Its beauty and sublimity were
lost upon Carley now; she was concerned with its travail, its age, its
endurance, its strength. And she studied it with magnified sight.
What incomprehensible subterranean force had swelled those immense slopes
and lifted the huge bulk aloft to the clouds? Cataclysm of nature--the
expanding or shrinking of the earth--vast volcanic action under the surface!
Whatever it had been, it had left its expression of the travail of the
universe. This mountain mass had been hot gas when flung from the parent
sun, and now it was solid granite. What had it endured in the making? What
indeed had been its dimensions before the millions of years of its
struggle?
Eruption, earthquake, avalanche, the attrition of glacier, the erosion of
water, the cracking of frost, the weathering of rain and wind and snow--
these it had eternally fought and resisted in vain, yet still it stood
magnificent, frowning, battle-scarred and undefeated. Its sky-piercing
peaks were as cries for mercy to the Infinite. This old mountain realized
its doom. It had to go, perhaps to make room for a newer and better
kingdom. But it endured because of the spirit of nature. The great notched
circular line of rock below and between the peaks, in the body of the
mountains, showed where in ages past the heart of living granite had blown
out, to let loose on all the near surrounding desert the streams of black
lava and the hills of black cinders.
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