274 ft. T. HILL — PELE AND THE WINDWARD ARCHIPELAGO 



That these movements have been regional and not orogenic is testified 

 by the harmonious evidence that all the islands participated in them. 

 At present the cause of these great uplifts and subsidences can not be 

 interpreted. They can in no way be ascribed to sudden and disastrous 

 catastrophies accompanying the violent disturbances popularly supposed 

 to be associated with volcanic eruptions, although we can not say that 

 they are not gradual after effects. 



Associated with these phenomena are the problems of the origin and 

 meaning of the triple submarine Windward ridges — the Aves ridge to 

 the west, the Barbadian to the east, and the deep troughs separating them 

 from the great central ridge from which the present Caribbee volcanoes 

 apparently arise. 



Who can explain the mystery of these troughs and ridges and their 

 part in the history of the Windward islands ? It is a legitimate inquiry 

 to ask if their present condition and relations, like the great changes of 

 level noted, may not be isostatic results of vulcanism — that is, if they 

 could have been the result of adjustment of the crust to interior vacuities 

 created by the extrusion of the great volcanic piles. The cross-section 

 of this tri-peninsulate configuration might be the basis of a hypothesis 

 that the present conspicuous Caribbee ridges are piles on the axis of a 

 subsiding dynamic valley or line of weakness between the older ridges. 

 Such speculations present enchanting fields for reflection, but they carry 

 no supporting data or convincing conclusion. 



Some writers have even gone so far as to suggest that these changes in 

 the level have been those of the sea water rather than of the land and 

 bottoms. It may be that the great oceanic waters have changes in volume, 

 but as yet there is no tangible evidence of it. 



SUMMARY 



It must be apparent now that the conceptions as to the continental 

 origin of these islands, mostly created to uphold some preconceived 

 theory, without being based on adequate geologic research and which 

 have confused the pages of scientific literature, are erroneous. Analysis 

 of the geologic history of these islands fails to support one of the many 

 complicated theories which have appeared in print concerning their con- 

 tinental origin. 



If they were once a part of the Andean and Antillean mountain sys- 

 tems, a great fold or a continental bridge, now destroyed by subsidence, 

 some evidence of these facts would have been found by investigation 

 undertaken without preconceived prejudice or theory. 



A great subsidence of 6,000 feet, leaving the present islands as the tips 

 of a submerged continent, must be proved to have occurred in the Wind- 



