Then, fancy
each captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven hundred feet
thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and one half
heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as it
rose,--and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont
Saleve.
MAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust!
L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great;
probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made
partly ductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see
these parts of mountains in the state they were left in at the
time of their elevation; for it is precisely in these rents and
dislocations that the crystalline power principally exerts itself.
It is essentially a styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn,
it heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the earth
seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for you only find the
crystalline living power fully in action, where the rents and
faults are deep and many.
DORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are "faults"?
L. You never heard of such things?
DORA. Never in all our lives.
L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted
by another troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it
out, so that it has to begin again in another place--that is
called a fault.
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