THE DIVINE ABYSS 



geology in the East as in the West, did I say? Not 

 as much visible geology, not as much by many 

 chapters of earth history, not as much by all the 

 later formations, by most of the Mesozoic and Ter- 

 tiary deposits. The vast series of sedimentary rocks 

 since the Carboniferous age, to say nothing of the 

 volcanic, that make up these periods, are largely 

 wanting east of the Mississippi, except in New 

 Jersey and in some of the Gulf States. They are 

 recent. They are like the history of our own period 

 compared with that of Egypt and Judea. It is 

 mainly these later formations — the Permian, the 

 Jurassic, the Triassic, the Cretaceous, the Eocene, 

 — that give the prevailing features to the South- 

 western landscape that so astonish Eastern eyes. 

 From them come most of the petrified remains of 

 that great army of extinct reptiles and mammals — 

 the three-toed horse, the sabre-toothed tiger, the 

 brontosaurus, the fin-backed lizard, the imperial 

 mammoth, the various dinosaurs, some of them 

 gigantic in form and fearful in aspect — that of late 

 years have appeared in our museums and that throw 

 so much light upon the history of the animal life of 

 the globe. Most of the sedimentary rocks of New 

 York and New England were laid down before these 

 creatures existed. 



Now I am not going to write an essay on the geo- 

 logy of the West, for I really have little first-hand 

 knowledge upon that subject, but I would indicate 



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