ave the valleys been hollowed out of this immense mass of elevated
country?--No otherwise than as we may perceive it, upon every mountain,
and after every flood. It is not often indeed, that, in those alpine
regions, any considerable tract of country is to be found, where
an example so convincing is exhibited. It is more common for those
mountains of primary strata or schistus to rise up in ridges, which,
though divided into great pyramids, may still be perceived as connected
in the direction of their erected strata. These last, although affording
the most satisfactory view of that mineral operation by which land,
formed and consolidated at the bottom of the sea, had been elevated and
displaced, are not so proper to inform us of the amazing waste of those
extremely consolidated bodies, as are those where the strata have
preserved their original horizontal portion. It is in this last case,
that there are data remaining for calculating the _minimum_ of the waste
that must have been made of those mountains, by the regular and long
continued operations of the atmospheric elements upon the surface of
this earth.

It is the singularity of these horizontal strata in that extensive
alpine mass, which seems to have engaged M. de Saussure, who has
inspected so much of those instructive countries, to make a tour around
those mountains, and to give us a particular description of this
interesting place. Now, from this description, it is evident, that there
is an immense mass of primary or alpine strata nearly in the horizontal
position, which is common to all the strata at their original formation;
that this horizontal mass had been raised into the highest place of land
upon this globe; and that, in this high situation, it has suffered the
greatest degradation, in being wasted by the hand of time, or operations
of the elements employed in forming soil for plants, and procuring
fertility for the use of animals. Here is nothing but a truth that may
almost every where be perceived; but here that important truth is to be
perceived on so great a scale, as to enable us to enlarge our ideas with
regard to the natural operations of this earth, and to overcome those
prejudices which contracted views of nature, and magnified opinions of
the experience of man may have begotten,--prejudices that are apt to
make us shut our eyes against the cleared light of reason.

Abundant more examples of this kind, were it necessary, might be given,
both fr