Part 2 (1/2)
”What is it?” said Dale.
”Isn't it wonderful, Mr Dale? Only two days ago in London, and here we are in this wild place! Why, you can't hear a sound but the water!”
Almost as he spoke he bounded from the spot where he was standing, and ran a few yards in alarm.
For from somewhere unseen and high above, there was a sudden roar, a terrific crash, then a rus.h.i.+ng sound, followed by a dead silence of a few seconds, and then the earth seemed to receive a quivering blow, resulting in a boom like that of some monstrous gun, and the noise now ran up the valley, vibrating from side to side, till it died away in a low moan.
The boy looked wildly from one to the other, to see that his uncle was quite unmoved and that the guide was smiling at him.
”Then that was thunder?” he said inquiringly.
”No; a big piece of rock split off and fell,” replied the guide.
”Is there no danger?”
”It would have been dangerous if we had been there.”
”But where is 'there'?”
”Up yonder,” said the guide, pointing over the pine-wood toward the top of the wall of rock, a perpendicular precipice fully three thousand feet in height. ”The rock split off up the mountain somewhere, rushed down, and then fell.”
”Can we see?”
”Oh yes; I could find the place,” said the guide, looking at Dale.
”No, no: we will go on,” said the latter. ”It would take us two or three hours. That sort of thing is often going on out here, Saxe.”
”But why did it fall? Is any one blasting rock over there?”
”Yes, Nature: blasting with cold and heat.”
Saxe looked at him inquiringly.
”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 ma.s.s 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.”