GENERAL FEATURES OF THE EARTH. 13 



we must conceive of the earth without its water, — the depressed 

 areas, thousands of miles across, sunk ten to perhaps fifty thousand 

 feet below the bordering continental regions, and covering five- 

 eighths of the whole surface. The continents, in such a condition, 

 would stand as elevated plateaus encircled by one great uneven 

 basin. If the earth had been left thus with but shallow lakes 

 about the bottom, there would have been an ascent of five miles or 

 more from the Atlantic vale to the lower part of the continental 

 plateau, and one to five miles beyond this to scale the summits of 

 the loftier mountains of the globe. The continents would have been 

 wholly in the regions of the upper cold, all alpine and barren. This 

 uneven surface of the Atlantic and Pacific has been levelled off to a 

 plain by the waters of the ocean, the heights of the world reduced 

 from ten or fifteen miles to five, and the intolerable climates of such 

 extremes of surface reduced to a genial condition, rendering nearly 

 the whole land habitable, and giving moisture for clouds, rivers, 

 and plants ; and, by the same means, distant points have been 

 bound together by a common highway into one arena of history. 



18. (4.) General view of the land. — (a.) Position of the land. 

 — The land of the globe has been stated to lie with its mass to the 

 north, about the Arctic, and to narrow as it extends southward 

 into the waters of the Southern hemisphere. The mean southern 

 limit of the continental lands is the parallel of 45°, or just half-way 

 from the equator to the south pole. 



South America reaches only to 56° S. (Cape Horn being in 55° 58')> which is 

 the latitude of Edinburgh or northern Labrador; Africa to 34° 51' (Cape of 

 Good Hope), nearly the latitude of the southern boundary of Tennessee, and 60 

 miles nearer the equator than Gibraltar; Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) to 

 43£° S., nearly the latitude of Boston and northern Portugal. 



19. (b.) Distribution. — The independent continental areas are three 

 in number : — America, one ; Europe, Asia, and Africa, a second ; 

 Australia, the third. Through the East India Islands Australia is 

 approximately connected with Asia, nearly as South America with 

 North America through the West Indies ; and, regarding it as 

 thus united, the great masses of land will be but two : — The Ame- 

 rican, or Occidental, and Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, or the 

 Oriental. 



These great masses of land are divided across from east to west 

 by seas or archipelagoes. The West Indies, Mediterranean, Eed 

 Sea, and the East Indies, with the connecting oceans, make a nearly 

 complete band of water around the globe, as Professor Guyot ob- 

 serves, subdividing the Occident and Orient into north and south 

 divisions. Cutting across 37 miles at the Straits of Darien, where 



