44 AN OUTLINE OF THE 



greatly embarrassing the flow of the streams that again 

 took possession of the country, frequently turning them 

 aside from their former courses, and often holding them 

 back to form lakes. 



The rolling lowland over which the mountainous hills 

 rise is not, like the coastal lowlands of our southern 

 States, a former sea-bottom recently emerged, and still 

 for the most part as smooth as it was when under water. 

 The lowland is low, not because the country was never 

 built up to a greater height, but in spite of having been 

 long ago strongly uplifted in disorderly form. The low- 

 land is low because the whole region has been worn down 

 from its high estate by long continued denudation. It 

 lias slowly wasted away under the ceaseless attack of the 

 atmosphere. Its relief is now generally of moderate meas- 

 ure because, before the lowland was tilted into its present 

 southward inclination, it had been worn down nearly to the 

 level of the sea of that time, and only the more resistant 

 rock structures then still withstood denudation success- 

 fully enough to hold up their heads as residual moun- 

 tains and hills. There is every reason to believe that even 

 the residual mountains were once more lofty than they 

 are now; that the whole region was once deformed and 

 upheaved into a rugged highland; but these ancient fea- 

 tures have been subdued and almost lost in the denudation 

 of advancing old age. The existing mountains must there- 

 fore be regarded not so much as points of excessive upheaval, 

 but as points where the wasting of the land has been 

 retarded. The mountain range of Mount Desert is one 

 of the most stubborn survivors of the ancient highland. 

 The beauty of the Island as seen from the sea, unpar- 

 alleled along our whole Atlantic coast, is owing to its 

 persistent retention of a good share of the height which 

 this whole region once had, but which its surroundings 

 have lost. 



