Gold Mine

Начало книги

it began in the time when the world was young, in the time before man, in the time before life itself had evolved upon this planet.

the crust of the earth was still thin and soft, distorted and riven by the enormous pressures from within.

what is now the flat, compacted shield of the african continent, stable and unchanging, was a series of alps. it was range upon range of mountains, thrown up and tumbled down by the movements of the magma at great depth.

these were mountains such as man has never seen, so massive as to dwarf the himalayas, mountains of steaming rock from whose clefts and gaping wounds the molten magma trickled.

it came up from the earth's centre along the fissures and weak places in the crust, bubbling and boiling, yet cooling steadily as it neared the surface so that the least volatile minerals were deposited deeper down, but those with a lower melting point were carried to the surface.

Читать дальше →