METHOD IN THE GROWTH OF CONTINENTS. 309 



the rivulet, crawled over the hill-top, and embraced the 

 world. The world, in turn, opened its wide and rocky 

 jaws and swallowed the ocean — and another ocean laved 

 the face of Nature. 



In the progress of events, an occasional ridge of barren 

 granite lifted its back permanently above the level of the 

 sea. As the liquid core contracted, the surplusage of the 

 enveloping crust was absorbed by the wrinkles already ex- 

 isting, and thus the granite backs rose higher and higher. 

 As the ridges were higher raised, and the valleys deeper 

 sunken, the accumulated oceans pressed heavier and heav- 

 ier against the slopes of the rocky beds, and the gathered 

 sediments of ages weighted the ocean's floor with a burden 

 which easily outweighed the crust which bridged the hills. 

 And thus it was that the valleys were ever deeper sunken, 

 and that which was at first an insignificant wrinkle became 

 at last a stable mountain. From the coast of Labrador 

 southwest along the Laurentian Hills we tread upon that 

 ancient summit which was the first-born of Old Ocean. 

 From the far northwest it comes down to us with the 

 same time-worn record written on its weathered brow, 

 while a chain of noble lakes fringes the angulated ridge 

 along its western branch, and the eastern bathes its feet in 

 the waters of the St. Lawrence. As the flowers of one 

 spring-time foretell the forms which will reappear when 

 spring-time comes again, so this ancient germinal ridge 

 was but the first blooming of a continent ; and when the 

 circle of a geologic year was run, the rocky leaves of the 

 growing continent unfolded themselves again in their ap- 

 pointed fashion. Note the parallelism of that primeval 

 ridge with the present shores of the Atlantic and Pacific. 

 When we know that each successive revolution of the 

 globe has but rolled the waters of the oceans farther to 

 the southeast and southwest, do we not perceive that the 



