Читать книгу A West Point Treasure; Or, Mark Mallory's Strange Find онлайн

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“Behold yon towering precipice,” he cried, “with its crevices torn by the winter’s snows and rains! Gentlemen, I suppose you know that the substances which we call earth and sand are but the result of the ceaseless action of water, which tore it from the mountains and ground it into the ever-moving seas. It was water that carved the mountains from the masses of ancient rock, and water that cut the valleys that lead to the sea below. A wonderful thing is water to the geologist, a strange thing.”

“It’s a strange thing to a Texan, too,” observed the incorrigible cowboy, making a sound like a popping cork.

“This cliff, all covered with vegetation,” continued the Parson, gazing up into the air, “has a story to tell also. See that scar running across its surface? In the glacial era, when this valley was a mass of grinding, sliding ice, some great stone caught in the mass plowed that furrow which you see. And perhaps hundreds of miles below here I might find the stone that would fit that mark. That has been done by many a patient scientist.”