OBLITERATED CONTINENTS. 141 



plants and highest animals have diverged into other parts 

 of the world. 



But let us return now to America. On our northwest 

 coast we reach a point within 39 miles of Asia. Behring's 

 strait, which separates the two continents, is a channel 

 geologically modern. There was a time when an isthmus 

 connected the lands now dissevered by a strait. America 

 was then, like Africa, the prolongation of Asia. Over this 

 isthmus traveled the Hairy Mammoth from Siberia, and 

 left his teeth and bones all the way from Asia to the Gulf 

 of Mexico. Over this isthmus came the Mongoloid man, 

 who settled America, and developed the Mexican and Yu- 

 catese and Peruvian civilizations; and, in other regions, 

 became the red Indian, the Eskimo, and the Aleut. Yet 

 we have evidences of a wider communication between Asia 

 and America. The whole of Beh ring's sea is formed of 

 shallow water. On its southern boundary we find a pre- 

 cipitous descent into the bed of the great Pacific. Here 

 is another continental stump. Here is another telegraphic 

 plateau. May the time soon arrive when human enter- 

 prise will take nature's hint and reunite the mother land 

 with our own. But there are the Aleutian islands; what 

 means that wonderful chain arching from the Alaskan 

 point across the north Pacific to Japan? Are not these 

 the vestiges of the mountain barrier which bounded the 

 ancient continent of the north? What are these volcanic 

 islands but the smoking chimney-tops of another Andes, 

 sunken in the watery depths? 



These are the relics of continents which have disap- 

 peared. Their substance has entered into the upbuilding 

 of other lands, as the pyramids have yielded material for 

 the construction of modern cities. There rise the Hinia- 



