284 BULLETIN OF THE 
ever, that during the Cretaceous, at the close of the Comanche epoch, 
great orogenic forces were active, and that the strike of their corruga- 
tions constantly bent eastward until in the latitude of Southern Mexico 
they were in the direction of this old Antillean axis, and that the latter 
may have been part of the protuberances marking this line of great 
orogenic movement, which in general was peripheral or concentric to 
the old Appalachian land. 
How great an area was involved in the upper Cretaceous atl Tertiary 
subsidences it is difficult to say. No attempt has been made to trace 
the former event in the Antilles. The latter certainly included all the 
great Antilles, —a region fifteen hundred miles in length from east to 
west, — and the Atlantic and Gulf margins of the North and South 
American continents, and probably all the isthmian region, which was 
possibly land in Upper Cretaceous time, again connecting the Gulf of 
Mexico. , 
One of the misty epochs in Cuban history is that of the folding and 
disturbance at the close of the Tertiary, and I can only suggest that it 
belongs with the orogenic phenomena which enveloped or overlapped 
the periphery of the older Mesozoic Cordilleran region, in Central Amer- 
ica, and in northern South America. This involved the Tertiary forma- 
tions of the other Autilles, but there is no trace of it along the northern 
periphery of the Gulf of Mexico. 
I do not mean to say that these vast and apparently uniform regional 
elevations which have taken place since the earlier folding of the Mio- 
cene limestones were unaccompanied by faults or warping, but these are 
nowhere prominently apparent, and their importance is secondary to the 
former, which were not local, but general or epeirogenic in character, 
and involved the uplifting of the whole island epproztnately, uniformly, 
and synchronously. 
That this uplifting was confined to Cuba alone of the Antilles, it 
would be prepostorous to suppose, and we can in no way avoid the con- 
clusion that it represents only a small portion of a great regional uplift, 
including much of the surrounding area of the Mexican and Caribbean 
gulfs. The adjacent islands must have been involved in these great 
regional movements, the periphery of which must have been some dis- 
tance from the present island, but I do not allege that the islands were 
thereby connected. 
Whether the movements can ultimately be correlated with those of 
the surrounding American coasts, or the topographic irregularities of 
the surrounding ocean floor, is a question which I shall not attempt to 
