Arizona weekly enterprise., 1881-12-03
Wo,t,,fai,, P. cE.s,

young, and people were cont nted witt legends and myths concerning the won ders of creation, just as children like fairy stories, 1t was the common belle that mountains were the work of god, and genii, who hurled them down from heaven, and allowed them to fall by chance, or else raised them as mighty pillars destined to bear the vaults of tho skies. The Titans, who were not gods. threw down all the mountains of Thes saly in order to use them again for build ing up the ramparts round Olympus Another story IS that giantess of the North had filed her apron with little hills and dropped tham at certain distances that she might recognize her way. And still another, from the other end of the earth, is that Vishnu, one day, seeing a young girl asleep beneath the suns too ardent rays, took up a mountain, and held it poised upon his finger tips to shelter the beautiful sleeper. This, the legend tells us, was the origin of sun shades. Nor was 1t even always neces sary for gods and giants to lift up the mountains in order to remove them; the latter obeyed mere sign. Stones has tened to listen to the strains of Orpheus' Tyre; mountains stood erect to hear Apollo. It was thus that Helicon, the home of the Muses, took its birth.
 Strange as are these stories, they are no more wonderful than the actual fact that, under the direction of the Creator. the two great giants, fire and water have been and still are at work con stlucting mountains, slowly, it is true, and not by any sudden upheaval, as the lovers of the marvellous would have il to be, but none the less surely.
 While wandering over the surface oI the globe, and carefully observing its natural phenomena, we see that mount aims are the slow growth of ages. Wher an insular or continental mass some hundreds or thousands of yards high re ceives rain in abundance, its slopes gradually become indented with "a vines, dales, valleys; the uniform sur face of the plateau is cut into peaks ridges, pyramids; scooped out into am phitheaters, basins, precipices; systems of mourtains appear by degrees wher- ever the level ground has rolled down tt any enormous extent. Inaddition to tnes external causes which change plateau into mountains, slow transformations il the interior of the earth are also being ac compIshed, bringing about vast exca vatiors. Those hard working men who hammer in hand, go for many year among the mountains in order to stud, their form and structure, observe in tn lower beds of marine formation, whicl constitute the non-crystallire portion | the mountains, gigantic rents or insure extending thousands of yards in length Masses millions of wards thick have bee completely raised up again by thes shocks, or turned as completely Npsid down, 50 that what was formerly the SUI face has now become the bottom. An in this way have been revealed the cry' talline rocks. Plication, or folding,
 also an important feature in the hlstor of the earth. By this process, subiecte to slow pressure, the rock, the clay, th layers of sandstone, the veins of meta have all been folded mp like a piece ( cloth, and the folds thus formed becom mountains and valleys.
 One of the most interesting feature in the study of mountains is the disco0 cry of fossils. by which the natura'is accurately determines the age of rock Millions of these remains of animal an vegetable life have been preserved. ( course the tissues of flesh and drops l blood or sap are gone, but in their stea are pa, ticles of stone which have kel the form, and sometimes even the colo of the creature destroyed. Within th thickness of these stones are shells ( mollusks, disks, spheres, spines, cylil dars in astounding numbers; we see tf skeletons of fish with their fins an scales, the wing-sheaths of insects, an even footprints upon the hard rocl too, which was formerly the shft.n sand of the beach, we find the impre sion of drops of rain, and the inte secting ripple marks traced by wavele on the shore. These fossils which live millions of years ago in the mud ( oceanic abysses are now met at ever mountain height. They are to be see on most of the Pyrenees, they constitu
 whole Alps, they are recognized upo the Caucasus and Cordilleras.
 The wealth contained in mountains the shape of silver and gold ore an precious stone, has ever been, like Il magic thread of the labyrinth, leadin miners aud geologi,ts into the depths their caverns. Formerly it was suppose to be an easy matter to reach the' riches. All that man needed was wh. was called "luck and the favor of tI