THE DIVINE ABYSS 
geology in the East as in the West, did I say? Not 
as much visible geology, not as much by many 
chapters of earth history, not as much by all the 
later formations, by most of the Mesozoic and Ter- 
tiary deposits. The vast series of sedimentary rocks 
since the Carboniferous age, to say nothing of the 
volcanic, that make up these periods, are largely 
wanting east of the Mississippi, except in New 
Jersey and in some of the Gulf States. They are 
recent. They are like the history of our own period 
compared with that of Egypt and Judea. It is 
mainly these later formations — the Permian, the 
Jurassic, the Triassic, the Cretaceous, the Eocene, 
— that give the prevailing features to the South- 
western landscape that so astonish Eastern eyes. 
From them come most of the petrified remains of 
that great army of extinct reptiles and mammals — 
the three-toed horse, the sabre-toothed tiger, the 
brontosaurus, the fin-backed lizard, the imperial 
mammoth, the various dinosaurs, some of them 
gigantic in form and fearful in aspect — that of late 
years have appeared in our museums and that throw 
so much light upon the history of the animal life of 
the globe. Most of the sedimentary rocks of New 
York and New England were laid down before these 
creatures existed. 
Now I am not going to write an essay on the geo- 
logy of the West, for I really have little first-hand 
knowledge upon that subject, but I would indicate 
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