THE OLD AGE OF CONTINENTS. 125 



It is interesting to reflect that advancing civilization has 

 at last reestablished the amicable intercommunication 

 of two continents which had been embraced, perhaps, in 

 the ordinations of primeval time. 



Such are the reminiscences of a wasted continent of 

 which the Laurentide nucleus is but a trace. We stand 

 upon this venerable relic of long- forgotten lands, and the 

 current of time sweeps by, bearing upon its dark bosom 

 the wrecks of other continents born of earthquake and 

 flood in the later ages of terrestrial history. But though 

 we intend to rescue from oblivion the tales inscribed upon 

 these disappearing ruins, thought lingers fondly and rev- 

 erently and inquiringly around the scorched and beaten 

 brow of this Laurentide Ridge. What was its mother? 

 And where was its birth-place? These ancient granites 

 and thickly- bedded gneisses, thrice baked and crystal- 

 lized by the fiery ordeals through which they have passed, 

 bear, nevertheless, the ineffaceable traces of old ocean's 

 work. Here are the lines of sediment which betray the 

 parentage of these hardened and storm-beaten rocks. 

 Back into another cycle of eternity imagination plunges 

 in search of that more ancient land that was recon- 

 structed in this " primordial " ridge. To say that it did 

 not exist is to say that old ocean could pile up masonry 

 without a supply of bricks and mortar. In the realm 

 of thought that earlier land looms up, but its bounds 

 and borders are obscured by the overhanging fogs which 

 haunt the early twilight of time. The skies themselves 

 are strange, and our science gropes for the data which 

 shall fix the latitude and longitude of this undiscovered 

 country. Was it still another pile of rocks reared by the 

 labors of water? Or was it a mass of ancient slag, the 



