Publisher's Synopsis
Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and mother in a cottage builton a mountain, and he worked with his father inside the mountain.A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of theirstrangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains. But thensomehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hatedthem-and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them withadmiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of the earth that haveescaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is agreat wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot, melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps theearth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight-that is what it is.Now think: out of that cauldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it couldget room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped-up and away, and therethey stand in the cool, cold sky-mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonderthat there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness-forwhere the light has nothing to shine upon, much the same as darkness-from the heat, from theendless tumult of boiling unrest-up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and thecold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of theglaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, themoon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for thewind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that arestudying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the glaciers fresh born.Think, too, of the change in their own substance-no longer molten and soft, heaving andglowing, but hard and shining and cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing init, and the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its sides, like hair toclothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of itsarmour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down thevalleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipicesdown which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in theglaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ic