150 NAT! RAL HISTOB i 



equal in elevation, or differing only as the tides on either side 

 may be at full, won 1 rise perhaps sufficiently to separate the 

 two great portions d: America. 



Here, then, we have a not improbable diluvian event in the 

 western portion of the world, sufficient to account for all the 

 traditions locally current, in the supposition that the progeni- 

 tors of the present population were already in part upon the 

 spot. Some authors have assumed the American cataclysm to 

 be the same as the Atlantic; but what is more evident is the 

 volcanic agency in both, and the ignited galleries passing 

 beneath the ocean, with spiracula in the western African 

 islands, and the Azores completing the electrical circle on this 

 side, as the Kamtschatka volcanoes and the Caroline and Jap- 

 anese effect on the other. 



NORTH AMERICA. 



North America, having the Rocky mountain portion of the 

 Cordilleras for central watershed, although it is less disturbed 

 by volcanic convulsion, in proportion as the ridge is further 

 removed from the sea, and has not discharged a great propor- 

 tion of the inland lakes that weigh upon the eastern plane of 

 its surface, is nevertheless not so free of igneous agency as to 

 escape the West Indian ramification, which passes through the 

 Floridas and South Carolina, to the plain of the Mississippi, 

 where earthquakes left permanent tokens of their force in 

 1S11. Over a considerable part of the eastern side of the 

 great mountain ridge, more particularly where ancient lakes 

 have been converted into morasses, or have been filled by allu- 

 vials, organic remains of above thirty species of mammals, of 

 the same orders and genera, in some cases of the same species, 

 have been discovered, demonstrating their existence in a con- 

 temporary era with those of the old continent, and under sim- 

 ilar conditions. But their period of duration in the New 

 World ma}' have been prolonged to dates of a subsequent time, 



