IN THE FIRST ELEVATION OF THE LAND ARE NOT VALLEYS.

SEAS AND LAKES ARE NOT VALLEYS.

ATLANTIC IS A VALLEY.

HUMBOLDT SAYS THE

AND FORMED BY RUNNING WATER. WHAT A VALLEY IS. THE BASINS OF LONDON, PARIS, AND HAMPSHIRE ARE NOT VALLEYS.

As will have been seen in chapter XI., it is not meant to deny the all-dominant influence of fire on the form of the land of the globe. Fire first raises the continent, and, therefore, first forms it. Rain afterwards transforms its surface. Subterranean igneous heat is the quarryman who raises the block. Rain is the artist who shapes its surface. 'Beauty is but skin deep.' We are not the less for that touched by beauty, nor by the exquisite beauty of the surface of the earth. We owe this beauty of the surface to water, not to fire. Could the labourer of Paros with justice

write

Non me Praxiteles fecit

Did

on some divine production of the artist?
Bailey form his exquisite Eve, or the workman
of the Carrara quarries? This forming or trans-
forming of the surface is, however, all that is
claimed for rain.

On the subject of the original forming of the land by fire, Humboldt uses plenty of sesquipedalian words, and quotes authors from Eratosthenes downward. I shall be satisfied with one. quotation from one author:

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

With regard to the cause of the form of the land: Very little can be empirically determined regarding the causal connexion of the phenomena of the formation of continents, or of the analogies and contrasts presented by their configuration. All that we know regarding this subject resolves itself into this one point, that the active cause is subterranean, that continents did not arise at once in the form they now present, but were, as we have already observed, increased by degrees, by means of numerous oscillatory elevations and depressions of the soil, or, were formed by the Humboldt fusion of separate smaller continental masses.' nents by With regard to the effect of this cause, in conjunction with Bacon, Polybius, and Eratosthenes, Humboldt calls our attention to the pyramidal

6

forms conti

'fusion.'

configuration of all the southern extremities of continents.' Here we become mithraic, and Humboldt shows us more PYRamids even than Eratosthenes.

The letter A has also a 'pyramidal configuration,' and four out of five of our continents, which end in pyramids, begin and end with this pyramidal letter, ASIA, AFRICA, AMERICA, and AUSTRALIA. Axis, Arctic, and Antarctic, also begin with it. These coincidences cannot be accidental. I do not pretend to class myself with the gentlemen named above. But I do think that this one original idea of mine is likely to be as useful, and is in all respects as worthy consideration in a co(s)mical way, as their joint stock company one.

It is true that lands-ends' are apt to be pyramidal, to whatever point of the compass they may face. And if we saw as much of the northern lands-ends of our continents as we do of their southern lands-ends, they might show a fair share of pyramids. Indeed, since the time of Eratosthenes, the north of Europe at the north cape, and of Asia at the north-east cape, have been found to be pyramidal. Cape Barrow, to the westward of Mackenzie river in North America, is pyramidal, and the cape to the eastward of that river not a bad imitation of a pyramid.

But,

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as the fool thinks, the bell clinks,' and if a man happens to be a fire-worshipper, and wishes to see a pyramid, he will see one in the section of a circle, and out of a square he will make four beauties. If a man does not wish to see pyramids, I do not think that he will see them in the south of Australia and New Zealand, which Humboldt quotes as continents, more than he will on the north of them, or of Borneo, or any island north or south from Iceland to Madagascar.

Humboldt might make four pyramids out of the Isle of Wight, though, it would then be three to one against his southern theory. For, instead of all facing the south, they each face a cardinal point. And, the active cause' of these' pyramidal configurations,' has been water, not fire. For the eroding force of the sea, being horizontal, forms horizontal pyramids, as the eroding force of rain, being vertical, forms vertical pyramids. Fire has had nothing to do with the form of the island farther than having raised it as a part of the mass which joined both England and France. Water is the sculptor who has formed the island out of this mass, and will continue to transform it till it has swallowed the last grain of it.

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The original form given to the Weald valley' by fire, was one smooth hill, or hog's-back, running from the north of France westward, and covered

Hollows formed in the first elevation of land are not valleys.

Seas and lakes are not valleys.

Humboldt says the

Atlantic is a valley.

with one single stratum, or geological formation. The present form of the region is due to water. To water we owe its infinitely varied features and beauties, its infinite alternation of ridge and furrow, hill and dale, its infinite ramification of stream and valley, streamlet and valleylet, and its great variety of geological strata. Nay, like the Isle of Wight, its very hills are as much formed by water out of the original mass as the statue is formed by the sculptor out of the original block.

But since all the protuberances of the earth's crust have been thrust up by subterranean fire, and as the intervals between these protuberances may be called hollows, it may perhaps be asserted that these hollows are valleys, formed by fire, not by water.

All seas and lakes are such hollows. From the top of Mont Blanc in the Alps to the Rocky Mountains in North America, or to the top of Chimboraço in the Andes, may in this sense be said to be a hollow. From the Andes westward to the Himalaya another, and between Europe and Africa a third. If these hollows are called the valleys of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean, then I confess that there are valleys in the world not formed by water.

I might, however, still fight, and that with Humboldt on my side. The last recruit I should