She saw whole acres of granite—the hard stone that lay in pieces about the wood, half covered with moss and violets; acres of this were rolling and foaming like the river in a storm, melted and boiling in the fiery flames.
"Why, in a few minutes, the cave itself, and all the earth, will melt, and we shall be burned up," said Daisy, alarmed.
"O, no," laughed the fairy. "The fire was kindled thousands of years before you were born; and the granite your violets grow upon has boiled like this in its day; but we are not burned yet, and shall not be. There's a bridge over the fire."
And, surely enough, when Daisy looked again, she saw great cold ribs of rock rising above the flames and above the sea of boiling stone, up and out, like arches on every side. Upon this rock the earth was heaped, layer above layer, until on its outside countries, and cities, and great forests were planted, and fastened together, it seemed, by rivers and seas.
In the beds of rivers, in crevices of rock, in depths of the earth, were hidden precious stones and metals; and where the rocks rose highest, they formed what we call mountains, that buried their soaring heads in the sky, and stretched along the earth for many hundred miles.
"What can this rock be made of?" asked Daisy. "Look!" and, to her wonder, she saw that it was all little cells, crowded with insects of different kinds. She asked the dame how many there were in one piece of stone which she picked up, and which was about an inch square.
"About forty-one thousand millions of one kind, and many more of another," she answered carelessly.
"You could not make Maud believe that," thought Daisy; and the dame, as if seeing into her mind, continued,—
"But it is only the one little world we live in which you have seen thus far: look above."