The First Book of the Earth

Did you ever look at a map made especially to show the rivers and mountains, the lakes and plains—the “up-hills and down-dales” of our land? It is called a relief map, and it is quite different from the usual map that shows countries and cities. On it you can really see the hills rising from the flat land. And you can see the rivers beginning as narrow streams and growing wider and wider as they run toward the sea. Some of the land is spotted all over with lakes, large and small. Other parts of the country, the deserts, have no waterways at all.

Suppose someone were to ask you to make a quick, very rough map something like this, showing the little hills and valleys, the brooks and ponds of your own small neighborhood. You could probably do it from memory.

“How do you know that’s the way it is, without even looking?” a friend might ask.

“Why, that’s the way it’s always been. I’ve climbed that hill dozens of times,” you might possibly answer, pointing to a hill you have made on your map.

Yet all those hills and valleys, brooks and ponds, and even the earth itself, had a beginning. Did you ever stop to wonder how they all happened to be exactly as they are? Why are there mountains on one part of our earth, plains on another, oceans in another? Why are there rocks, lakes, swamps, and caves?