THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST’S EYES 
seem really to have grown and multiplied like or- 
ganic beings; the seed of the granite seems to have 
fertilized the whole world of waters, and in due time 
they brought forth this huge family of stratified 
rocks. There stands the Archean Adam, his head 
and chest in Canada, his two unequal legs running, 
one down the Pacific coast, and one down the At- 
lantic Coast, and from his loins, we are told, all the 
progeny of rocks and soils that make up the conti- 
nent have sprung, one generation succeeding an- 
other in regular order. His latest offspring is in the 
South and Southwest, and in the interior. These 
are the new countries, geologically speaking, as well 
as humanly speaking. 
The great interior sea, epicontinental, the geolo- 
gists call it, seems to have been fermenting and 
laboring for untold zons in building up these parts 
of the continent. In the older Eastern States we find 
the sons and grandsons of the old Adam granite; but 
in the South and West we find his offspring of the 
twentieth or twenty-fifth generation, and so unlike 
their forebears; the Permian rocks, for instance, and 
the Cretaceous rocks, are soft and unenduring, for 
the most part. The later slates, too, are degener- 
ates, and much of the sandstones have the hearts of 
prodigals. In the Bad Lands of Arizona I could have 
cut my way into some of the Eocene formations 
with my pocket-knife. Apparently the farther away 
we get from the parent granite, the more easily is 
103 
