THE HUMAN SPECIES. 149 



of Cuba. All this enormous surface, from Barbadoec to Vera 

 Cruz, forming the two distinct basins of the Caribbean Sea and 

 Gulf of Mexico, presents many indications of a violent disruption 

 belonging to the present geological superficies of the earth, and 

 perhaps not remote in date from the submersion of Atlantis on 

 the African coast. A series of volcanic craters, still in violent 

 ignition, may have worked on the single mountain ridge, of no 

 great breadth of base, pressed by the unceasing action of the 

 tropical current, laboring in a gyration, which impels the Atlan- 

 tic Sea, on the north of the equator, and strengthened by the 

 trade wind, broke through the mountain barrier directly opposed 

 to it, perhaps not unaided by the collapsing of the submarine 

 galleries, or struck by some great sea wave, rushing from the 

 African or from the Azorean regions, under the impulse of a 

 mighty earthquake. On examining the Windward Islands, the 

 Grenadines, between St. Vincent's and Grenada, point out 

 where the force of the current was most violent; and the 

 rocky hills, from Tobago to beyond Curao t oa, almost perpendic- 

 ular on the north, and sloping to the south, attest its contin- 

 uity through the Caribbean Sea. 



"WEST INDIES. 



The Windward Islands are, in this view, only the remains of 

 8 vast mountain chain, still impeding the currents sufficiently 

 tn produce a very considerable difference in the sea levels 

 between their east and west coasts ; or, as they are obviously 

 checked, according to their respective localities. Thus, in the 

 port of Havana, the sea is thirty-six feet lower than at the 

 north side of Guadaloupe, according to the observations of 

 Jonnes, compared with those of Humboldt and F. de Bellevue. 

 If the great current were not restrained by the islands, and by 

 the coast of Yucatan turned into the Florida Strait, the sea 

 level at the isthmus of Panama, now by some asserted to be 

 twenty-four feet lower than the Pacific, and by others to be 

 13* 



