The course of creation

by John Anderson

THE
COURSE OF CREATION.

GEOLOGY OF SCOTLAND.
PART I.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

Geology is that branch of science which comprehends the knowledge of all that relates to the form, structure, mineral and fossil constituents, of the earth. The Scottish Grampians, it is generally admitted, form part of the lowest sections of its crust, to which the researches of geologists extend. We must go to other countries for any coeval, and, to North America for any older, competing land: and still, there, the rocks are of the same mineral qualities and arrangement. The Ben-Mac-Dhui group form the highest and most prominent masses in the whole range of these crystalline mountains.

When I first stood on the broad flat top of Ben-Mac-Dhui, I had no thought or purpose of ever recording its geological history. The excursion was undertaken simply for recreation, and a delightful one it proved. I longed to plunge into the deep recesses of the old forest, and to see the trees which nature had strewed with careless hand, ere, perhaps, Caledonia was tenanted by the human family. I looked down from its rugged sides, as I ascended, with awe and wonder—snatched a little alpine as I drew breath for the next spring—chipped a piece of granite as I obtained a footing over a yawning chasm, or breasted along by jagged precipitous defile,—and when, having fairly scaled the summit, I gazed out upon the world beneath, the feeling which for a moment flitted across my mind was one of no merely vain complacency, that I was then the most elevated subject of all the twenty-six or twenty-seven millions inhabiting the British Islands—and the lowest, too, in their stony regions! The mountains of the earth serve to inspire some of the loftiest sentiments that can fill the breast of its intelligent inhabitants. Imbosomed in their deep solitudes, man feels his own littleness, and is forced to inquire who made these wonders, and who sustains them? We are all the better, morally speaking, for leaving occasionally our daily-trodden haunts, where we see only human things, and hear only of the triumphs of human craft, the excitement of human passions, the littleness and vanity of even the noblest human daring. There is an image of Jehovah’s greatness impressed upon the outward face of nature, which for a time will awaken and sustain the most salutary reflections, breathing, as it were, a new life into the soul of the wayfarer. A man escapes from himself, forgetting the burden of a thousand petty cares, and rising above his sensual condition, when he looks upon the physical world in these its grander features and secluded scenes, which irresistibly speak to the inner sense of divinity, wisdom, and omnipotence.

The philosophy of the mountains, in the classic ages of Greece and Rome, inclined but little to any analysis of their grosser materials of earth and stone. The poetic and ideal were exclusively associated with their structures and form. The dii majores dwelt upon, and thundered from, their lofty summits. The clouds hovered in peaceful majesty over their council of sage or fierce debate. The elements were the ready ministers of their will; and Oreads, Dryads, and Naiads, peopling all the hills, forests, and streams, were the creations of that principle of the inner man, which has always searched for the spiritual behind and beyond the tangible attributes of Nature. Hence, too, the gnomes of the caverns, the spirits of the mists, the fairies of the glens, the kelpies of the torrents, were all the embodiment of forms, which fancy, in her later superstitions, has cast around the mountain landscape, with the witchery at once of the terrible and beautiful. The charm that spell-bound the human mind for ages, is not dissolved when, with ruder intent, we traverse these rocky solitudes, listening to the echo of our obedient hammer, learning the secrets of the universe amidst the voices of the everlasting hills, and seeing the wonders of the material world throwing light on the wonders of the spiritual.

We are reminded, among the mountains, of one of the first and loveliest of all material things, the creation of light. Loving them for their own sakes, as well as for the legends of the old world with which they are everywhere inscribed, the geologist takes to the hills with the first faint fresh streak of dawn. Emerging with earliest day from the somber shades of the forest which, like night, invests the prospects with its own sadness and gloom, speedily a scene of joy and activity bursts upon the sight. The light comes upon you like a real tangible thing. You see it glinting and breaking on the lofty ridge, then nearing down along the brown slope of the mountain, here projecting in long bright lines through the trees, and there—delicious, golden morn! first-born of Nature’s children, harbinger of life and gladness. How beautiful are thy first footsteps upon the heath-clad mountains! What a brood of gloomy thoughts thou dispellest, chasing them before thee, like yonder envious mists rising lazily from the plains, valleys, and streams, which they would fain hide from the eyes that now revel amid their exuberant loveliness. These lofty peaks are worthy altars for the beacon-fires of the orb of day, after he has finished his journey through the nations; and comes back to us, over the floating splendor of the sea, in the eastern heavens. And see! he hath lit a hundred on these splintered summits, which blaze now as they blazed centuries ago, and diminish not!