But the fact is certain, that off the surface of
Wales, south of Ffestiniog a mass of solid rock as high as the Andes
has been worn down and carried bodily away; and that a few miles
south again, the peak of Arran Mowddy, which is now not two thousand
feet high, was once--either under the sea or above it--nearer ten
thousand feet.
If I am asked whither is all that enormous mass of rock--millions of
tons--gone? Where is it now? I know not. But if I dared to hazard
a guess, I should say it went to make the New Red sandstones of
England.
The New Red sandstones must have come from somewhere. The most
likely region for them to have come from is from North Wales, where,
as we know, vast masses of gritty rock have been ground off, such as
would make fine sandstones if they had the chance. So that many a
grain of sand in Chester walls was probably once blasted out of the
bowels of the earth into the old Silurian sea, and after a few
hundreds of thousands of years' repose in a Snowdonian ash-bed, was
sent eastward to build the good old city and many a good town more.
And the red marl--the great deposit of red marl which covers a wide
region of England--why should not it have come from the same quarter?
Why should it not be simply the remains of the Snowdon Slate? Mud
the slate was, and into mud it has returned.
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