3 



FIRE, ROCK, AND SEA 



THE great circular sweep of the Ocean River — which in- 

 cludes for us the Equatorial Current, the Gulf Stream, 

 the eastgoing Atlantic drift, the north-wending Irminger Cur- 

 rent, and the southerly Canary Current — is constrained by 

 river beds and banks sculptured by titanic forces that began 

 their work millions of years ago before ever water flowed. The 

 hand of creation, when a semimolten and elastic globe cooled 

 into a crust, formed the confines and the deep courses of the 

 Ocean River — unlike the beds of some great land streams 

 which have carved their own way by constant erosion from the 

 highlands to the sea. The ocean bed is vastly older than the 

 soil we live on today. It may have been roughly blocked out 

 even before the torrential rains of the infant earth poured 

 ceaselessly on what had till then been a dry surface of heated 

 rock. 



In order to understand the beginnings of the Atlantic basin 

 we must therefore know something about the great cosmic 

 convulsions which ended in the birth of a new earth planet. 

 We do know a good deal about this, by many and curious 

 deductions from the study of heavenly bodies and the chemi- 

 cal and physical study of the earth itself. It is not necessary to 

 have been an eyewitness. The methods of scientific inquiry 

 outrank the best detective fiction; but unlike the neat conclu- 



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