the glaciers fresh born.

Think, too, of the change in their own substance - no longer molten
and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold.
Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the
birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of
its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the
valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its
armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and
the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and
green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices
down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful
gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound
lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of
ice.

All this outside the mountain! But the inside, who shall tell what
lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles
thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin
or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones - perhaps a brook,
with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaselessly, cold and
babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes,
or over a gravel of which some of the stones arc rubies and
emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires - who can tell? - and
whoever can't tell is free to think - all waiting to flash, waiting
for millions of ages - ever since the earth flew off from the sun,
a great blot of fire, and began to cool.

Then there are caverns full of water, numbingly cold, fiercely hot
- hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water