74 ROMANCE OF GEOLOGY 



During my first walk, I noted that the soil was day, with 

 deposits of sea-sand here and there ; and more or less embedded 

 in the clay were smooth granite and syenite boulders, some of 

 immense size. I heard, too. at the hotel, that in sinking for wells 

 the workmen had to dig through the clay till they came to a bed 

 of sand and gravel. Evidently the peninsula of Vancouver was 

 covered with boulder clay, and I saw before me the debris left by 

 a great glacier. How great this glacier had been I had no idea, 

 till I read, in the Geological Reports of Canada, the paper by 

 Dr. George Dawson, on the Geology of British Columbia. The 

 Straits of Georgia, between the Mainland and Vancouver Island, 

 are about the width of the sea between England and Ireland and 

 these straits were once filled by a stupendous glacier, which has 

 left its traces on the rocks of both sides of the Channel. Imagine 

 a glacier, from seventy-six to eighty miles wide, ploughing its way 

 along till it found, both to the North and South, an outlet to 

 the Pacific. 



In the first glacial age, a pall of ice covered all but the highest 

 peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Five thousand feet above the 

 present level of the sea, the glaciers bore with them huge rocks, 

 which are left behind as mute witnesses of the giant force of ice. 

 The depressions and elevations of the land have been very great 

 in this region. The mountains of Vancouver Island and of the 

 Queen Charlotte Islands, further North, are the unsubmerged 

 portions of a sunken mountain range, which Dr. Dawson says 

 may " properly be considered the bordering range of the Conti- 

 nent, as beyond it, after a sub-marine plateau of inconsiderable 

 width, the bottom shelves very rapidly run down to the abyssal 

 depths of the Pacific." This range is unsubmerged in Washington 

 Territory. 



From the romance of Geology as caused by the action of 

 water, I turn next to the romance of Geology caused by the action 

 of fire. I had been much puzzled in hearing of anthracite coal, 

 ordinary bituminous coal and lignite being found within short 

 distances of each other. I thought I knew that anthracite 

 was characteristic of the more ancient rock formations, and lignite 

 of the new. How was it that they were found so close together ? 

 In turning again to the Geological Surv^ey, I found the coal-bearing 



