第51章 BOOK II.(27)

"If anything could reconcile me,"said Bearwarden,"to exchange my active utilitarian life for a rustic poetical existence,it would be this place,for it is far more beautiful than anything Ihave seen on earth.It needs but a Maud Muller and a few cows to complete the picture,since Nature gives us a vision of eternal peace and repose."Somehow the mention of Maud Muller,and the delicate and refined flowers,whose perfume he inhaled,brought up thoughts that were never far below the surface in Ayrault's mind."The place is heavenly enough,"said he,"to make one wish to live and remain here forever,but to me it would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out.""Ah!poor chap,"said Cortlandt,"you are in love,but you are not to be pitied,for though the thrusts at the heart are sharp,they may be the sweetest that mortals know."The following morning they reluctantly left the picturesque shores of Lake Serenity,with their beautiful tints and foliage,and resumed the journey,to explore a number of islands in the ocean in the west,which were recorded on their negatives.

Ascending to rarefied air,they saw great chains of mountains,which they imagined ran parallel to the coast,rising to considerable altitudes in the east.The tops of all glistened with a mantle of snow in the sunlight,while between the ridges they saw darker and evidently fertile valleys.They passed,moving northwest,over large and small lakes,all evidently part of the same great system,and continued to sweep along for several days with a beautiful panorama,as varying as a kaleidoscope,spread beneath their eyes.They observed that the character of the country gradually changed.The symmetrically rounded mountains and hills began to show angles,while great slabs of rock were split from the faces.The sides also became less vertical,and there was an accumulation of detrital fragments about their bases.These heaps of fractured stone had in some cases begun to disintegrate and form soil,on which there was a scant growth of vegetation;but the sides and summits,whose jaggedness increased with their height,were absolutely bare.

"Here,"said Cortlandt,"we have unmistakable evidence of frost and ice action.The next interesting question is,How recently has denudation occurred?The absence of plant life at the exposed places,"he continued,as if lecturing to a class,"can be accounted for here,as nearer the equator,by the violence of the wind;but I greatly doubt whether water will now freeze in this latitude at any season of the year,for,even should the Northern hemisphere's very insignificant winter coincide with the planet's aphelion,the necessary drop from the present temperature would be too great to be at all probable.If,then,it is granted that ice does not form here now,notwithstanding the fact that it has done so,the most plausible conclusion is that the inclination of Jupiter's axis is automatically changing,as we know the earth's has often done.There being nothing incompatible in this view with the evidence at hand,we can safely assume it correct for the time being at least.When farther south,you remember,we found no trace of ice action,notwithstanding the comparative slowness with which we decided that the ridges in the crust had been upheaved on account of the resisting power of gravity,and,as I see now,also on account of Jupiter's great mass,which must prevent its losing its heat anything like as fast as the earth has,in which I think also we have the explanation of the comparatively low elevation of the mountains that we found we could not account for by the power of gravitation alone.[2]From the fact that the exposed surface farther south must be old,on account of the slow upheaval and the slight wear to which it is exposed,about the only wearing agent being the wind,which would be powerless to erase ice-scratches,especially since,on account of gravity's power,it cannot,like our desert winds,carry much sand--which,as we know,has cut away the base of the Sphinx--I think it is logical to conclude that,though Jupiter's axis is changing naturally as the earth's has been,it has never varied as much as twenty-three and a half degrees,and certainly to nothing like the extent to which we see Venus and Uranus tilted to-day."[2]It is well known that mountain chains are but ridges or foldings in the crust upheaved as the interior cools and shrinks.

This is proved by reason and by experiments with viscous clay or other material placed upon a sheet of stretched rubber,which is afterwards allowed to contract,whereupon the analogues of mountain ridges are thrown up.