The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1881-06-02

$50 gladden. tho day with your blissful song;
Sing on while You may, dear, sweet and strongl
Make sure Of your moment Of pure delight,
No matter what trials may come before night"
Celia Thaxter, in Wide A,cake.
Mountain Peaks.
When the world was comparatively
young, and people were contented with
legends and myths concerning the won
ders Of creation, just as children like
fairy stories, it was the common belief
that mountains were the work of gods
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 the
skies. The Mtans, who were not gods.
threw down all the mountains of Thes-
sally in order to use them again for build
ing up the ramparts round Olympus.
Another story is that a giantess of the
North had filled her apron with little hills
and dropped than 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 mountain, and
held it poised upon his fnger-tips to
shelter the beautiful sleeper. This, the
legend tells us, was the origin of sun
shades. Nor was it even always neces-
sary for gods and giants to Lift up the
mountains in order to remove them; the
latter obeyed a mere sign. Stones has
tened to listen to the strains of Orpheus'
Tyre; mountains stood erect to hear
Apollo. 1t was thus that Helicon, the
home of the Muses., took it's 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 it
to be, but none the less surely.
While wandering over the surface of
the globe, and carefully observing it's
natural phenomena, we see that mount
aims are the slow growth of ages. When
an insular or continental mass some
hundreds or thousands of yards high re-
ceives rain in abundance, its slopes
gradually become indented with ra-
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 mountains appear by degrees wher-
ever the level ground has rolled down to
any enormous extent. In addition to these
external causes which change plateaus
into mountains, slow transformations in
the interior of the earth are also being &C
complished, bringing about vast exca-
vations. Those Woodworking men who,
hammer in hand, 60 for many years
among the mountains in order to study
their form and structure, observe in the
lower beds Of marine formation, which
constitute the non-crystalline portion Of
the mountains, gigantic rents or assures
extending thousands Of yards in length.
Masses millions OF yards thick have been
completely raised up again by these
shocks, or turned as completely upside
down, 80 that what was formerly the sur
lace has now become the bottom. And
in this way have been revealed the crys-
talline rocks. Plication, or folding, is
also an important feature in the history
of the earth. By this process, subjected
to slow pressure, the rock, the clay, the
layers of sandstone, the veins of metal,
have all been folded up like piece of
cloth, and the folds thus formed become
mountains and valleys.
One of the most interesting features
in the study of mountains is the discov-
cry of fossils, by which the naturalist
accurately determines the age of rocks.
Millions of these remains of animal and
vegetable life have been preserved. Of
course the tissues of flesh and drops of
blood or sap are gone, but in their stead
are PARTICLES of stone which have kept
the form, and sometimes even the color,
OF the creature destroyed. Within the
thickness of these stones are shells Of
mollusks, disks, spheres, spines, cylin-
ders in astounding numbers; we see the
skeletons of fish with their fms and
scales. the wing sheaths of insects, and
even footprints; upon the hard rock,
too, which was formerly the shifting
sand Of the beach, we find the impress
sion of drops Of rain, and the inter-
secting ripple marks traced by wavelets
on the shore. These fossils which lived
millions Of years ago in. the mud of
oceanic abysses are now met at every
mountain height. They are to be seen