certaining the
existence of this mystery, we shall perhaps be able to form some new
conjectures respecting the facts of mountain aspects in the past ages.
Not respecting the processes or powers to which the hills owe their
origin, but respecting the aspect they first assumed.

Sec. 8. For it is evident that, through all their ruin, some traces must
still exist of the original contours. The directions in which the mass
gives way must have been dictated by the disposition of its ancient
sides; and the currents of the streams that wear its flanks must still,
in great part, follow the course of the primal valleys. So that, in the
actual form of any mountain peak, there must usually be traceable the
shadow or skeleton of its former self; like the obscure indications of
the first frame of a war-worn tower, preserved, in some places, under
the heap of its ruins, in others to be restored in imagination from the
thin remnants of its tottering shell; while here and there, in some
sheltered spot, a few unfallen stones retain their Gothic sculpture, and
a few touches of the chisel, or stains of color, inform us of the whole
mind and perfect skill of the old designer. With this great difference,
nevertheless, that in the human architecture the builder did not
calculate upon ruin, nor appoint the course of impendent desolation; but
that in the hand of the great Architect of the mountains, time and decay
are as much the instruments of His purpose as the forces by which He
first led forth the troops of hills in leaping flocks:--the lightning
and the torrent, and the wasting and weariness of innumerable ages, all
bear their part in the working out of one consistent plan; and the
Builder of the temple for ever stands beside His work, appointing the
stone that is to fall, and the pillar that is to be abased, and guiding
all the seeming wildness of chance and change, into ordained splendors
and foreseen harmonies.

Sec. 9. Mountain masses, then, considered with respect to their first
raising and first sculpture, may be conveniently divided into two great
groups; namely, those made up of beds or layers, commonly called
stratified; and those made of more or less united substance, called
unstratified. The former are nearly always composed of coherent rocks,
the latter of crystallines; and the former almost always occupy the
outside, the latter the centre of mountain chains. It signifies,
therefore, very little whether we distinguish the grou