THE PRIMEVAL AMERICAN COXTIXENT. 233 



Connecticut, almost all of Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts, 

 with some slight exceptions, where islands of later rock occur, as 

 southwest from Boston and about Lowell. Nearly all New Hamp- 

 shire is covered by it, and in Canada it forms another strip parallel 

 to the first, while eastward it constitutes the surface rock of much 

 of Maine, wherein, at last, it breaks up into scattered patches, lying 

 like Titanic stepping-stones, from Augusta northward to the desolate 

 horn of Newfoundland. One of these districts surrounds Mount Ka- 

 tahdin ; another, in a long, easterly-deflected strip of land, runs from 

 Mount Desert northward to Chaleur Bay, New Brunswick ; while from 

 Machias Bay a third streams northward in a narrow ribbon. 



Separated areas are found along the southern shore of Newfound- 

 land and upon Cape Breton Island. 



In the United States four other extensive archcean territories exist 

 east of 95 west longitude ; one in the Adirondack region, embracing 

 the immense northern park of New York as far north as Malone, and 

 stretching southward almost to Saratoga Springs, bordered by the 

 State line, and, linking, through a narrow aperture between surfaces of 

 subsequent strata, with the enormous reaches of azoic land which form 

 Quebec and Ontario Provinces, it merges into two lateral expansions, 

 on one side into the limitless highlands of Labrador, on the other into 

 the ridges, valleys, and plateaus of the lake country northward to the 

 Arctic Circle. 



The second area is in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, embracing 

 the Marquette region, famous for its ores. The third is a neighboring 

 and related province in eastern Minnesota, from the South Bend on 

 the Minnesota River, widening northward and uniting with the Cana- 

 dian area about the Rainy Lake region. The fourth, a diminutive 

 outlier, comprises the Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob country in south- 

 east Missouri. 



These large spaces of arch^ean rock represent the floor-layers, as 

 now exposed in the eastern United States, of the continent's super- 

 structure. In these parts of our country they form the surface-rock, 

 and whether they have been always raised beyond the reach of sedi- 

 mentary deposit or have been scoured and relieved by frost and flood 

 of superincumbent strata, whether their present extent is conterminous 

 with their limits, as once revealed above the level of primeval seas, or 

 whether shrunken bj subsidence and partially obliterated by later 

 formations, they are at any rate outcrops of the vast bedding on which 

 ocean and continent alike repose. But when we examine these aged 

 stones we find that they themselves appear as the cemented residues 

 and stratified deposits formed from some yet preexistent firmament of 

 land. In serial bands, conforming to each other, as book lies against 

 book, we find limestone, slates, sandstones, quartzites, schists, and 

 gneiss, and we know now that these regular layers, hard, distinct, and 

 characterized by color, constituents, and adventitious minerals, were 



