the fiery peaks,
which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting
like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their Titan hands to
Heaven, saying, "I live forever!"

Sec. 4. Mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their
support.

But there is this difference between the action of the earth, and that
of a living creature, that while the exerted limb marks its bones and
tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the flesh
altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. Mountains are the bones
of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those parts of its
anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and twenty thousand
feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and which spring up in
the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, flinging their garment
of earth away from them on each side. The masses of the lower hills are
laid over and against their sides, like the masses of lateral masonry
against the skeleton arch of an unfinished bridge, except that they
slope up to and lean against the central ridge: and, finally, upon the
slopes of these lower hills are strewed the level beds of sprinkled
gravel, sand, and clay, which form the extent of the champaign. Here
then is another grand principle of the truth of earth, that the
mountains must come from under all, and be the support of all; and that
everything else must be laid in their arms, heap above heap, the plains
being the uppermost. Opposed to this truth is every appearance of the
hills being laid upon the plains, or built upon them. Nor is this a
truth only of the earth on a large scale, for every minor rock (in
position) comes out from the soil about it as an island out of the sea,
lifting the earth near it like waves beating on its sides.

Sec. 5. Structure of the plains themselves. Their perfect level, when
deposited by quiet water.

Such being the structure of the framework of the earth, it is next to be
remembered that all soil whatsoever, wherever it is accumulated in
greater quantity than is sufficient to nourish the moss of the
wallflower, has been so, either by the direct transporting agency of
water, or under the guiding influence and power of water. All plains
capable of cultivation are deposits from some kind of water--some from
swift and tremendous currents, leaving their soil in sweeping banks and
furrowed ridges--others, and this is in mountain districts almost