From Norton's "Elements of Geology." By permission of Ginn and Company
THE STORY OF BIG ROUND TOP AND LITTLE ROUND TOP
One story of Big Round Top and Little Round Top your history tells, but long before the battle of Gettysburg these two mountains had age-long battles of their own with the winds, the rains, and the frosts, and in these battles lost their peaks and their sharp outlines of jagged rock, and became rounded down to the forms we see before us. Those rocks in the field were probably broken off in these battles, as the rocks of high mountains are to-day, and carried down by roaring torrents.
WEATHER RECORDS ON THE MOUNTAIN WALLS
From a scientific standpoint little things may be just as big as big things. For example, in this matter of old weather records these rain-drops and ripple stones are just as interesting as other weather records written large on mountain walls; such as those which tell that what is now the Dead Sea was once part of a much larger sea that wasn't dead at all. You may never get to read these records on the mountain walls of Palestine, for they are a long way off, but here in our own country we have a similar story told on mountain walls in the region of another dead sea—the Great Salt Lake of Utah. From Salt Lake City you can see on the mountain surrounding the desert of the Great Basin the marks of old shore lines; where the waves cut into the rock. These marks show that this Basin once held two great lakes, and the one in the eastern portion dried up into what is now Great Salt Lake.
WEATHER RECORDS ON THE WALLS OF TIME
What is now the Great Salt Lake used to be a much greater lake that wasn't salt at all. That vast flight of steps up the mountainside shows how wide it spread. As the big lake dried up, and grew smaller and smaller and saltier and saltier, its shores were bounded successively by those wave-cut cliffs.
IV. Stories Written on the Pebbles