According to Geologists scooped out by "rain, frost, and running water" (aerial denudation)! To face page 63. effected à un seul coup. Their sides are flat, smooth, and, where the beds of strata project, they present sharp angles or splintery edges, in distinction from curved surfaces. Such facts as these occurring all over the globe are a standing protest against water erosion. The well-known gorge of the Via Mala is so absolutely a crack through a mountain, that the two sides, 1500 feet high, in places are barely separated by 2 or 3 feet of interval. The Rhine, though a broad river above the pass, sinks invisible or reduced to a mere thread at the bottom of this most remarkable fissure. But cliffs and precipices occur all over the world, and there is no distinction in form and structure between those which bound seas or river-courses, and those which occur inland and far away from running water. Why should the one class of cliff have a different origin from the other? The gorge of Göschenen, on the St. Gothard Pass, is traversed by the furious torrent Reuss; but its valley runs uninterruptedly into the lake of Lucerne, whose precipices are loftier than those about the Devil's Bridge, and as straight, though no running water washes their base, but only a deep lake. A ready explanation is at hand in the faults, shifts, joints, etc., which prevail all through the earth's crust: but these the ruling |