EARTH’S SURFACE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 264, 3 August 1929, Page 11

EARTH’S SURFACE

CHANGES DUE TO EROSION AND EARTHQUAKES

Violent changes in the earth’s surface are produced in a few moments by such earthquakes as have been experienced in New Zealand lately. At the opposite end of the scale is the gradual erosion by water, of which the most striking example is the Grand Canyon. *T am convinced that there is no spectacle to be put in quite the same rank with it for awe-inspiring quality,” Dr. Rufus M. Jones wrote of the canyon recently in the “Friend.” “One would expect mountains to be more inspiring than chasms. Height seems likely to be more moving than depth. And yet the fact remains that this strange erosion through the crust of the earth makes a profounder impression on the beholder than does any mountain of any height. AH this carving has been done by the slow process of erosion, going on so gradually that a thousand years makes almost no difference. By this infinitesimal nibbling away of the rock the waters have cut down more than a mile through all the strata of the earth that represent the eras of life on the planet, and have made a pathway 13 miles wide and 200 miles long across this tableland. When one says ‘millions of years,’ it carries no meaning. It rolls off the mind without leaving a groove behind; but as one gazes down at that narrow ribbon of water plunging along in its channel and reflects that soft fluid, with no hammers and no blasting material, has inch by inch sculptured out this pathway for itself, the very time-element takes on a grandeur of its own and adds immensely to the mysterum tremendum of the total effect.”