WEST INDIAN SUBSIDENCE IN LATEU PLEISTOCENE. 129 



Pliocene period or greater, or varying from 8,000 to 12,000 feet or more 

 and, subordinatel}^ that almost all of the drainage flowed into the Paeific 

 ocean. While most of the canyons did incise the frontal margins of the 

 l)lateans and receded to great distances in them, yet the elevation did 

 not last long enough for the deep valleys to be completely cut back and 

 leave great depressions in the central portions of what are now the coastal 

 ])lains. Wii ether the elevation was great enough to completely drain 

 the sea of Honduras (as the Caribbean sea) cannot be told at present. 

 Tlie great altitude of the Antillean land is no longer a question. The 

 climate of the high lands may have been more or less arid in some local- 

 ities, like the plateau-valleys of modern Mexico and Guatemala, or even 

 parts of San Domingo. 



SuB3rDi<:xcK of tiik West Indies in the later Pleistocene Period. 



The subsidence which followed the earlier Pleistocene elevation is 

 marked by some terraces rising in Cuba to an elevation of 1,000 feet and 

 lower altitudes. This terrace problem needs careful revision before the 

 Pleistocene and later made shorelines can be distinguished over widely 

 separated areas. Put both sulxsidences affected and depressed all of the 

 greater Antilles, Central America, and the coastal margins of the conti- 

 nent from about 25 to 500 or 700 feet lower than now. This depression 

 greatly reduced the size of the larger West Indies and Central America; 

 it also made the coast of the northern continent recede 100 or 150 miles, 

 and drowned most of Florida. The accumulations in Cuba and the other 

 greater Antilles, and also in })arts of Central America, consisted of red- 

 dish loams and gravels (in the vicinity of the streams), which are noAV 

 seen at an elevation of 200 feet or more in some regions. To this forma- 

 tion the writer has given the name of the Zapata in his forthcoming 

 paper on the geographical evolution of Cuba. 



The Zai)ata occurs in Jamaica, San Domingo, apparently in Trinidad 

 and widely over Central America.^^ In Yucatan it a[)]:>ears that tlie U[)per 

 post-Pliocene marls of Heilprin belong to this epoch. The sediments 

 were principally derived from the residual loams and gravels left by the 

 solution of the Miocene and other limestones, as there were then suflici- 

 ent land surfaces to furnish such materials. 



Turning now in the continent, the Zapata formation is of about the 

 same age as .McCiee's older Columbia series, which covers 150,000 s(piare 

 miles of the coastal i)lain. In Carolina it reaches an altitude of G50 feet, 

 in southern Alal)ama only 25 feet and along the Rio Grande from 100 to 

 200 feet above the sea. Physically, it is of the same character as the La- 



» Tlie authorities here mentioned have been cited before. 



