186 J. D. Dana — Rocky Mountain Protaxis and the 



Dr. G. M. Dawson (in his Report on the portion of the 

 Rocky Mountains between latitudes 49° and 51° 30' in the 

 Canadian Geological Report for 1885, part B) describes similar 

 facts from the Cascade Trough, and the region just south 

 between it and the parallel of 49° ]ST. Through much of the 

 distance there are two to three Paleozoic limestone ranges 6000 

 to 9000 feet in height, with intervening north-south Cretaceous 

 belts, and the Cretaceous beds are upturned, along with the 

 Paleozoic, through a- belt 30 miles or more wide. As one of 

 several similar facts, we cite : The " Misty Range [north of lat, 

 50° 30' and east of long. 115°] is with little doubt a great com- 

 pressed anticlinal of limestone overturned eastward." " The 

 Cretaceous shales and sandstones pass beneath the limestones 

 at an angle of about 40° and, to the east of them, are thrown 

 into a series of overlapping folds." At the Crow Nest Pass 

 (lat. 49° 35'), the Carboniferous beds are represented, in a sec- 

 tion on his map, as having two steep eastwardly overthrust 

 flexures against the area of Cretaceous rocks; and in another 

 section, taken in the vicinity of the Kootanie Pass (lat. 49° 

 25'), the Cretaceous beds of the foot-hills, along the South 

 Fork of Old Man River, are in a series of similarly overthrust 

 flexures. Both up-thrust and down-throw faults are shown in 

 the sections. 



The Cambrian beds are described as closely resembling those 

 of the Wasatch Mountains in lithological characters and rarity 

 of fossils, and also, even more closely, those of the Colorado 

 Canon. 



The thickness of the Cretaceous rocks of the Kootanie series 

 (Lower Cretaceous) at the north Kootanie Pass (lat. 49° 25' ~N.) 

 is made about 7000 feet ; and for the whole Cretaceous series 

 in the mountain region, about 21,000 feet, while east of the 

 disturbed region it is little over 8000 feet. 



2. In the United States. — This upturned Rocky Mountain 

 belt extends far northwestward along the summit ; but how 

 far has not yet been ascertained. Southward it is continued 

 through Montana into western Wyoming, passing the eastward 

 bend of the Archaean axis in lat. 45°-47° N. Sections of the 

 rocks of the Wyoming Range, on the west side of the Green 

 River Basin, and also of other ranges in the region, by Mr. A. 

 C. Peale, published in the Hayden Expedition Report for 

 1877, are very similar to some of Mr. McConnell's in rocks, 

 flexures and upthrust faulting, and in thrusts of Carboniferous 

 beds from the west along a fault-plane to the top of the Creta- 

 ceous. The Cretaceous also is in flexures. The thickness of 

 the Paleozoic and Mesozoic beds is made about 31,000 feet. 

 Moreover, the sections from western Wyoming, in the Report 

 of Mr. O. St. John, in the Hayden Report for 1878, are of 



