g about for some reason to explain to
himself the existence of mountains, and prove their harmony with the
general perfectness of the providential government of creation, can
light upon this reason only, "They are inhabited by the beasts."

First use of mountains. To give motion to water.

Sec. 6. It may not, therefore, even at this day, be altogether profitless
or unnecessary to review briefly the nature of the three great offices
which mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve the
health and increase the happiness of mankind. Their first use is of
course to give motion to water. Every fountain and river, from the
inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling
clearness, to the massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of
waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to
the ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or
abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course
necessary, before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its
pilgrimage; and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the
margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that
ordinance, of which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water
is a perpetual sign; that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the
earth shall find no resting-place; shall find, on the contrary, fixed
channels traced for them, from the ravines of the central crests down
which they roar in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath the
banks of lowland pasture, round which they must circle slowly among the
stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared for them, by
which, at some appointed rate of journey, they must evermore descend,
sometimes slow and sometimes swift, but never pausing; the daily portion
of the earth they have to glide over marked for them at each successive
sunrise, the place which has known them knowing them no more, and the
gateways of guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none
letting them in their pilgrimage; and, from far off, the great heart of
the sea calling them to itself! Deep calleth unto deep. I know not which
of the two is the more wonderful,--that calm, gradated, invisible slope
of the champaign land, which gives motion to the stream; or that passage
cloven for it through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health
of the land immediately around them, would yet, un