GRKNAOA AND THE GRENADINES. 249 



winter storm when a fierce wind has swept along, 

 leaving them combed or sharply cut, suggests either 

 immense denuding, eroding floods, or upheaval. 



Were these islands once connected with the main 

 land of either continent? How often this question 

 arises in one's mind as he gazes on these mountains 

 peering above the sea ! Did they, in the language 

 of Humboldt, "belong to the Southern continent, and 

 form a part of its littoral chain," or have they been 

 upheaved from the depths of the sea? The great 

 naturalist thus refers to these islands and the various 

 theories regarding their origin : " The supposition of 

 an oceanic irruption has been the source of two other 

 hypotheses on the origin of the smaller West India 

 islands. Some geologists admit that the uninterrupted 

 chain of islands from Trinidad to Florida exhibits the 

 remains of an ancient chain of mountains. They con- 

 nect this chain sometimes with the granite of French 

 Guiana, sometimes with the calcareous mountains of 

 Paria. Others, struck with the difference of geo- 

 logical constitution between the primitive mountains 

 of the Greater and the volcanic cones of the Lesser 

 Antilles, consider the latter as having risen from the 

 bottom of the sea. In opposing the objections of some 

 celebrated naturalists, I am far from maintaining the 

 ancient contiguity of all these smaller West India 

 islands. I am rather inclined to consider them as 

 islands heaved up by fire, and ranged in that regular 

 line of which we find striking examples in so many 

 volcanic hills in Mexico and in Peru. The geological 

 constitution of the archipelago appears, from the little 

 we know respecting it, to be very similar to that of 

 the Azores and the Canary Islands. Primitive forma- 



