caveman should have helped 
 develop such a beautiful thing as a little child. 
 
 This progress has not been steadily upward. The world 
 of life, like the surface of the globe itself, has had its ups 
 and downs. Wonderful nations like Greece and Rome 
 have risen and flourished and passed away, but they left
 
 270 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 the best of themselves, the part that time cannot destroy. 
 The Greeks taught us literature and art and the grace of 
 life. The Romans gave us a science of government and 
 a solid way of doing practical things, such as the building 
 of good roads and bridges. The great lesson of history 
 is that civilization and human liberty and all the things 
 that make life worth living have not only survived the 
 fall of empires but stand to-day on higher and firmer ground 
 than they ever did before. 
 
 THE WORLD THAT MOTHER MADE 
 
 But do you know who was at the bottom of it all? 
 Mother ! All the things that men have done in the develop- 
 ment of national life, with its arts and industries, every- 
 thing we call civilization, grew out of the life and industry 
 of the home, and it was mother who finally made the home. 
 The mother idea came into the world with the first seed 
 that ever started out to make its own way; for the mother 
 plant had provided it with food enough to keep it going 
 until it could get well-established in business. But the 
 kind of mothers we know, mothers who stay with their 
 babies and feed them, came very late in the long story of 
 life. In the early days the world was not only without 
 flowers and birds and the beautiful trees and varied land- 
 scapes we know, but it was motherless, in the sense that 
 we understand mothers. In the lowest forms of life, such 
 as the insects, the mothers and children never saw each 
 other at all; for among the insects just as it is to-day the 
 mother simply laid the eggs and then, before the little 
 insects were born, passed away. Even among the fish, 
 who are much closer relations of ours than the insects
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 271 
 
 since fish belong to the great brotherhood of the backbone 
 the sense of motherhood doesn't get beyond looking after 
 the eggs. So with the next higher group to which the frogs 
 belong; and the next, the reptiles. Only with the birds, 
 the next group above the reptiles, do we begin to see what 
 motherhood means. Then at the very top of the list come 
 the class of animals whose very name has "mamma" in 
 it; the "mammalia." Among these, even outside the 
 human race, we find very striking examples of family love 
 and devotion. The gorillas, for instance, although they 
 haven't what one would call an attractive face, are good 
 to their folks. Not only does Mamma Gorilla nurse her 
 babies and carry them in her arms much as a human mother 
 does, and fight and die for them, but a famous African 
 traveller tells of a Mamma Gorilla who stayed safe with 
 the babies in their humble home of sticks in the fork of a 
 tree while Papa Gorilla sat all night at the foot of it, with 
 his back against the trunk, to protect them from a leopard 
 that had been seen prowling around. 
 
 Among most animals below man the babies are soon 
 able to leave mother and shift for themselves, but in the 
 case of human beings the baby is helpless for a much longer 
 time. So, even among the lowest savages, it was neces- 
 sary for father and mother to keep together and look after 
 their children. Thus grew up family life; and out of the 
 family the tribe; and out of many tribes living together 
 and closely related, grew first small and then larger na- 
 tions. Yet, always at the beginning, it was the mother, 
 more than the father, who looked after the children and 
 taught them, so bringing before the world the idea of doing 
 things, not for one's self alone but for others. From this
 
 272 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 came the mutual giving and helping which made national 
 life possible, and that is making this a better and better 
 world to live in. 
 
 IV. THE GREAT UNSEEN 
 
 So it is very plain not only that the end, the purpose of 
 all this machinery and march of things that we have been 
 going through since the beginning of Chapter I, is to make 
 life better, more beautiful both in form and character, but 
 to show that "all nature is on the side of those who try 
 to rise." l It is plain also that this end must have been 
 foreseen and intended from the beginning; for, from the 
 very start each change in the world and in life was a 
 preparation for another and a greater change. The change 
 from rock to soil made plant life possible; the growth of 
 plants made animal life possible, and so on up through the 
 long succession of changes in this tree of life by which all 
 things are related and which gave us the infinite variety 
 of good things we already have fruit, homes, churches, 
 schools, art galleries, books, railroads and steamships 
 that make the whole world neighbors; the telegraph, the 
 newspapers, and the magazines that carry thought and 
 knowledge and plans for the common good so fast and 
 far that already it is as if a whole nation with its millions 
 had a heart and brain in common. 
 
 Man himself, you see, has become one of the great forces 
 
 of nature in the evolution of nature, in the blossoming 
 
 out and fruit-bearing of things. But now notice this: Back 
 
 of all that man does and all that the rest of nature does 
 
 1 Drummond: "The Ascent of Man."
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 273 
 
 From the painting by Burne-Jones 
 
 THE FIRST DAY OF CREATION
 
 274 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 is the great controlling force called Mind; and this Mind 
 is invisible. If I should say of some great man that he 
 had a powerful mind you would know just what I meant; 
 but if anybody should ask "What did his mind look like?" 
 you would think that was an odd question, wouldn't you? 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS PRINCESS HIDDEN IN THE BUD 
 
 So it is and has been from the beginning. We can see 
 the results of changes of one thing into another but never 
 just how the changing is done. While it is no longer be- 
 lieved that species were given a certain form in the be- 
 ginning and that they have always kept that form, it is 
 still true that each species comes into being from some un- 
 seen cause " all of a sudden, " as it were. Because species 
 thus seem to vary of themselves, and not for any reason 
 that we can see these changes are called "spontaneous 
 variations." Always back of the material nature we can 
 see is a nature that is not material; a part of nature that, 
 like the mind of man, we can neither see nor hear nor feel 
 nor know by any of our five senses. Some Unseen Power 
 forms the baby plant out of the seed; some power changes 
 the leaves hidden away in the bud into the petals of the 
 flower. When the leaves gather to form the bud, like little 
 hands playing "button, button, who's got the button," 
 where do you suppose the flower is ? It isn't. It has not 
 yet begun to be. But soon, as if some magician had waved 
 his wand and said "Presto! Change!" the pink petals 
 begin to form there in the dark of the cup and, first thing 
 we know, out steps Miss Blossom, all in her pink and gold 
 like a princess dressed for a ball ! 
 
 But always hidden in a mystery these changes take
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 275 
 
 place. We can peep into the growing bud as often as we 
 like and we will never catch the fairies making the dress, 
 nor the princess putting it on. We always see the thing 
 after it is done ! 
 
 WONDERFUL ART BUT WHERE IS THE ARTIST? 
 
 Another thing: How do the fairies of Roseland remember 
 every spring just how a rose looked, when the roses of last 
 year have been dead and gone so long ? You see they work 
 without a model, something great artists seldom do; and 
 in some kinds of work, as busts and portraits and land- 
 scapes, never do at all. Even the most powerful micro- 
 scope doesn't show any pattern in the seed for the seed 
 to go by in growing into the finished plant; or in an egg 
 to tell it what kind of a bird it is expected to be. No, not 
 the trace of a pattern. What then, guides the growth of 
 the seed; of an oak, say, so that it finally and always takes 
 the family form? Some Power, evidently, as intelligent 
 as the power that moves the hand of the human artist 
 when he paints that oak into his landscape. How many 
 of us have stopped to think that not only in the world of 
 mind but in the material world itself, all forms of power 
 are as invisible as the fairies that work unseen in the rose- 
 bud and the little birds' egg and the big rock ? All power 
 what we call steam power, wind power, electric power 
 and the rest are not only unseen but unseeable, unfeel- 
 able, untastable. We know steam power only when heat 
 gets into the water and makes steam; electric power only 
 when it gets into a wire or a dynamo; or, passing by un- 
 seen ways through the air, moves the wireless telegraph 
 receiver; gravity power only when it moves something
 
 276 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 as the water of a waterfall; or when it is helping to hold 
 things the earth and the other worlds in their appointed 
 paths. 
 
 HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY 
 
 You can easily see why evolution is the most talked about of 
 all phases of science of the study of this wonderful world we live 
 in. One reason is it's such an astonishing thing in itself, this 
 relationship of all forms of life, trees, kittens, birds, and every- 
 thing; another reason is that in reading the books on evolution 
 you're taken into every field of knowledge and into the most curi- 
 ous and striking aspect of things in those fields. Could anything 
 be stranger, for example, than a little theatre in a chicken's egg, 
 over which pass strange shadowy forms that seem to retell, in a 
 kind of moving picture show, the story of how one form of life 
 developed out of another? 
 
 Drummond's "Ascent of Man" tells about that and covers the 
 whole subject of evolution. It is one of the books which no one 
 who has heard of this wonderful story of life should fail to read. 
 Doctor Drummond's way of telling the story is very attractive. 
 Readers from the Eighth Grade up to the Eightieth will delight 
 in it, and they won't stop until they read it from cover to cover. 
 I'll guarantee that ! 
 
 Then take such a book as "The World of Life," by Wallace. 
 "Alice in Wonderland" is nothing to it. Here are some of the 
 things you will find in it: 
 
 How there got to be different kinds cf rabbits and what islands 
 have to do with it. 
 
 (Islands are almost as prominent in the story of evolution as they 
 are in the story of adventure. There are Robinson Crusoes until 
 you can't rest !) 
 
 How the pig in the struggle of life won out as usual. 
 
 Why the peacock has such a fine tail and how he overdid it. 
 
 How the elephant saved his life by lengthening his nose. 
 
 How the birds traded their teeth for feathers. 
 
 How shelled creatures coiled and uncoiled their shells. 
 
 Why we miss the "missing links." (As you go into this 
 subject of evolution you will hear a good deal about missing 
 links.)
 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 277 
 
 How they know butterfly wings are made first and the coloring 
 and patterns laid on afterward. 
 
 How much of a butterfly's beauty is probably known to the but- 
 terflies themselves. 
 
 How Nature seems to make things just to be pretty. 
 
 And these are just a few of the things in one of Doctor Wallace's 
 books. 1 
 
 Then he was such a fine man personally. Why, what do you 
 think he did ? Although he thought out the principle of evolution 
 independently of Darwin, and wrote an essay on it before Darwin- 
 had ever given his views to the world, yet after Darwin's "Origin 
 of Species" 2 came out Wallace gave Darwin all the credit, and in 
 his own autobiography always referred to the theory of evolution 
 as the "Darwinian Theory." Yet Wallace had a very good reason 
 for taking this generous attitude, as you will see from his auto- 
 biography and other writings, and you are quite likely to find the 
 reason in articles on Darwin or Wallace or "Evolution. 
 
 The relations of Darwin and Wallace furnish one of the finest 
 examples in history of the best thing in the world --human friend- 
 ship. 
 
 Of course, like so many other great men, Wallace was one of 
 those boys whose minds never grow old. -Read in his autobiogra- 
 
 1 In addition to all this curious and absolutely reliable information 
 that ought to be interesting to every one is the fact that Wallace shows 
 in "The World of Life" how there must have been Mind and Purpose 
 back of it all. Doctor Wallace was a great traveller as well as a great 
 student of nature one of the most famous in the history of science. 
 His works include: "Travels on the Amazon and the Rio Negro," 
 "The Malay Archipelago," " Natural Selection," "Darwinism," "Island 
 Life and the Geographic Distribution of Animals." 
 
 There are so many books on this biggest of all nature topics Evolu- 
 tion that they make quite a library in themselves. The most famous 
 of these books is Darwin's "Origin of Species," and it is not at all hard 
 to understand. Other books bearing directly or indirectly on evolu- 
 tion are "Animals of the Past," by Lucas, "Creatures of Other Days," 
 by Hutchinson, Fiske's "Destiny of Man," and "Evolution and 
 Religion." A book for older readers one of the latest and most com- 
 prehensive treatments of the subject is Osborn's "Origin and Evolu- 
 tion of Life." 
 
 2 Of "The Origin of Species" it has been said that no work ever 
 produced so profound a change in the opinions of mankind.
 
 278 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 phy how on the day he first discovered a new species of butterfly 
 it gave him a violent headache, and he had to go to bed to get rid 
 of it and quiet his nerves he was that worked up ! 
 
 Darwin was much the same sort of a man. Everything in the 
 world was interesting to him. He wrote a whole book about 
 "Fish Worms," for example. And although probably the most 
 famous man in the history of natural science he was as humble 
 as could be, always looking for the truth and ready to accept criti- 
 cisms no matter how much they might upset his own previous 
 conclusions, provided these opposing views were supported by 
 evidence. Of course you will want to know more about his life, 
 and you will find more in the "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," 
 dited by his son. 
 
 How do you suppose this boy began being a great man by col- 
 lecting beetles ! Beetles and outdoor sport were his chief delight.
 
 USE OF THE INDEX 
 
 SOME THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH THIS 
 INDEX 
 
 I shouldn't be surprised if you thought that an index 
 was the dullest part of a book. 
 
 But it all depends ! As a matter of fact, with your 
 help, I am sure I can make this index of ours one of the 
 most interesting things in the whole story; for, like the 
 H. & S., it gives you a chance to "come into the game." 
 The mind enjoys books and grows upon them much as the 
 body grows on food, but, as in the case of both food and 
 books and books are food the good you get depends not 
 only on the food but how you season it and eat it. You 
 can't expect everything of the cook ! 
 
 Everybody knows, of course, how to use an index to 
 look things up once in a while and it saves time if the in- 
 dex not only tells the page on which a given subject is 
 referred to, but conveys some idea of what that reference 
 is about, as this index tries to do. If, for example, you 
 are studying the Alpine regions in school you may already 
 have covered the question of how flowing water carves 
 mountain valleys, but you may not have had anything 
 about why the Alps don't run north and south, as so many 
 of earth's great ranges do; and so what could be a more 
 interesting thing for you to take into those delightful class 
 discussions ? 
 
 Your teacher knows, although you may not have real- 
 279
 
 280 STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PEBBLE 
 
 ized it, that these class talks and debates by the pupils 
 themselves are the big thing in modern teaching. The best 
 education, we know nowadays, isn't the mere cramming 
 down of facts, as people used to think. It's training in 
 thinking, and in standing on one's own feet! 
 
 But memory training is important too; and an index is 
 the best thing in the world for that. Take some subject 
 you're studying in school mountains, for example they're 
 always studying such big things as mountains, the work of 
 rivers, and so on; or if they aren't to-day they will be to- 
 morrow. Look at the references as questions to yourself 
 and see how well you can answer them: "How do moun- 
 tains help make water-gates for the rivers?" and "Why do 
 they have earthquakes in regions where mountains haven't 
 got done with their growing?" 
 
 Then you can have a lot of fun with these questions at 
 home and with boy friends, after you have read the book 
 together. For instance: Just how did the pebbles help 
 dig the Grand Canyon? And that's a poser for many 
 grown people too people who've travelled and met the 
 Grand Canyon face to face ! Try it on Father. Yes, and 
 Teacher too. There are none of her boys that a teacher is 
 so proud of as the boys that have initiative go-aheadi- 
 tiveness and can ask good questions as well as answer 
 them. 
 
 But, best of all, you can find no end of things to write 
 about for your language work in school and for the little 
 books of your own that I've already suggested in the 
 H. & S. Take the subject of pebbles, 'for example. Al- 
 though this whole book has to do with the life and adven- 
 tures of pebbles, I haven't put the facts together in just
 
 USE OF THE INDEX 281 
 
 the way you will if you follow out the references under 
 the heading "Pebbles" in this index. If you don't happen 
 to remember how pebbles act as bankers for the farmers, 
 how they helped make the Great Lakes, built the Grand 
 Canyon, and so on, look these things up and then, as they 
 thus become digested in your mind, write about them in 
 your own way the way you'd talk if you were telling some- 
 body about it. Do that and you'll have something ! one 
 of those things that mothers show to the neighbors, and 
 that teachers show to visitors. 
 
 Of course you'll have to have a name for your story and 
 you'll think of plenty: "What One of My Pebbles Told 
 Me," "The Pebbles in the World's Work," "What a Won- 
 derful Thing a Pebble Is!" "Why Common Pebbles are 
 Worth More than Diamonds"; for of course a diamond is 
 a kind of pebble. 
 
 GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH YOURSELF 
 
 In all this you will not only find you'll have a good time, 
 but, let me tell you, you'll be getting the best part of your 
 education; you'll be getting acquainted with yourself, 
 your undeveloped powers of memory reasoning expres- 
 sion. You'll find before you get .so very old that one of 
 the most important elements of success, of doing your part 
 in the world's great work of making itself better all the 
 time, is in having something worth while to say and being 
 able to say it. 
 
 This was the making of the Greeks; and the Greeks, you 
 know, were the most wonderful people that ever were. It 
 all started with old "Know Thyself" Thales of Miletus. 
 
 That's what did it !
 
 INDEX 
 
 Africa, children's handwork, illus- 
 trating home life of the natives, 
 including the elephants and the 
 lions, 1 68 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, and his stone hut, 
 43; adventure in the crevasse, 
 51; on the height of ancient 
 glaciers, 123 
 
 Air, origin of, 16; how corals get 
 their breath, 225 
 
 Alaska, the flowers and the snow 
 line, 44 
 
 Albany, Atlantic tides at, 221 
 
 Alleghany Mountains, birth of, 10 
 
 Alps, mountain pastures, 41 ; how 
 rain drops helped carve the 
 Alps, 67; why the Alps don't 
 run north and south, 136; gla- 
 cial "autographs" on their 
 walls, 255 
 
 Amazon River, its stately flow, 74 
 
 Ants, how they help teach men 
 how volcanoes are built, 123 
 
 Apollo, how he lighted the world, 2 
 
 Appalachian Mountains, birth of, 
 10 
 
 Arabian desert, physiognomy and 
 complexion, 165 
 
 Arabian Sea, why its waves salute 
 the Himalayas, 140 
 
 Arabs, life in the desert, 183; and 
 the Simoom, 184 
 
 Atlas Mountains, morning beauty 
 of, 163 
 
 Atoms, defined, relation to mole- 
 cules, no 
 
 Aurora, the dawn goddess and her 
 chariot, 2 
 
 Avalanches, impulsiveness of; 
 snap-shot at one in motion, 63 
 
 Bad Lands, why so called, 114 
 Bar Harbor, Nature's remarkable 
 
 masonry in Castle Rock, 228. 
 Bald Mountains, how they got 
 their crowns shaved off, 26, 28, 
 123 
 
 Beavers, as lake makers, 192 
 Bedding planes, defined, 217 
 Bees, and Alpine flowers, 45; why 
 they hide from the cloud shad- 
 ows, 56; shape of honey cells 
 and basaltic columns, 243 
 Beetles, varieties in desert places, 
 
 1 80; use of poison gas, 182 
 Big Round Top Mountain, how 
 
 it lost its peak, 248 
 Birds, life in the desert, 178 
 Bombs (volcanic), what they are 
 
 and how they are made, 129 
 Boulders, Agassiz' monument, 54; 
 travels of Plymouth Rock, 64; 
 boulders on a New England 
 hill, 145; why the Indians wor- 
 shipped a boulder, 146; the 
 strange stranger on Mount Abu, 
 147; as mountain climbers, 147, 
 152; why there are no big caves 
 in boulder regions, 148; how 
 boulders help tell the secret of 
 the Ice Age, 149; how torrents 
 help shape, 151; how glaciers 
 carry, 151; how boulders ride 
 on the water, 153; how Jack 
 Frost builds boulder walls, 154; 
 how the sun helps shape boul- 
 
 282
 
 ders, 155; Geikie on the story 
 told by a conglomerate boulder, 
 1,55; Ruskin on boulders in art, 
 157; why boulders sometimes 
 jump up from the ground, 158; 
 how rain drops split boulders, 
 171; how boulders shiver their 
 skins off, 170; boulders in the 
 rock mills of the sea, 216; how 
 perched boulders are perched, 
 149; the perched boulder in 
 Bronx Park, in New York City, 
 and its autograph, 250 
 
 Bridal Veil Falls, how it got its 
 name and why it hurries to 
 "catch the tsain," 74 
 
 Butterflies, how they help in Al- 
 pine flower gardening, 46; why 
 they hide from the cloud shad- 
 ows, 56 
 
 Cactus, the desert water bottle, 
 174 
 
 Cactus wren, how she bars her 
 front door against her bad neigh- 
 bors, 177 
 
 Caesar, Julius, his literary style 
 compared to that of Mr. Gla- 
 cier, 254; how he and Mr. 
 Glacier went into winter quar- 
 ters, 256 
 
 Canada, her sea terraces for the 
 gannets, 223 
 
 Canada thistles, and the Siberian 
 "wind witches," 178 
 
 Canyons, deepened by glaciers, 
 26, 37; how pebbles helped make 
 the Grand Canyon, 82; how 
 long a mile is straight down ! 
 87; how the Grand Canyon 
 swallows you up, 88; how rivers 
 wrote the history of the Grand 
 Canyon and how they cut the 
 leaves, 88 
 
 INDEX 283 
 
 Caravan, the marching camels and 
 their shadows, 185 
 
 Carbonic acid gas, and air mak- 
 ing, 16; how it helped make coal 
 with one hand and the Ice Age 
 with the other, 20; how it helps 
 the volcanoes feed the world 
 128 
 
 Carpathian Mountains, why they 
 do not border the sea, 138; 
 their ups and downs under the 
 sea, 230 
 
 Castle Head, a remarkable ex- 
 ample of Nature's masonry, 228 
 
 Catskill Mountains, how they 
 were made, 116 
 
 Cavemen, a caveman's art note 
 on mammoths, 22; why they 
 were the handsomest men of 
 their day, 267; the joyous lesson 
 they helped teach, 269 
 
 Caves, relation to natural bridges, 
 85; why large ones are never 
 found in boulder regions, 148; 
 their sightless inhabitants, 186 
 
 Centipede, his numerous feet and 
 objectionable character; how 
 the trap door spider slams the 
 door in his face, 182 
 
 Centrifugal force, and the birth 
 of worlds, 4; and the direction 
 of mountain ranges, 137 
 
 Ceratosaurus, his dreadfulness 
 and his name, 23; and Nature's 
 dream of the coming of man, 23; 
 one of our queer cousins, 264 
 
 Civilization, its constant advance, 
 but with ups and downs, 269; 
 the civilization that Mother 
 made, 270 
 
 Coal, did it help bring on the Ice 
 Age ? 20; bad effect of coal mak- 
 ing on plant and animal life 
 volcanoes to the rescue! 226;
 
 28 4 
 
 INDEX 
 
 coal seams and the records of 
 ancient life, 245 
 
 Colorado River, how it dug the 
 Grand Canyon, 88 
 
 Conglomerate rock, why it is 
 called "pudding stone," 96; 
 conglomerate boulders as his- 
 torians, 155; how made in the 
 sea mills, 227 
 
 Continents, how they rose out of 
 the sea, 8; how the fact that 
 they are still rising helps the 
 rivers get back to sea, 75; the 
 continents and Nature's acci- 
 dent insurance, 262 
 
 Copernicus, and the discovery 
 that there are worlds of worlds, 
 4 
 
 Coral islands and reefs, how the 
 sea helps the corals build them, 
 225 
 
 Coyotes, as ventriloquists, 179; 
 their night songs, 179; how they 
 get a living, 180 
 
 Crater Lake, the blue lake in the 
 volcano's mouth, 194, 195 
 
 Crevasse, origin of the word, 51; 
 what a crevasse looks like, 51, 
 53; Agassiz' adventure in, 51; 
 voices of, 54; their water-mills, 
 55; picture of a crevasse swal- 
 lowing an avalanche, 63 
 
 Crystallization and the fairy land 
 of change, 93; how the pebble 
 caught cold and what came of it, 
 94; crystals in sugar and gran- 
 ite, 94; the great melting pot 
 and the remaking of the rocks, 
 96; how old rocks hatch new 
 ones by sitting on one another, 
 96; how mountain making helps, 
 97; how Mother Nature uses 
 salt and soda in cooking rocks 
 over and how she keeps these 
 
 materials handy, 99; an illus- 
 tration of how men of science 
 study things out for the fun of 
 it, 104; the crystal fairies and 
 their curious ways, 106; how 
 crystals help tell about dikes, 
 243 
 
 Dead Sea, its deadness and how it 
 died, 207; and the story of Sod- 
 om and Gomorrah, 209; what 
 "Lot's Wife" looks like to-day, 
 210; ancient history on the 
 Dead Sea's walls, 249 
 
 Deltas, why delta river mouths 
 always multiply by two, 167 
 
 Descent of Man, how man has 
 risen as he descended, 269 
 
 Desert, origin of Lybian (myth), 
 2; enigmas of, 161; the desert 
 and the Sphinx, 162; physiog- 
 raphy and coloring, 163; " Baths 
 of the Damned," 165; river 
 "skeletons," 166; indications of 
 former heavier rainfall, 166; 
 Roman aqueducts, 166; "sand 
 roses," 1 68; how the desert 
 makes its sands, 168; its trade- 
 mark on its sand grains, 172; 
 why deserts are so cold at night, 
 170; how a simoom looks from 
 the outside, 173; how it begins 
 business, 184; the plant people 
 of the desert, 174-175; how the 
 Rose of Jericho goes to sea, 176; 
 the cactus wren and how she 
 bars her front door against her 
 bad neighbors, 177; the "wind 
 witches" of the steppes, 178; 
 animal life in the desert, 178; 
 the coyote as a ventriloquist, 
 his night song, 179; bird life, 
 1 80; why the desert humming- 
 birds have rusty coats, 1 80;
 
 INDEX 285 
 
 how the trap-door spider slams 
 the door in the centipede's face, 
 182; a beetle that uses poison 
 gas, 182; wonderful flight of the 
 vulture, 183; a day with the 
 Arabs in the Sahara desert, 183; 
 the cat, the dog, the Arab, and 
 the struggle for life, 187, 188 
 
 Diamonds, form of their crystals, 
 107 
 
 Dikes, what one in New York City 
 tells about marble making, 97; 
 the iron walls near Spanish 
 Peak, 235, 241 ; dikes in the 
 rocks at Marblehead, 242; how 
 dikes get their driving power, 
 244 
 
 Dinosaurs, their dreadfulness, their 
 habits and their family name, 
 23 
 
 Diplodocus, his name, his gentle 
 nature, his defensive tail and 
 how it helped him at his meals, 
 24 
 
 Domes (Mt.), 123 
 
 Drift theory, 120 
 
 Drowned valleys, 212 
 
 Drumlin, why an Irish boy would 
 know what "drumlin" means, 
 122 
 
 Dunes, 163 
 
 Earth, story of the spoiled boy 
 who set it afire, 2; how much 
 truth science finds in the Phae- 
 ton myth, 3; theories as to the 
 earth's origin and how they 
 compare with the Bible story, 
 17; watching worlds in the mak- 
 ing, 5, 6; the sun and his pebble 
 worlds, 6; how you can watch 
 the world turn round, 7; how 
 the continents came up out of 
 the sea, 8, 14; lands the seas 
 
 have swallowed, I r ; reasons for 
 thinking the continents won't 
 go under again, 12; how earth's 
 slowing up helped make moun- 
 tains, 137 
 
 Earthquakes, how growing moun- 
 tains make them, 86; earth- 
 quakes that travel incog., 158; 
 how earthquakes are recorded 
 in the veins of marble, 239; 
 earthquakes and the earth's 
 __ "faults," 243 
 
 Echoes, Arab superstitions about, 
 187 
 
 Electrons, how they act as messen- 
 ger boys of the universe, 110 
 
 Emerson, on the industries of Eng- 
 land, 214 
 
 England, her heavy losses of land 
 to the sea, 214; how her drowned 
 rivers helped make her great, 
 224 
 
 Eskers, defined, 122 
 
 Esparto grass, 176 
 
 Europe, how most of her rivers get 
 their start, 73; her ragged out- 
 line and the "transgressions" of 
 the sea, 219; Europe's geological 
 biography and her mountain 
 chains, 230 
 
 Evolution, was Nature dreaming 
 of man's legs and arms when she 
 designed the dinosaurs? 23; 
 "some call it Evolution and 
 others call it God," 260; answer 
 of Science to the question 
 "whither," 261; why nothing 
 "happens," in the great course 
 of things The Accident Insur- 
 ance System of the Universe, 
 262 ; kinship of kittens and apple 
 trees, 264; universal acceptance 
 of the evolution theory-, 264; the 
 old "special creation" theory,
 
 286 
 
 INDEX 
 
 265; and the mysterious special 
 creation theory that Science has 
 substituted, 274; facts that sup- 
 port the evolution theory; the 
 story of changing forms recorded 
 in the rocks, 265; the "rabbit" 
 that turned into a horse, 266; as 
 to men being descended from 
 monkeys, 267; how evolution 
 proves the world is getting 
 better, 268; how man has risen 
 as he descended, 269; the world 
 that Mother made, 270 
 
 Family, the, and civilization, 271 
 "Faults," geological, defined, 243 
 Finland, its butterflies, and the 
 
 left-over butterflies of the Ice 
 
 Ages, 48 
 Fiords, how they were made by 
 
 the Old Men of the Mountain, 
 
 254 
 Florida, her sympathetic sister 
 
 lakes, 200 
 Folds, how the story of the crum- 
 
 pling of mountains is told in the 
 
 veins of marble, 237 
 Fossils, how they help tell the 
 
 story of marble, 100 
 Frost, how it helped build the 
 
 stone "Temple of the Winds," 
 
 33; how it builds boulder walls, 
 
 154 
 
 Fujiyama, Mt., why it resembles 
 Mount Rainier, 124 
 
 Galileo, and the discovery that 
 there are worlds of worlds, 4 
 
 Geikie, on the conglomerate boul- 
 der as an historian, 230 
 
 Geodes, Nature's pebble jewel 
 boxes and how they are made, 
 
 101 
 
 Geography, when all our geog- 
 raphy was at the bottom of the 
 sea, 8; how they study geography 
 in Boston on rainy days, 68 
 
 Geysers, and the geyser basins, 165 
 
 Giant's Causeway, its architec- 
 ture, 243 
 
 Gila monster, 181 
 
 Glacial Period. (See Ice Ages.) 
 
 Glacial tables, how stones go walk- 
 ing in glacier land, 62 
 
 Glacier Mills, 55 
 
 Glaciers, how snow changes itself 
 to ice, 26; glaciers in their 
 "working clothes," 29; how to 
 make glaciers and icebergs in 
 the schoolroom, 32 ; how glaciers 
 helped make the gray stone 
 "Temple of the Winds," 33; how 
 the glaciers of the Ice Ages made 
 the Great Lakes, 34; songs of 
 the glacier and how it sings, 42, 
 56; a day's visit with the Alpine 
 glaciers, 49; the crevasses and 
 the adventure of Agassiz, 51; 
 how long it took Agassiz to de- 
 termine the nature of glacial 
 movements, 52; why the peas- 
 ants think the glacier has a soul, 
 54; Mr. Glacier's caterpillar 
 tractor, 62; how the glaciers 
 start Europe's rivers in business, 
 73; how pebbles tell on what 
 part of a glacier they travelled, 
 
 251 
 
 Golden Gate, entrance to San 
 Francisco harbor, how it was 
 made, 224 
 
 Gorges, 26, 82 
 
 Grand Canyon, 88 
 
 Granite, ancient lineage and social 
 standing among earth's rocks, 
 17; the Granites and the Fairy- 
 land of Change, 94; how they
 
 INDEX 287 
 
 crystallize their neighbors, 103; 
 how they help make sand, 170 
 
 Gravitation, how it pulls the 
 worlds into roundness, 5; and 
 helps them to grow up, 8; how 
 it helps sea waves to salute the 
 mountains, 139; equally careful 
 in handling big worlds and little 
 seeds, 261 ; like all power it is 
 invisible and intangible, 276 
 
 Great Basin, records of the two 
 great lakes it used to hold, 249 
 
 Great Lakes, how they were made 
 in the Ice Ages, 34; an Ice Age 
 lake that was greatest of all, 193; 
 tides in the Great Lakes and 
 tides in a teacup, 201 ; how the 
 glaciers of the Ice Age tipped 
 the Great Lakes up, 253 
 
 Great Salt Lake, ancient weather 
 records on its walls, 249 
 
 Greek civilization, one of the 
 things that do not die, 270 
 
 Harbor engineering of the rivers 
 
 and the sea, 221, 222 
 Hieroglyphics, picture language of 
 
 the Egyptians and how 'it was 
 
 read, 258 
 Himalaya Mountains, glacial table 
 
 on, a lesson in picture-reading, 
 
 59; why some of the Himalayas 
 
 are called "hills," 117 
 Horse, evolution of, 266 
 Hot Springs (cause of), 165 
 Hudson River, action of the tides, 
 
 221; the Palisades, 241 
 Hydrogen, and the making of 
 
 earth's air, 16 
 
 Ice Ages, theories as to their origin, 
 20; the three union stations of 
 the ice trains, 27; how the gla- 
 ciers put the Missouri River to- 
 
 gether, 29; how they pushed the 
 Mississippi about, 30; how they 
 turned rivers around and made 
 waterfalls for New England, 31; 
 how they chiselled out stone 
 bowls for the Great Lakes, 34; 
 how they made other lakes, 194; 
 the thousand-year clock at Ni- 
 agara Falls and what it tells 
 about the Ice Age, 35; how the 
 glaciers set Niagara Falls up in 
 business, 36; Muir's eloquent 
 tribute to the marvellous "busy 
 work" of the snowflakes, 37; 
 how the Ice Age glaciers went 
 off and left the butterflies and 
 the flowers in the Alps, 47 ; how 
 the butterflies missed the train, 
 48; how Agassiz discovered the 
 Ice Age, 52; how the glaciers 
 moved the hills about, 117; 
 travels of the boulders and how 
 the glaciers rounded them, 146, 
 1 55 ; why there are no big caves 
 in glaciated regions, 148; rela- 
 tion of the Ice Ages to the Dead 
 Sea and the Sea of Galilee, 206; 
 Burroughs's theory as to future 
 Ice Ages, 219; what raindrop 
 autographs tell of the Ice Age, 
 246; a perched boulder and its 
 autograph in a New York City 
 park, 250; records of the Ice Age 
 glaciers compared with Caesar's 
 Commentaries curious simi- 
 larities, 252 
 
 Icebergs, how to make them in the 
 schoolroom, 32; how the ice- 
 bergs of the Ice Age gave the 
 boulders a ride, 153 
 
 Ice wells, huge ice water tanks 
 that the Ice Age glaciers left, 49 
 
 Indian Ocean, why its waves rise 
 to salute the Himalayas, 140
 
 288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Islands, oceanic, the tops of vol- 
 canoes, 133; islands on the 
 Maine coast and how they were 
 made, 212; how the sea helps 
 the corals build their islands, 
 225 
 
 "Joints," places where rocks don't 
 join, how made, 33; how they 
 help make "perched rocks," 60; 
 joints in the "Marble Rocks" 
 at Jabalpur, 105; joints and the 
 work of the sea's rock mills, 216; 
 use of joints in Nature's stone 
 architecture, 228 
 
 Jordan River, why it was born 
 partly grown, 73; why the mak- 
 ing of the Jordan Valley was the 
 death of the Dead Sea, 206 
 
 Jungfrau, summer pastures on, 41 ; 
 its beauty, 44 
 
 Jupiter, how as rain god he put 
 out the world, 3; place of the 
 planet in the Solar system, 6 
 
 Keewatin, one of the central sta- 
 tions of the Ice Age, 28 
 
 Kentucky, the sink holes in the 
 cave regions, 200 
 
 Kepler and the discovery that 
 there are worlds of worlds, 4 
 
 Kettle lakes, how the glaciers of 
 the Ice Age made them, 196 
 
 Labrador, one of the central sta- 
 tions of the Ice Age, 28; how 
 the butterflies of Labrador tell 
 that their ancestors missed the 
 train, 49 
 
 Lakes, the Ice Age lake and the 
 "Temple of the Winds," 33; how 
 the Ice Age glaciers made the 
 Great Lakes, 34; how they 
 
 helped Lake Erie in making 
 Niagara Falls, 36; the sleep of 
 lakes and how it brightens them 
 up, 80; how Mirror Lake shows 
 Mount Rainier how beautiful he 
 is, 130; how, with Jack Frost's 
 help, lakes build boulder walls, 
 134; the empty lake beds of the 
 desert, 162; "trade-marks" on 
 lake-shore sand, 173; how lakes 
 are born, 192; moods of lakes, 
 198; why the ducks overlook 
 some lakes, 198; where moun- 
 tain lakes get their coloring, 199; 
 sympathetic action of sister 
 lakes, 200; how some lakes act 
 as barometers, 201; tides in 
 lakes, 201 ; why lake storms are 
 particularly dangerous, 202 ; 
 peculiarity of storms on the Sea 
 of Galilee, 202 ; and of storms on 
 mountain lakes, 203; how lakes 
 grow old and pass away, 204; 
 why lilies come to dying lakes, 
 204; the procession of the trees 
 to the margins of dying lakes, 
 204; why they have a regular 
 marching order, 204; the Dead 
 Sea and how it died, 205; what 
 science says of the legend of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, 209; 
 "Lot's Wife" as she looks to- 
 day, 210; records of ancient 
 weather on the walls of Great 
 Salt Lake, 249; how the Great 
 Lakes were tipped up and how 
 they tell about it, 253 
 
 Lake Agassiz, a great lake of yes- 
 terday which could swallow all 
 the Great Lakes of to-day, 193 
 
 Lake Baikal, its great depth, 193 
 
 Lake Erie, how the glaciers helped 
 it make Niagara Falls, 36 
 
 Lake Superior (size), 193
 
 INDEX 
 
 289 
 
 Laplace, his great theory of the 
 origin of worlds, 4 
 
 Lapland, strange stories its butter- 
 flies tell, 48 
 
 Laurentian Highlands, how they 
 rose out of the sea, 9 
 
 Lava, how it makes dikes and what 
 a New York City dike has to say 
 about the origin of marble, 97, 
 241; how lava plays "grand- 
 father" in the Porphyry family, 
 102; lava and the flame effects 
 on volcanic clouds, 126; lava 
 plains, 126; how lava helps 
 raise the fine fruit and wheat of 
 Washington and Oregon, 128; 
 how it increases the violence of 
 delayed volcanic explosions, 
 130; the lava and the "fire from 
 heaven" in the story of Lot, 
 209; the iron wall near Spanish 
 Peaks, 235; remarkable archi- 
 tecture of the Giant's Cause- 
 way, 243; theory as to what 
 makes the lava climb, 244 
 
 Libyan desert, Greek myth as to 
 its origin, 2 
 
 Limestone, how it turns to marble, 
 97, 104; how the shelled crea- 
 tures of the sea help make it, 
 101; the "Marble Rocks" at 
 Jabalpur, 105; the place of lime- 
 stone in the rock-making system 
 of the sea, 227; limestone and 
 the story marble tells of moun- 
 tain making, 237, 239 
 
 Little Round Top (Mt.), the bat- 
 tles that rounded it, 248 
 
 Lizards, " varieties in the Arizona 
 desert, 181 
 
 London, how it owes its greatness 
 to the transgressions of the sea, 
 224 
 
 Los Angeles River, how one of its 
 
 tributaries plays hide-and-seek, 
 
 80 
 Lowell, Mass., how the Old Men 
 
 of the Mountain helped build it, 
 
 34 
 
 McCloud River, why it is born 
 half grown, 73 
 
 Maine, advance of the sea upon 
 its coasts, 219 
 
 Mammoth, art note on, from the 
 "Cavemen's Diary," 22; an- 
 cient members of the elephant 
 family that wore underclothes, 
 24 
 
 Manchester, Mass., how the Old 
 Men of the Mountain built its 
 falls, 34 
 
 Marble, how a New York City 
 dike helps tell how marble is 
 made, 97; what the fossils have 
 to say, 100; how it is quarried, 
 103; the mysteries in marble 
 walls, 235; when marble flows, 
 238; the cloud effects in marble, 
 239; how marble tells of earth- 
 quakes and other exciting things, 
 
 239 
 
 Mars (planet), 6 
 Meanders, engineering work of 
 
 wandering rivers, 81; meanders 
 
 and the making of natural 
 
 bridges, 83 
 Mediterranean Sea, its connection 
 
 with the making of the Alps, 136 
 Mercury (planet), 6 
 Metamorphism (defined), 98 
 Miller, Hugh, how he found a fish 
 
 inside of a stone and so found 
 
 Hugh Miller, 159 
 Mississippi River, how the Old 
 
 Men of the Mountain pushed it 
 
 about, 30; how you can jump
 
 290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 across it, 69; the mountains of 
 soil it carries into the sea, 84 
 
 Mississippi River System (map), 67 
 
 Mississippi Valley, when it was at 
 the bottom of a mediterranean 
 sea, 10; why the sea went away, 
 138 
 
 Missouri River, how it was pieced 
 together and pushed about in 
 the Ice Age, 29 
 
 Mohawk River, why it grew taller 
 as it grew older, 72 
 
 Molecules, their relations to atoms 
 and electrons, 109 
 
 Moraines, how the glaciers take 
 them on their backs, 56 
 
 Moulins, the "mills" of the gla- 
 ciers and how they are made, 
 
 55 
 
 Mountains, earliest arrivals in the 
 mountain world, 9; origin of 
 bald mountains, 26; Muir on 
 the marvellous mountain sculp- 
 ture of the snowflakes, 37; how 
 mountain peaks are kept sharp, 
 43; rain-drops as mountain 
 sculptors, 67; mountains and 
 the origin of river valleys, 69; 
 and the birth of partly grown 
 rivers, 72; mountain streams 
 and their waterfalls, 77; storm 
 chorus of the mountain torrents, 
 78; how mountain lakes and 
 baby rivers go to sleep together 
 and the liveliness of the rivers 
 afterward, 80; how mountains 
 help make the water gates, 86; 
 why growing mountains make 
 earthquakes, 86; why almost all 
 granite is found in mountain 
 regions, 97; the different kinds 
 of mountains, 115; why moun- 
 tains border the sea, 134; why 
 they run north and south, 137; 
 
 why sea waves rise to greet the 
 mountains, 139; Ruskin on 
 mountain drawing, 140; resem- 
 blance of mountains to sea 
 waves, 140; how mountains 
 helped solve the mystery of the 
 stones of the field, 151; sunrise 
 in the Atlas Mountains, 163; 
 why desert mountains look so 
 gaunt and hungry, 164; why the 
 desert winds are constantly 
 blowing them away, 171 ; moun- 
 tain shapes and the law of the 
 picturesque in Nature's art 
 work, 229; how the mountain 
 chains are the making of 
 Europe, 230; their ups and 
 downs, 230; why the markings 
 in marble tell the story of moun- 
 tain building, 237; and of moun- 
 tain shaking, 239; ancient 
 weather records on mountain 
 walls, 248 
 
 Mountain lakes, the blue lake in 
 the volcano's mouth, 195; why 
 mountain lake storms are par- 
 ticularly dangerous, 202; and 
 why they are apt to come at 
 night, 202 
 
 Mountain meadows, how rapidly 
 their flowers follow the snow, 44 
 
 Mount Fujiyama, its striking re- 
 semblance to a mountain 3,000 
 miles away, 124 
 
 Mount Hermon, its spring that 
 gives birth to the Jordan, 73 
 
 Mount McKinley, remarkable 
 snapshot of one of its ava- 
 lanches, 63 
 
 Mount Pelee, its discharge of huge 
 rocks and whirling bombs, 129; 
 the mysterious shaft that rose 
 and fell, 132 
 
 Mount Ritter, its resemblance to
 
 INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 the sacred mountain of Japan, 
 124 
 
 Mount Shasta, how it gives birth 
 to a river that has no babyhood, 
 73; how the mountain itself was 
 born at the crossroads and why 
 this is apt to happen in the case 
 of volcanic mountains, 127 
 
 Mount Vesuvius, why, like other 
 active volcanoes, it seems to 
 smoke but doesn't, 126, 127 
 
 Mount Washington, its interesting 
 colony of descendants of butter- 
 fly pilgrims of the Ice Age who 
 missed the train, 48 
 
 Muir, John, on the wonderful team 
 work of the snowflakes, in the 
 Ice Age, 37; on the liveliness of 
 mountain streams after a little 
 nap in mountain lakes, 80; on 
 the winter sleep of the mountain 
 lakes and their glad awakening 
 in the spring, 198 
 
 Natural bridges, various ways in 
 which they are made by the very 
 streams they bridge, 83, 85 
 
 Nebular Hypothesis, one of the 
 theories as to how the world was 
 made, 4; how it differs from the 
 latest theory, 6; the Bible story 
 compared with both theories, 17 
 
 Neptune (planet), 6 
 
 New England, how the Old Men 
 of the Mountain plowed its 
 farms away, 31 ; and then made 
 up for it by putting in New Eng- 
 land's waterfalls, 32 
 
 Newton, his connection with the 
 theory of the origin of worlds, 4 
 
 New York City, what one of its 
 big rocks tells about marble 
 making, 97; what its harbor 
 
 owes to the engineering of the 
 sea, 221, 222; the perched boul- 
 der in Bronx Park and its auto- 
 graph, 250 
 
 Niagara Falls, its thousand-year 
 clock and what it tells about 
 the Ice Age, 35; how the Old 
 Men of the Mountain set the 
 falls up in business, 36 
 
 Nitrogen, how it helped to make 
 fresh air for the new-born world, 
 16 
 
 Norway, interpretation of the 
 handwriting on the walls of its 
 fiords, 254 
 
 Ogden Canyon, curious example 
 
 of a rock fold, 238 
 Ohio River, how the Old Men of 
 
 the Mountain helped it by 
 
 turning some rivers around, 31 
 Omar Khayyam, answer of Science 
 
 to the universal riddle that 
 
 puzzled him, 261 
 
 Origin of Species. (See Evolution.) 
 Oxygen, its use in making the 
 
 world's air, 16; how the sea 
 
 feeds oxygen to the corals, 225 
 
 Pack Rat, his remarkable fortress 
 in the desert, 187 
 
 Paleontologists, the wizards of 
 queer anatomies and the strange 
 forms they conjure up from the 
 fragments of old bones, 266 
 
 Palestine. (See Dead Sea. ) 
 
 Palisades, how they were made in 
 the "Middle Ages," 241 
 
 Pebbles, how they tell of old sea 
 beaches on inland mountain and 
 hill, 14; their enormous age, 18; 
 dramatic stories the pebble 
 scratches tell, 26; how the Old
 
 2 9 2 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Men of the Mountain used peb- 
 bles in turning New England 
 rivers around, 31; how pebbles 
 helped deepen the basins of the 
 Great Lakes, 34; how they still 
 help run the thousand-year clock 
 at Niagara Falls, 35; how they 
 help the glaciers talk, 56; why 
 the pebbles of Glacier Land 
 can't walk as the big stones do, 
 62 ; how the river pebbles act as 
 bankers for the farmers and the 
 sea, 80; how the pebbles helped 
 dig the Grand Canyon, 82; how 
 they tell about doings in the 
 Fairyland of Change, 97; how 
 a pebble may, in its time, play 
 many parts, 99; how they help 
 unravel the secrets of the h$s, 
 119; how they help dying rivers 
 multiply by two, 167; how they 
 report the fact that the storms 
 on the Sea of Galilee are par- 
 ticularly severe, 203 ; their fixed 
 place in the rock-making system 
 of the sea, 227; how they tell of 
 rough experiences in river travel, 
 250; and of high winds at sea, 
 desert sandstorms, rides on gla- 
 ciers, and in what compartments 
 they travel, 251 
 
 Peninsulas, how the drowning of 
 rivers helps to make them, 212 
 
 Pennsylvania, autographs left by 
 ancient reptiles in the sandstone 
 under the coal seams, 245 
 
 Perched boulder, in Bronx Park 
 and its autograph on its rock- 
 bed, 250 
 
 Quartz, how it helps to make the 
 pebble jewel-boxes the geodes, 
 
 101 
 
 Quartzite, (denned), 98 
 
 Rain, what fossil rain-drops tell of 
 ancient weather, 224 
 
 Rat, desert, 186 
 
 Reclus, on the motion of glaciers, 
 62; on the mountain whirlpools 
 of stones, 141; on the severity 
 of lake storms, 202 
 
 Reefs, coral, how the sea helps the 
 little people build them, 225 
 
 Reptiles, with bird feet, 246 
 
 Rivers, how the Mississippi River 
 and others were pushed about 
 in the Ice Age, 26; how the Old 
 Men of the Mountain helped 
 the Ohio by turning some rivers 
 around, 31; how they helped 
 make New England a great 
 manufacturing section by turn- 
 ing some other rivers around, 
 32; how they helped build the 
 "Temple of the Winds," 33; 
 the little boy's definition of a 
 river system, 66; how the sea 
 and the rivers take turn about 
 in emptying into each other, 66; 
 their wonderful work in the 
 mountains, 67; the Mississippi 
 River system, 67; how they 
 study the work of rivers on 
 rainy days in Boston, 68; how 
 you can jump across the Missis- 
 sippi, 69; what springs do for 
 rivers, 69; how the springs act 
 as regulators of river flow, 72; 
 how rivers grow at the top, 72; 
 why some rivers are born partly 
 grown, 72 ; how most of Europe's 
 rivers get their start, 73; why 
 many little rivers have to jump 
 to catch the train, 74; why all 
 rivers flow toward the sea, 75; 
 beautiful way in which Ruskin 
 tells of the response of rivers to 
 the call of the sea, 76; the hu-
 
 INDEX 
 
 293 
 
 man nature in rivers, 76; baby 
 ways of baby rivers, 76; why 
 waterfalls are found only in 
 young streams and more often 
 as you near the source, 76; how 
 rivers play in the rain, 78; storm 
 chorus of the mountain torrents, 
 78; where to look for hiding 
 rivers, 78; how rivers sleep in 
 mountain lakes and how lively 
 they are when they wake up, 80; 
 why rivers grow more thrifty as 
 they grow older; how, with the 
 help of the pebbles, they act as 
 bankers for the farmers and the 
 sea, 80; the machinery of rivers 
 includes circular saws and dirt- 
 spreaders, 82; how a river dug 
 the Grand Canyon, 82, 88; the 
 automatic stop in the river ma- 
 chinery, 83; enormous amount 
 of soil carried by the Mississippi 
 into the sea, 84; how rivers cut 
 mountains in two, 85; how riv- 
 ers help in mining granite, 97; 
 how they help make hills, 117; 
 how they combine with the 
 boulders to help out the artists, 
 157; the land in which there are 
 river beds without rivers and 
 rivers without mouths, 162; the 
 skeletons of dead rivers and 
 what they tell of the past history 
 of the desert, 166; why dying 
 rivers multiply by two, 167; 
 harbor engineering of the rivers 
 and the sea, 22 1 ; how rivers 
 made the Golden Gate of San 
 Francisco and so made San 
 Francisco, 223; the rivers and 
 the rock mills of the sea, 227; 
 the river's trade-mark on its 
 pebbles, 250 
 Rocky Mountains, how they were 
 
 born, 10; their relation to the 
 Mediterranean Sea that is no 
 more, 135; why they are now 
 so far from the sea, 138; how 
 the mountain waves of stone 
 resemble the waves of the sea, 
 140; folded strata that illustrate 
 Ruskin's line about the strange 
 quivering recorded in mountain 
 rocks, 142 
 
 Romans, some of the big things we 
 owe to them, 270 
 
 Rose of Jericho, what it is like and 
 how it puts to sea, 176 
 
 Round Tops (Mt.), how they are 
 formed, 123 
 
 Ruskin, on the response of rivers 
 to the call of the sea, 76; on the 
 sleep of lakes, 80; on mountain 
 drawing, 140; on the strange 
 "quivering of substance" of 
 mountains, 141; on the art 
 lessons to be learned from 
 stones, 158; on the correct draw- 
 ing of boulders, 160 
 
 Sahara Desert. (See Desert.) 
 
 St. Lawrence River, how the Old 
 Men of the Mountain took some 
 of its rivers away, 30; how the 
 Old Men used it in making the 
 Great Lakes, 34 
 
 Salt, how Mother Nature uses it 
 in warming over rocks, 99; how 
 Father Neptune uses it in his 
 rock mills, 217 
 
 Sand, how it helped build the 
 stone "Temple of the Winds," 
 33; how Mother Nature dis- 
 solves it out of sandstone in her 
 rock cookery, 99; how the 
 crystal fairies give sand grains 
 a new lease of life, 108; how the 
 sand helped shape the old Indian
 
 294 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of Mt. Abu, 147; color of desert 
 sand, 165; how the desert makes 
 its sand, 168; "sand roses," 168 
 
 Sandstone, its place in the rock- 
 milling system of the sea, 227 
 
 San Francisco Bay, how it was 
 made, the two rivers that 
 opened its Golden Gate, 222 
 
 Saturn (planet), 5, 6 
 
 Sea, when the seas were all in the 
 sky, 1 6; how its stratification of. 
 rock helped build the "Temple 
 of the Winds," 33; the Alps, 
 like sea waves turned to stone, 
 50; how the sea flows into the 
 rivers, the endless circuit of the 
 waters, 66; why the rivers al- 
 ways get back to sea, 75; how 
 the pebbles help feed the sea fish 
 and furnish material for the 
 sea's rock mills, 81; the Grand 
 Canyon and the ancient sea, 88; 
 how the sea helps Mother Na- 
 ture do the work in her rock 
 cookery, 99; why volcanoes and 
 mountains border the sea, 133, 
 134; why sea waves rise to greet 
 the mountains, 139; how sea 
 sand grains differ from those of 
 the desert, 173; the rock mills of 
 the sea, method in the madness 
 of the on-shore waves, 212; why 
 the sea's chief business at first 
 seems to be that of eating us up, 
 213; the sea in literature and 
 art, 213; England's heavy losses 
 to the sea, 214; how helpless the 
 Old Man of the Sea is without 
 his tools, 215; how he uses the 
 stone-throwing engines and the 
 battering-ram of the Romans, 
 216; what he knows about 
 wedges and pneumatic tools, 
 216; the hidden enemies in the 
 
 rocks of the sea, 216; planing- 
 mills of the winter seas, 217; 
 how stones are carried out to 
 sea, 218; how the sea has shaped 
 Europe, 219; the sea as a build- 
 er, why Father Neptune is 
 like Old King Cole, 220; harbor 
 engineering of the rivers and 
 the sea, 221, 222; how the sea 
 helped teach shore engineering 
 to man, 223; how it has helped 
 make London, New York, and 
 other great cities, 223, 224; how 
 Father Neptune feeds the coral 
 people, 225; the art work of the 
 sea, 227, 228; Nature's building 
 blocks and the sea, 228; the ups 
 and downs of Europe's moun- 
 tains under the sea, 230; how 
 sea tides help in recording rain- 
 drop marks in stone, 244 
 
 Sea caves, what they told about 
 how the continents came up out 
 of the sea, 14 
 
 Sea of Galilee, why its storms come 
 so suddenly and usually at 
 night, 202, 203; how the pebbles 
 on its shores tell that these 
 storms are severe, 203; why it 
 parted company with the Dead 
 Sea, 206 
 
 Sea-shells, how some of them tell 
 how marble is made, 100 
 
 Seismograph, the device for get- 
 ting the autograph of earth- 
 quakes, 240 
 
 Shakespere, how he emphasizes 
 the rough side of Father Nep- 
 tune's nature, 213; on the man 
 and the swallowing waves, 219; 
 his reference to the greatness of 
 Mr. Caesar, 252 
 
 Shaler, Dr., on the stone auto- 
 graphs of rain-drops, how they
 
 INDEX 
 
 295 
 
 throw light on the climate of 
 ancient days, 246 
 
 Shasta River, why it is born partly 
 grown, 73 
 
 Sierra Nevada Mountains, Muir 
 on how the snowflakes helped 
 carve them, 37 
 
 Silica, its use by Mother Nature 
 in making sandstone, grass, 
 wheat, and corn, 99 
 
 Slate, and the Fairyland of Change, 
 98; its place in the rock mills 
 of the sea, 227; ancient auto- 
 graphs found in slate, 245 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible 
 story of their destruction and 
 what Science has to say about 
 it, 208 
 
 Soil, how it was made in the be- 
 ginning of things, 11; how the 
 Old Men of the Mountain car- 
 ried New England's best farms 
 away, 31 ; how river pebbles act 
 as bankers for the farmers, 80; 
 how the sea helps make good 
 farming land, 222; Nature's art 
 work and the making of soil, 229 
 
 Solar system, how it was discov- 
 ered that there are worlds of 
 worlds, 4; Laplace's theory as 
 to the origin of the Solar system, 
 4; the planetessimal theory, 6 
 
 Soldanella, the flower of the Alps 
 that blooms its way up through 
 the ice, 45 
 
 Special Creation theory, 265 
 
 Spiders, the tarantula and the 
 tarantula killer, 181 ; the spiders 
 of the Arizona desert, 182; how 
 the trap-door spider slams the 
 door in the centipede's face, 182 
 Spontaneous variation, the scien- 
 tific modification of the ola 
 "Special Creation" theory, 274 
 
 Springs, not only start rivers in 
 life but go on feeding them, 69; 
 how rain-drops stored in big 
 stone safes keep the springs 
 going, 69; springs that work 
 like a town pump, 70: hot 
 springs and the geysers, 165 
 
 Stratification, defined; how it 
 helped make the "Temple of 
 the Winds," 33; how it helps in 
 marble quarrying, 103; as shown 
 in the "Marble Rocks" at 
 Jabalpur, 105; how it helps in 
 the making over of rock in the 
 sea's mills, 217 
 
 Stratus clouds, their counterparts 
 in marble and what these mar- 
 ble cloud pictures mean, 239 
 
 Striae, scratches made in rocks by 
 glaciers, and how they helped 
 to disclose the great secret that 
 there was an Ice Age, 121; the 
 big boulder's autograph in 
 Bronx Park, New York City, 
 250 
 
 Tarantula, and the life struggle in 
 the desert, 181 
 
 Terraces, what they tell about the 
 tipping up of the Great Lakes 
 once upon a time, 253 
 
 Tides, in lakes and in teacups, 
 201 ; and the harbor and shore 
 engineering of the sea, 221, 225; 
 how they help preserve the 
 autographs of ancient rain- 
 drops, ancient reptiles, and 
 other things, 244 
 
 "Transgressions" of the sea, de- 
 fined, 218; how they help to 
 make great cities, 223; how they 
 help in the art work of the sea, 
 227
 
 296 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Umbrella Parties," an interest- 
 ing form of geography study in 
 Boston, 68 
 
 Uranus (planet), 6 
 
 Valleys, howcrooked riversbroaden 
 them, 82 
 
 Venus (planet), 6 
 
 Vesuvius, why it seems to smoke 
 but doesn't, 126, 127 
 
 Volcanoes, what they tell about 
 the inside of the earth, 3; why 
 volcanoes were more numerous 
 in early days, 16; difference 
 between ordinary mountains 
 and volcanic mountains, 114, 
 123; the volcanic mountains in 
 the Sahara and the "Baths of 
 the Damned," 165; the blue 
 lake in the volcano's mouth, 194; 
 volcanoes and "the fire from 
 heaven" in the Bible story of 
 Lot, 209; how volcanic explo- 
 sions help to cause transgres- 
 sions of the sea, 219; Mr. Vul- 
 can's famous castle on the 
 Hudson, 241 
 
 Vulture, his wonderful abilities 
 as a flying machine, 182 
 
 Wasp, desert, how it disposes of 
 the tarantula, 181 
 
 Waterfalls, how the Old Men of 
 the Mountain put them in for 
 New England, to make up for 
 carrying her farms away, 31; 
 how they set Niagara Falls up 
 in business and started the 
 thousand-year time clock, 35, 
 36; why the Bridal Veil Falls in 
 the Yosemite has to jump to 
 catch the train, 74; why water- 
 
 falls are found only in young 
 streams and oftenest near the 
 source, 76 
 
 Water Gaps, how the rivers cut 
 them with the help of pebbles, 
 85 
 
 Weathering, examples of, 33, 60, 
 97, 147, 228, 229, 231, 241, 243, 
 248 
 
 Wind, how it helped carve the 
 "Temple of the Winds," 33; 
 how it helps make pillars for 
 perched rocks, 60; how it helped 
 carve the strange old Indian of 
 Mt. Abu, 147; how it helps the 
 desert in trade-marking its sand, 
 173; the wind witches of the 
 Steppes, 178; why lake wind 
 storms are particularly danger- 
 ous, 202; the winds and the 
 night storms on the Sea of 
 Galilee, 202; how winds help 
 fill up the sea, 219; stone auto- 
 graphs of ancient breezes, 247; 
 pebble facetted by wind-blown 
 sand, 252; wind ripples, 248 
 
 Wren, desert, how she locks her 
 front door against her bad 
 neighbors, 177 
 
 Wyoming, the ancient bones found 
 in its soil and the wonderful 
 story they told about horses, 266 
 
 Xenophanes, the wise old Greek 
 who first suggested that the 
 mountains had risen out of the 
 sea, 13 
 
 Yosemite Valley, why the rivers 
 of the little valleys have to 
 jump to catch the train, 74
 
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