IX.
THE SUSPENDED MOUNTAIN.
"The uplifted Mountain Arm, as though raised in anger, threatens you and your little ones with destruction…..Let all hearts unite in prayer, that Heaven may inspire your Tootmanyoso with the means of saving the world from so dire a calamity!.."
The ordinary elevation of the tides is immense. They advance and rise to a height far beyond any similar phenomenon in your planet, and the waters retire in proportion, leaving at low water many miles of seashore uncovered.
In Montalluyah the sun's electricity is very powerful. It is the power of the sun, and not of the moon, which principally influences the tides.
A huge mountain mass projects from the elevated continent of Montalluyah for miles above the sea.
The heart and base of the mountain mass had been carried away from under the higher mass by some great convulsion of nature, leaving the upper part of the mountain without support, except by its adhesion to the main continent, of which it formed part. From the point of juncture the suspended mass extends itself out horizontally in the air over cities built on the ridges, sides, and foot of the parent mountain-chain, and far beyond the extreme bounds of these cities, for miles over and parallel with the sea, at a height which from the lower cities makes the superincumbent mass rarely distinguishable from the illuminated clouds above.
The electric agencies in our world are very powerful; and it is supposed that at an early age of our world's history the mountain-foot covered with cities extended considerably beyond the land on which stand the present lower cities, and for many miles beyond the actual point to which the sea now recedes at low water, and that through a great electric disturbance, the upheaving seas of mighty waters rolled on, and, rising to an immense height—some think above the summit of the great mountain—with resistless force carried away miles of intermediate rock-land, which had till then formed the heart of the mountain.
When after some time the waters receded the mountain mass above the point of their ravages was left suspended, deprived of the support of the intermediate and nether strata, which before the upheavings of the waters had connected the plateaus and peaks of the mountain with the land beneath.
The suspended or aerial mountain stretches from the high lands of the continent horizontally through the air, just as one of your largest continents stretches into the sea. Between it and the sea below, however, is a space to be measured by miles.