BURIED LAXDS. 



^9 



''the thoughts of God in the sky," so the geologist wlio reads to 

 us from the book of the rocks, seems, like Moses upon Sinai, to 

 commune Avith Jehovah and to have his lips hallowed with a 

 divine inspiration. 



To man's inquiring tliouglit, the ocean responds only in dirge- 

 like harmonies. In its mystic and profound depths, during tlie 

 long and silent ages, the sea has kept its secrets well. But in 

 our own time — thanks to a Darwin, a Dana, a Marsh, and an 

 Agassiz — the key of the known has unlocked many of the m3^s- 

 teries of the unknown, and in these rocky isles we now behold 

 the head-stones of lands that tlie sea engulfed ! 



Prof. Dana, in his work upon Corals and Coral Islands, after 

 alluding to "the northern continental upward movements whicli 

 introduced the glacial era," and stating that ''wliilo the earth's 

 crust was arching upAvard"at tlic nortli, ''it may have been 

 bending downward over the vast central area of the great ocean," 

 adds: 



"Tlie changes Avhich took place, contemporaneously, in the 

 Atlantic tropics, are very imperfectly recorded. Tlie Bahamas 

 show by their form and i)osition that tliey cover a submerged 

 land of large area, stretcliing over six hundred miles from north- 

 west to south-east. The long line of reefs, and the Florida 

 keys, trending far away from Southern Floi-ida, arc evidence 

 that this Florida region participated in the downward movement, 

 though to a less extent than the Bahamas. Again, the islands 

 of the West Indies diminish in size to the eastward, being (juite 

 small in the long line that looks out upon the broad ocean, just 

 as if the subsidence increased in tliat direction. Finally, the 

 Atlantic beyond is water only, as if it had .been made a blank ])y 

 the sinking of the lands." 



•1* 't* -P ^i ^ •T* T« 



"The peninsula of Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas, look, as 



