THE GEOLOGICAL AGEXCY OF THE WINDS. 291 



tion an eqnilibriiim, as in the Dead and Caspian Seas. But, for 

 aught we know, the water-level of the Mediterranean might, 

 before this equilibrium were attained, have to reach a stage far 

 below that of the Dead Sea level. The Lake Tadjura is now in the 

 act of attaming such an equilibrium. There are connected with 

 it the remains of a channel by which the water ran into the sea ; 

 but the sm^face of the lake is now five hundred feet below the sea- 

 level, and it is salting up. If not in the Dead Sea, do we not, in the 

 valley of this lake, find outcropping some reason for the question, 

 "What have the winds had to do with the phenomena before us ? 



554. The winds, in this sense, are geological agents of great power. 

 How, by (he winds It is not impossiblc but that they may afford us the 

 the age of certain meaus of comparius:, dhectly, o-eolo^^ical events which 



geological pheno- i . ^5' i • i -n i • i 



mena in our hemi- navo taken placc m onc hemisphere, witn geoiogical 

 pSeTwitif the age'of events in another: e. g., the tops of the Andes were 

 those in the other. ^^^^ ^^ ^Yie bottom of the soa.— WMch is the oldest 

 formation, that of the Dead Sea or the Andes ? If the former be 

 the older, then the climate of the Dead Sea must have been hygro- 

 metrically very different from what it now is. In regardmg the 

 winds as geological agents, we can no longer consider them as the 

 type of instability. We should rather treat them in the hght of 

 ancient and faithful chroniclers, which, upon being rightly con- 

 sulted, will reveal to us truths that Natm^e has written upon their 

 wings m characters as legible and endm^ing as any with which she 

 has ever engraved the history of geological events upon the tablet of 

 the rock. 



555. The waters of Lake Titicaca, which receives the drainage 

 The Andes older of the gTcat inland basin of the Andes, are only 

 as an inland water, brackish, Hot Salt. Hcuce WO may infer that this 

 lake has not been standing long enough to become briny, like the 

 waters of the Dead Sea ; consequently, it belongs to a more recent 

 period. On the other hand, it will also be interesting to hear that 

 my friend, Captain L^nch, informs me that, in his exploration 

 of the Dead Sea, he saw what he took to be the dry bed of a river 

 that once flowed from it. And thus we have two more links, stout 

 and strong, to add to the chain of circumstantial evidence going to 

 sustain the testimony of this strange and fickle witness which I 

 have called up from the sea to testily in this presence concerning 

 the works of Natm-e, and to tell us which be the older — the Andes, 

 watching the stars with their hoary heads, or the Dead Sea, 

 sleeping upon its ancient beds of crystal salt. 



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