The vapor alone that is absorbed in the air from the sea is more than sufficient to feed all the rivers on the face of the earth.

Mountains, by their formation, arrest these vapors, collect them in a hole here and in a cavern there, and permit them to filter by a million of threads from rock to rock, fertilizing the land and nourishing the rivers that intersect it.

If, therefore, you were to suppress the Alps that rise between France and Italy, you would, at the same time, extinguish the Rhone and the Po." "It would be a pity to do that," said Jack; "there was a time though when there were no Pyrenees." "That must have been, then, at a period prior to the formation of granite, which is esteemed the oldest of rocks." "No such thing," insisted Jack; "it was so late as 1713, when, by the peace of Utrecht, the crown of Spain was secured to the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV." "Howsomever," remarked Willis, "all the mariners in the French fleet could not convince me that the Pyrenean mountains are only a hundred years old." "My brother is only speaking metaphorically," said Fritz; "when the crown of Spain was assigned to the Duke of Anjou, his grandfather said--_Qu il n'y avait plus de Pyrenees_.

He meant by that simply, that France and Spain being governed by the same prince, the moral barrier between them existed no longer.

The formidable mountains still stood for all that, and he who removes them would certainly be possessed of extraordinary power." "I am always putting my foot in it," said Willis, "when the yarn is about the land; let us talk of the sea for a bit.