If, indeed, there is any meaning in the
remarkably symmetrical combinations of the double twin continents in
the Eastern Hemisphere, so closely soldered in their northern half, as
contrasted with the single pair in the Western Hemisphere, isolated in
their position, but so strikingly similar in their Outlines, they must
be the result of a progressive and predetermined growth already hinted
at in the relative position and gradual increase of the first lands
raised above the level of the ocean.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that we now know with
tolerable accuracy the limits of the land raised above the water at that
period in the present United States. Let us see, then, what we inclose
between oar two lines. We have Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, the greater
part of New England, the whole of New York, a narrow strip along the
north of Ohio, a great part of Indiana and Illinois, and nearly the
whole of Michigan and Wisconsin.
Within this region lie all the Great Lakes. The origin of these large
troughs, holding such immense sheets of fresh water, remains still the
subject of discussion and investigation among geologists. It has been
supposed that in the primitive configuration of the globe, when the
formation of those depressions at the poles in which the Arctic seas are
accumulated gave rise to a corresponding protrusion at the equator, the
curve thus produced throughout the North Temperate Zone may have forced
up the Canada granite, and have caused, at the same time, those rents
in the earth's surface now filled by the Canada lakes; and this view
is sustained by the fact that there is a belt of lakes, among which,
however, the Canada lakes are far the largest, all around the world in
that latitude.
Pages:
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241