Planed and smoothed
off as they are, the Algonkian and Archaean masses are to be submerged once
more in the ever receptive ocean. A period of subsidence occurs, and the
whole area is soon hidden under the face of the sea. But, all around these
are masses, some day to be mountain peaks, that refuse to sink again into
the sea. Then the forces of the air assail them. If they cannot be drowned,
they shall be gnawed at, smitten, cut and worried by the air, the chemicals
of the atmosphere, the storms, the rain, the hail, the frost, the snow, and
thus made to feel their insignificance. Slowly or rapidly, they yielded to
this disintegrating process, and as the rocky masses broke up, they were
washed by the rills and streams into the bed of the sea, where they soon
rested upon the tilted ends of the Algonkian strata and exposed surfaces of
the Archaean masses, waiting for them.
The Deposition of the Tonto Sandstones. The wise men tell us that this
ocean was a salt sea, and that it was quite shallow while these new
sediments were being deposited. Little by little one thousand feet of the
sediments of this epoch were washed down, so that it is very likely that
the tilted strata upon which they rested slowly sank lower and lower to
accommodate them. Then, for some reason or other, there was a rest for a
while - a few hundreds or thousands of years - and the masses of sediments
became cemented into sandstone and shale, which we call the Cambrian
formation, or the Tonto sandstone.
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