84 GEOLOGY. 



which, from their common civilization, have so much in- 

 tercourse with each other. It would be a great bar to 

 this intercourse to have so wide an ocean as the Pacific 

 lying between America and Europe. I have spoken of 

 the two grand masses of land as extending from the arc- 

 tic xegion down into the southern hemisphere ; but ob- 

 serve that it is not an unbroken extension of land. By 

 an arrangement of the waters, as noticed by Professor 

 Guyot, there is a band of water from east to west cut- 

 ting the land in two almost completely so nearly that 

 it requires only two short canals to be made by man to 

 finish the communication. This belt is composed of the 

 two oceans, the Mexican Ocean in the western hemi- 

 sphere, and the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the 

 seas of the East Indies in the eastern. You can readily 

 see how this arrangement promotes largely the inter- 

 course by water throughout the earth, and how import- 

 ant it is that those parts of the plan which the Creator 

 has purposely left to the ingenuity and enterprise of man 

 should be carried into execution. 



162. Arrangement of Mountains Mountains are not 

 scattered about here and there in a confused manner, 

 but there is an obvious general plan in their arrange- 

 ment. They are to a great extent placed in chains or 

 ranges, as you see in the Rocky Mountains, the Andes, 

 the Appalachians, the Pyrenees, the Urals, the Himala- 

 yas, etc. Perhaps the most remarkable fact about these 

 mountain chains is that they are so arranged as to in- 

 close large basins of land on the continents. Thus in 

 North America the immense basin watered by the Mis- 

 sissippi and other rivers lies between the great ranges 

 of mountains on the east and the west. It is this basin 

 arrangement, with great mountain walls, that is the 

 grand characteristic of a continent in distinction from 

 an island. Notice another great fact in the arrange- 

 ment. The highest mountains are placed on that side 

 of the continent which is toward the broadest ocean. 



