310 The supposed recent Origin of' America refuted. 



riodically. At present physical disorder and political tranquili- 

 ty reign in the New Continent, while in the Old, the discords of 

 the nations drive men to seek for rest in the bosom of nature. 

 Perhaps a time will come when one part of the world will take 

 the place of the other in this singular contrast between physical 

 and moral energy. Volcanoes rest for ages, before they are 

 again hghted up. The opinion that, in the older regions, there 

 ought to reign a certain peace in nature, is founded merely up- 

 on a play of our imagination. One side of our planet can never 

 be older than the other. The islands produced by volcanoes, 

 such as the Azores, or gradually formed by mollusca, like many 

 islands of the Pacific Ocean, are in general more recent than the 

 granite masses of the central chain of Europe. A country of 

 small extent, like Bohemia, and several valleys of the moon, 

 circularly inclosed by mountains, may long remain covered with 

 water, in consequence of partial inundations, and form a lake. 

 After the waters have been entirely drained oif, the name of 

 newly-formed land might by metaphor be given to this, where 

 vegetation would establish itself by degrees. But an aquatic 

 envelope, such as the geologist figures to himself at the period 

 of the formation of the secondary mountains, can only be sup- 

 posed, consistently with the laws of hydrostatics, as existing at 

 once in all parts of the world, and in all climates. The sea 

 could not remain on the vast plains of the Oronocco and Ama- 

 zon, without, at the same time, ravaging the countries situated 

 around the Baltic. The concatenation and identity of the se- 

 condary strata near Carracas, in Thuringia, and in Lower 

 Egypt, prove, as I have shewn in my Geological Picture of 

 South America, that this great operation of nature has been per- 

 form^ at the same period over the whole earth — Humboldt, 

 Tableau de la Nature, tom. i. p. 133-139. 



