CHAPTER VIII 



A SEASHORE ONE MILE UP 



Like all American specialists in Haiti, the 

 geologists have done their work well. The island 

 shows signs of great volcanic activity, in full swing 

 perhaps one hundred million years ago. Actual 

 outbreaks of lava, although isolated and local, 

 have been identified with Upper Cretaceous and 

 Middle Eocene, say sixty millions of years before 

 I write these words. At this same period a shallow 

 sea covered part of the republic, and in the Late 

 Eocene it was greater in extent, showing remains of 

 one-celled animals and corals rather closely related 

 to former Mediterranean species. Around thirty 

 millions of years back, there was a shallow sea so 

 extensive that it covered most of the island, — a 

 Miocene sea with mighty coral reefs and snails of 

 groups still living in these West Indian waters. 

 This covered the Cul-de-Sac Valley and Port-au- 

 Prince and lasted until comparatively recent 

 times, perhaps within a million years of 1928. 



Toward the end of the Miocene, only a score of 

 million years ago, occurred the lifting, crumpling 

 and folding of the Haitian Mountains which out- 

 line the chief modern features. It was during this 



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