“You’ll soon understand all this, my lad,” said Dale. “The rocks high up the mountains are always crumbling down.”
“Crumbling? I don’t call that crumbling.”
“Call it what you like; but that was a crumb which fell down here, my lad. You see the snow and ice over yonder?”
“Yes.”
“Well, of course that means that there is constant freezing going on there, except when the sun is blazing down at midday.”
“Yes, I understand that,” said Saxe.
“Well, the rock gets its veins charged with water from the melting of the snow in the daytime, and at night it freezes again; the water expands in freezing, and splits the rock away, but it does not slip, because it is kept in position by the ice. By-and-by, on an extra hot day, that ice melts, and, there being nothing to support it, the mass of rock falls, and drives more with it, perhaps, and the whole comes thundering down.”
“I should like to see how big the piece was,” said Saxe; “it must have been close here.”
“No,” said the guide; “perhaps two miles away.”
Dale made a sign, and they went on again.