296 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



packed away among the solid rocks; and there is no ex- 

 planation so natural and so consonant with what we know 

 of the history of the world as the doctrine of evaporated 

 sea-waters. How the waters of the sea came into posses- 

 sion of their saltness is a question of primeval chemistry to 

 which allusion has heretofore been made. It was the result- 

 ant of the chemical actions which took place between the 

 fire-born rocks and the atmospheric acids washed down by 

 the primeval rains, and gathered with "the gathering to- 

 gether of the waters." 



Salt lakes, or detached outliers of the great ocean, have 

 existed in all ages since the continents began to shed the 

 ocean's waters from their backs. In the age just preceding 

 the last, an inland sea occupied the region of the upper 

 waters of the Missouri River ; and, a little earlier, the same 

 sea extended a few hundred miles farther south, over the 

 country of the " Bad Lands" of Dakotah. In the middle 

 ages of the world's history, the evaporation of salt lakes or 

 bays more or less shut off from the ocean, and the bedding 

 of their saline constituents, was a phenomenon of so fre- 

 quent occurrence as to constitute the most prominent feat- 

 ure of an entire group of strata. This group has conse- 

 quently been styled the " Saliferous system." The saiifer- 

 ous beds of this group are extensively worked for rock-salt 

 over a territory stretching along both sides of the Carpa- 

 thians, embracing the mines of Wallachia, Transylvania, 

 Galicia, Upper Hungary, Upper Austria, Styria, Salzberg, 

 and the Tyrol. In England they are mined in the counties 

 of Cheshire and Worcestershire. In the United States we 

 find saliferous beds of the same age extensively distributed 

 over the region between the Mississippi River and the 

 Rocky Mountains. 



Descending in the series of American strata, we find the 

 Coal-measures in certain regions — or rather the con^lomer- 



