255 



1 have not yet had an opportunity to look for other geological 

 reports of the Antilles. I suppose, however, that this is the same 

 limestone formation, which the negroes in Guadaloupe very ap- 

 propriately call " God's masonry," and which is so evidently a 

 formation of modern time, since it encloses instruments made by 

 man, and even those once celebrated, supposed fossil human skel- 

 etons. 



If we want a name for the Haytian limestone described above, 

 we might call it the modern " Coral-rag," for if it had not been for 

 the difference in the fossil remains, I should have recognized it as 

 exactly the same limestone, which forms those steep, porous rocks 

 of the so-called rough Alps of Southern Germany, between the 

 Danube and Rhine. Indeed, it was not a slight pleasure for me to 

 see here clearly, how those old rocks of my home must have been 

 formed in their time, millions of years. ago, when Southern Ger- 

 many was yet an island not much larger than Hayti, having a 

 wax-m climate, and surrounded by a warm ocean ; and presenting, 

 all along the coast, the same banks of corals ; and in the cavities 

 of these rocks the cidarites, which abounded then, and of which I 

 found one species alive in Hayti. But this also is so scarce as 

 to show that its days have passed. 



II. THE SEA OF NORTHERN HAYTI. 



Beyond the formation of the coast there are some features con- 

 nected with the sea, which borders upon the northern side of that 

 island, which are of the greatest importance to its animal and 

 vegetable life. 



1. The great respiration of the ocean, the ebbing and flowing of 

 the tide, hardly touches that coast. Neither the native fishermen 

 along the coast, nor the American captains in the harbor speak 

 of high and low water there. The great tide wave is not only 

 broken by the wall of islands in front of the Mexican Gulf, but, 

 perhaps, is even neutralized by a continual current, which runs 

 from east to west all along the northern shore of Hayti. 



the late Prof. Adams, tells me that he found this limestone, particulai-ly in the 

 northern part of that island. He noticed it for its peculiar richness in Cyclos- 

 tomas, which live in the cavities. 



2 See Humboldt's Kosmos, I. p. 260. 



