264 WALKS AND TALKS. 



XL/VI. THE THROES OR THE CONTINENT. 



HOW THE LAND GREW. 



WHILE the great plan of organic life was unfolding itself, 

 the continental theater of its exhibition underwent a process 

 of expansion which no less reveals a plan, and no less awakens 

 our interest and admiration. By what stages the region east 

 of the Great Plains acquired its form and dimensions, has 

 long been understood ; but the method of the building of the 

 western half has only been Jbrought to light through the re- 

 cent researches of Hayden and Meek, King and Wheeler, 

 Powell and Dutton, Gilbert and Hague, Whitney and Gabb, 

 and their compeers and collaborators. 



East of the Great Plains, rose first a long, hook-shaped 

 ridge, with its longer branch stretching from the north shores 

 of the Upper Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, in the region be- 

 tween Hudson's Bay and McKenzie's River; while the shorter 

 branch extended northeastward as far as the coast of Labrador. 

 Not improbably this branch stretched across the North At- 

 lantic to the British Islands and Scandinavia. This primitive 

 area I have styled the Great Northern Land. It is also known 

 as the Laurentian area a name which applies properly only 

 to the portion sustaining some contiguity to the St. Lawrence. 



Along the low seaboard region east of the Appalachians, 

 stretches, from Maine to Alabama, the stump of an ancient 

 mountain range which appears to have been of the same age. 

 The stump only, I say, for the tooth of time has gnawed it 

 nearly level with the sea, and the old material has been re- 

 built in the foundations of later lands. This was the great 

 Seaboard Land. 



West of the Great Plains, as we now understand, stretched 

 another long belt of land, which was destined eventually, to 

 be consolidated with the eastern lands, to form the continent. 

 In width, it extended originally that is, at the beginning 

 of the Palaeozoic JEon, from the eastern bases of the Rocky 

 Mountains to western Nevada probably seven hundred and 

 fifty miles; in length, it stretched far northward and south- 



