We see, too, a period--whether the same as this, or after it, I know
not yet--in which the mountains of Wales and Cumberland rose to the
limits of eternal frost, and Snowdon was indeed Snowdon, an alp down
whose valleys vast glaciers spread far and wide; while the reindeer
of Lapland, the marmot of the Alps, and the musk ox of Hudson's Bay,
fed upon alpine plants, a few of whose descendants still survive, as
tokens of the long past age of ice. And at every successive
upheaval of the western mountains the displaced waters of the ocean
swept over the lower lands, filling the valley of the Thames and of
the Wey with vast beds of drift gravel, containing among its chalk
flints, fragments of stone from every rock between here and Wales,
teeth of elephants, skulls of ox and musk ox; while icebergs,
breaking away from the glaciers of the Welsh Alps, sailed down over
the spot where we now are, dropping their imbedded stones and silt,
to confuse more utterly than before the records of a world rocking
and throbbing above the shocks of the nether fire.
At last the convulsions get weak. The German Ocean becomes sea once
more; the north-western Alps sink again to a level far lower even
than their present one; only to rise again, but not so high as
before; sea-beaches and sea-shells fill many of our lower valleys;
whales by hundreds are stranded (as in the Farnham vale) where is
now dry land.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139