124 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



continent. Around its bases have been wrapped layer upon 

 layer of accumulating sediments, till the ocean has been 

 banished from a broad belt of his ancient dominion. But 

 this, instead of being the real nucleus of the American 

 continent, is but the vestige of that nucleus. How vastly 

 inferior in height and breadth, and especially in north- 

 eastward prolongation to that primordial continent whose 

 crumbling shores and denuded slopes afforded material 

 for the broad sheets of Silurian, Devonian and Carbon- 

 iferous strata which stretch a thousand miles in every di- 

 rection! Where lay the dissolving lands which furnished 

 substance for the ponderous Alleghanies? It must be 

 that vast areas have disappeared from view. Though I 

 believe, with Dana, that the modern continents were out- 

 lined in primeval time, and the ocean still reposes in his 

 ancient bed, we must not be too exact in the enuncia- 

 tion of our faith. The Aleutian Islands, stretching from 

 Alaska across the North Pacific, are but the protruding 

 vertebrae of an eroded ancient ridge which welded the Ori- 

 ent to the Occident. New England, Gaspe, the Labrador 

 elbow, these all reach toward the site of an obliterated 

 prolongation, a friendly arm of the American conti- 

 nent stretched out to greet the continental arm of Europe 

 extended from the British Archipelago toward America. 

 Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward's, Anticosti, 

 these are but the highest summits of that wasted ridge, 

 as Ireland and Great Britain are the relics of the ridge 

 responsive to this upon the European side. The subma- 

 rine plateau, along whose back creeps the great Atlantic 

 cable, though sunken ten thousand feet beneath the reach 

 of further denudation, is but the stump of an ancient 

 continent that has been gnawed to the very foundations. 



