208 THE STORY OF THE MOUNTAINS
siding again beneath the waters, and finally, under
‘titanic lateral pressure and crustal compression, corrugating into mighty folds, while vast masses of granite well up from below, force their way through, lift up the pre-existing rocks and toss themselves upward into the final climax of the’ great peaks which distinguish the Himalaya from every other range of mountains in the world.
For millions of years a perpetual struggle has been going on between the inherent earth forces pressing upward and the opposing forces of denuda- tion wearing away the surface. Sometimes the internal forces are in commotion, or the contracting crust of the earth finds some weak spot and crumples upward, and the mountains win. A period of internal quiescence follows, and the rain and snow, the frost and heat, gain the victory, and wear down the proudest mountains—as they have worn away the snowy glacier mountains which once stood in Rajputana.
Of all this wonderful past the mountains them- selves bear irrefutable evidence. Near Rampur, on the road into Kashmir, are bold cliffs of lime- stone, a rock which is merely the accumulation of the relics of generations of minute marine shell-
