GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 



INTERCONTINENTAL SEAS. 



M. ROCHAT, **Comptes Rendus," March 30, 1868, draws atten- 

 tion to one of the most important and interesting analogies be- 

 tween the Old and New World, in the fact that the continents in 

 both are deeply indented by a large interior sea, the Old World by 

 the Indian Ocean and the New by the Gulf of Mexico. Each of 

 these seas is placed in the very centre of the continent, in the 

 direction of its length and in its hottest part ; the Indian Ocean is 

 traversed in the middle by the equator, the Gulf of Mexico by the 

 Tropic of Cancer. Each is large in proportion to the extent of the 

 continent which it bounds, the Asiatic being at least twice as vast 

 as the American ; each has the form of a semicircle or a pyramid 

 with truncated apex, the base turned toward the ocean ; both 

 toward the apex have two great peninsulas, one Honduras and 

 Yucatan, the other India and Chin-India; these two peninsulas 

 separate three gulfs, namely, Mosquito, Honduras, and Cam- 

 peachy; and Oman, Bengal, and China. Both contain numerous 

 large and small islands, and have been the theatre of grand vol- 

 canic phenomena ; and both are traversed by regular winds, on 

 one side the monsoons, on the other the trade Avinds. The differ- 

 ences which certainly exist relate only to minor details. 



These seas not only render possible communication between 

 these countries and the ocean, but moderate the tropical heat 

 which otherwise would be intolerable in the centre of the conti- 

 nents, and are the source of the necessary rains and fertilizing 

 rivers, which render the East Indies and the Mississippi Valley the 

 most productive regions of the earth. 



GEOGRAPHY OF ALASKA. 



According to Mr. W. H. Dall, in a paper read before the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, in most of the maps of North Ameri- 

 ca the Rocky Mountain range is represented as extending in a 

 straight line to the Northern Ocean. This is an error. About 

 latitude 64°, the mountains tend to the westward and meet the 

 coast range in a confused, high, rolling country, where the 

 distinctive characters of both ranges are lost. They soon merge, 

 however, in one lofty volcanic range, extending tirst westward 

 and then southward, and forming the backbone of the penin- 

 sula of Alaska. To the northward, between the Mackenzie and 

 Porcupine Rivers, the country is filled with low, rolling hills, but 

 along the northern coast, west of the Mackenzie River, a sepa- 



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