THE DRIFTING OF THE CONTINENTS^ 



By PiEKRE Tebmier 



Nothing concerning the seas or their history should fail to inter- 

 est you. The structure ^ we now occupy is a kind of temple erected 

 by an enthusiastic mariner to the glory of the ocean which he had 

 made his god; therefore, all the echoes from the mighty roar of 

 waves past and present should converge here. Yes; even from the 

 past, the most distant past; the dashing of waves breaking on 

 shores which in no way resemble our own ; the roll of waters which 

 divide an instant to engulph some great island, as fabulous Atlantis, 

 or some bit of continent, and close again with a lazy indifference 

 over so many swallowed-up treasures; the roar of the terrible tidal 

 wave, the tsuyiamis of our Japanese brothers, which has caused agita- 

 tion, undulation and trembling from the depths of the sea, and 

 which has rushed to the assault of the continental domain, overturn- 

 ing all, leveling all, mowing down the terrestrial life and its work 

 of a day; subterranean sounds from unfathomable depths, scarcely 

 to be perceived, while listening to the importunate murmur of living 

 beings and flying meteors, and which are the sighs of the earth in 

 travail, of the earth incessantly deformed, increasing or diminish- 

 ing its oceanic areas, folding the bottv n of its seas, elevating it, 

 after having folded it, then raising it above the waters as if to menace 

 the heavens, and sometimes, after having thus elevated it, dragging 

 it back into the marine depths lower than before. Sound, indeed, 

 who knows? A sound almost imperceptible, so slight, so little dif- 

 ferent from silence itself, of continents en niarche, which slowly, oh 

 very slowly, as great pontoons floating on the calm waters of a port, 

 or as giant icebergs borne by the polar currents, are drifting toward 

 the Equator. 



This is the very question we are going to consider this evening: 

 Are the continents absolutely fixed ; the one in relation to the others 

 and all in relation to the profound depths? Are they really terra 

 firma, as the sailors say when, worn out by the rolling and pitching 

 from the depths of a monsoon, they dream of the old iron ring on 

 the sun-flooded quay ? Are the outlines of the seas on the surface of 

 the planet invariable? 



Let us suppose an observer without sense of time, indifferent to its 

 duration, for whom a thousand years are as a day, were placed be- 

 yond the earth, for example, at the distance of the moon, contem- 



^ Translated by permission from Revue Scientiflque, May 10, 1924. 



2 Institut oc^anographique of Paris, founded by Prince Albeit I of Monaco. 



219 



