514 THE GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ. 



temporaueously with the g-laciatiou of North America, Europe, and portions 

 of the southern hemisphere. Within the same time the great table-land of 

 Thibet^ and much of central and northwestern Asia have been uplifted; the 

 tract extending from the Black and Caspian seas northeast to the Arctic 

 Ocean has risen to form a land surface; and the deep basin of Lake Baikal 

 probably has been formed in connection Avith these crustal movements. 

 Accompanving the formation of the Himalaj-as, there has been doubtless 

 much disturbance by faults, local uplifts, and here and there plication of 

 strata along the whole complex east to northwest and west mountain sys- 

 tem of Oceanica, Asia, Europe, and northern Africa, from New Guinea, the 

 Sunda Islands, Anam, and Siam, to the Caucasus, Carpathians, Balkans, 

 Apennines, Alps, Pyrenees, and Atlas mountains, stretching quite across 

 the Eastern Hemisphere; Init the greater part of the relief from the previ- 

 ously existing deformation of the earth was doubtless along the central part 

 of the belt, in the colossal Himalayan range. In like manner the North 

 American Cordilleras and the Andes, reaching in one continuous moun- 

 tain system from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, have experienced within 

 the same period great disturbances, as already noted, similar to those of the 

 mountains of southern Europe and the adjacent part of Africa. With this 

 American orographic belt is also probably to be associated the mountain 

 system, consisting largely of volcanoes now active, which forms the Aleutian 

 Islands, Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands, Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, 

 Borneo, and Celebes, lying nearly in the same great circle with the Andes 

 and Rocky mountains, and with them continuous in an arc of about 240'^. 

 Along two lines transverse to each other, one having an extent of half and 

 the other of two-thirds of the earth's circumference, the great lateral pres- 

 sures of the earth's crust which probably caused the elevation and glaciation 

 of extensive areas during the Pleistocene period have been relieved by 

 plication, faults, and uplifts in the processes of the formation of mountain 

 ranges. 



Asia had no extensive ice-sheet like those of Europe and North Amer- 

 ica, probably because a sufficient elevation was not attained there until the 

 Himalayas and Thibet were viplifted in the Glacial period. The southern 



"Ibid., Part II, pp. 585, 586, 669-672. 



