The Two Islands. 33 



of a mountain range. We have here the ne- 

 cessity thrust upon us of imagining 1 an origi- 

 nal, nearly level, ocean bed, lifted to the form 

 of a great upfold of the crust of the earth to 

 a height of fifteen or twenty thousand feet 

 and extending across continents. Such an 

 upfold as that includes the Alps, the Cau- 

 casus and the Himalaya mountains in one belt 

 of a continent, or the Andes, the Mexican 

 Cordilleries and the Rocky mountains in an- 

 other. 



After long ages of quiet life on our islands 

 of the Pacific, the forces of the natural world 

 commenced the work of building another of 

 these world girdles, one whose lines of prog- 

 ress were destined to pass between these is- 

 lands of our story and cast into separate and 

 dissimilar currents their subsequent history. 



A colossal sea dyke was slowly rising from 

 the bed of the ocean, extending from what we 

 call Lower California through what is now 

 Oregon and Washington to the Aleutian Is- 

 lands, a mere sea dyke for a long time, only 

 a barrier between contiguous waters; then 



