Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-27
Scientific Discussions
by Garrett P. Serviss

Mr.. "E. NJ" writes: 'I noticed a pc
Garret Mountain, near Paterson, N. ].
The lower stratum. about sixty feet
thick. Is sandstone. whereas the upper
stratum. about forty feet thick, is un-
cracked. solid trap rock. This seems
very strange TO me. as according to
geology. trap rock, which is of vol
canic origin. should be lower stratum
than sandstone. Samples of these
stones are sent you herewith"
Who reading that letter can doubt
that there is God in whose likeness
man is made? 1t is only the God
in man that turns the mind from
grubbing for food. clothes and money
to reading the history OF the earth in
the open book of the rocks. If there
is any proof of the existence OF some
thing which at least deserves to be i'm
mortal in human creatures. it is to be
found in such things as curiosity about
the happenings of a million years ago,
whose marks are still around us.
The sandstone that our observant
correspondent found in his walk under
the shoulder of Garret Mountain was
laid down on the bottom of a Triassic
sea, or lake, n good many millions of
years ago. 1t is the red sandstone"
characteristic of so much of northern
New Jersey. He found 1t 60 feet thick,
where he saw 1t.
Inasmuch as it was originally a
sand-bed. slowly deepening as the
waters brought down more sand from
the surrounding hills that bordered the
ancient sea- anybody can form an idea
OF the great length of time that prob
ably elapsed while the deposit was
growing. Then came other ages dur
ing which the land rose, the sea was
drained of and physical and chemical
forces. never fastening, transformed
the sand into rock-a rock composed
OF close-packed and cemented grains, a
petrifled sea-bottom, over whose soft
sands fish had once darted.
Now, long before the >Triassic sea
flowed across part of what was TO
become the railroad-gridded State of
New Jersey, there lay over that same
region. cleaning in the yet more an
cient Paleozoic sunlight, rock strata
that had been formed at the bottom of
seas whose antiquity would make even
the Triassic seem recent, and below
these strata again were vast masses OF
Archeozoic and Archean rocks, the lat
ter belonging to the superficial portion
of the great inner core of the planet
which had been melted and remelted and
crystallized and recrystallizcd on cool
ing until it had lost all traces of any
organic forms that might once have
been there,
But at last. after the Triassic sea
had been and gone, and its bed had
turned to red sandstone, there came a
great commotion under or among those
deep-lying bottom rocks and molten
lava, in enormous, viscous sheets, max
ing road for itself by prying the rocky
strata above it apart, and sliding up
the subterranean sloping-way thus Gre
ated, moved slowly eastward, or north
eastward, at the same time gradually
approaching the surface until 1t burst
out into the sunshine on top of the
Triassic sandstone. presenting a tower
ing front of stiff, molten, but yet not
liqueiied, rock hundreds of feet in
height in some places as along the
line of the Palisades of the Hudson
and there it stood. slowly cooling and
crystallizing in contact with the air,
smoking and casting off sulphurous va
porS, like lava worm" thrust out
of the trembling flank of Vesuvius or
Etna.
1t crushed the sandstone beneath its
weight, and melted its grains along the
surface of contact. as can still be seen
in the specimens picked up by the
letter writer under Garret Mountain,
for the hills of trap rock overhanging
Paterson had the same origin as the
Palisades. At Garret Mountain, as at
the Palisades, one may see the vertical
columns and huge five and six sided