File:Frost and fire - natural engines, tool-marks and chips - with sketches taken at home and abroad by a traveller (1863) (14781260661).jpg

Identifier: frostfirenatural03camp (find matches)
Title: Frost & fire : natural engines, tool-marks & chips : with sketches taken at home and abroad by a traveller
Year: 1863 (1860s)
Authors: Campbell, J. F. (John Francis), 1822-1885
Subjects: Glaciers Meteorology Geology
Publisher: Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas
Contributing Library: National Library of Scotland
Digitizing Sponsor: National Library of Scotland

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k of denudation was made upon an igneoussurface, the cooling of the crust is a point in time from whichto reckon. At Thing-valla is a river called the Oxera, which,in ordinary weather, is about the size of an English mill-stream. The water woidd pass through one of the large ironpipes which carry Thames water to London. The Oxera fallsover a large cliff into a rift. There can be no doubt that thecliff over which the stream now falls was formed by the fallingaway of the opposite side of the rift, and that the cliffs and therocks in the valley were as fluid as water in the river at sometime. To see the place is to l)e convinced of these facts. TheOxera began to fall over this clift, and denudation began atthe edge, after the lava cooled, and after it split. There is nowater-mark on the opposite cliff, so the stream most probaljlyliegan to flow in its present channel when the bottom of thevalley sank, and the plain l)ecame a slope. The wliole surface of this lava for nuuu square miles is
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in TIME. 91 marked by certain rope-like coils, which formed while the hotfluid was curdling ; and these rise ahout two inches above thesurface. They are fire-marks. The water of the Oxera has worn the stone at the edge ofthe cliff for a breadth of about thirty yards, at the place wherewater is always flowing, unless frozen ; the channel is abouttwo feet deep, and three or four wide. Where water flowsonly during floods, the coils have not been worn away, butthey are smoothed and worn ; and near the deep channel, thelava-surface is very like that of slag which has been used tomend a road, and has been worn Ijy traffic. Specimens arecommon in Lanarkshire and other iron districts. Calculating from the angle which the sides of the rift makewith each other, and with the horizon, the beds of lava maybe about 600 feet thick, and it must have taken a long timeto cool such a mass. As it happens, the Icelandic Parliamenthave met at the Logberg, on the surface of the lava, for 800years, and there

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