place of American freedom. The subsidence which had restored the genial climate of the Tertiary Age extended from the Arctic to the Temperate regions. By degrees, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and other Northern States disappeared beneath the waves. Here the denizens of the land had held undisputed sway during the long ages since the coal-bogs were made vocal with the croaking of gigantic Batrachians. Now all that had been gained was lost. The trident of Neptune waved again where stately trees had reared their palmy heads, and the mastodon had hurried through the forest with his thunder-waking tread. Such are the fortunes of contests in the natural as in the social world. IT CHAPTER XXI. RESURRECTION OF THE CONTINENT. T seemed like a failure of the plan of creation. The land gained by unnumbered throes of the continent was lost. The higher summits only held their heads above the level of the careering waves. Deposits bearing the marks of oceanic action reach to an elevation of six thousand feet on Mount Washington, two thousand or more on the Green Mountains, and three thousand on Monadnock. But this deep submergence was not of long continuance. Slowly the continent rose again from its deep sea-burial. As summit after summit lifted its gravel-covered brow above the sea, the retiring waves, lingering, dallied with the pebbles on the widening beach. As the continent rose, every inch became, in succession, the ocean shore, and was subjected to the assorting action of the waters. As a consequence, the finer materials were left upon the surface, and a most suitable substratum for the soil was thus provided. During the preceding epoch, Nature robbed the Northern States of their finer material for the benefit of the Southern. Now she made amends by raking up the deep deposits, and selecting and strewing over the surface a new supply of finer detritus for the benefit of the Northern States. Before the resurrection was completed, Nature made several pauses in her work, and the sea was permitted to stand, perhaps for ages, over districts that had been marked out as the dwelling-place for man. The first pause occurred when the waters still stood four hundred feet above their present level at Montreal. At lower levels, down to twenty-five or thirty feet, the traces of standing waters have been observed about New England and Long Island. At one time the Atlantic flowed up the valley of the St. Lawrence to Montreal, and whales sported in an arm of the sea which reached over the valley of Lake Champlain. The ancient beaches have been traced all around those earlier borders of the land. The last portion of this upward movement has been in times comparatively recent. We are neither to suppose that the work was suddenly and violently performed, nor that it is even yet complete. The secular elevations now known to be progressing at various points along our coast are but a continuation of the action which rescued our continent from the jaws of the ocean, and which may be farther continued for many centuries. Who knows how much land may yet be added to the northeastern border of America? Who can say that Newfoundland may not yet become a peninsula joined to the main land, or that the ancient submerged prolongation of our continent may not be again resurrected? New England may cease to be “little New England," and may boast of as many acres as the "Great West”—or at least that portion of it covered by the organized states. However, New Englanders ought not to indulge too sanguine expectations in this respect. Around the Gulf-border of our country the indications of future extension are of a more reliable character. In one region the delta of the Mississippi is continuing to push itself seaward. Materials are being transferred from the Rocky Mountains to Louisiana. The Mississippi is annually building out into the Gulf. From the same source arises another and an unexpected development of land upon another portion of the Gulf-border. Vast quantities of the finer sediments of the Mississippi are floated out into the range of the Gulf Stream, and borne onward around the peninsula of Florida into the Atlantic. As is well known, the Gulf Stream in this region pursues a course from west to east, and, in passing the Florida Keys, it bends northward. At this flexure of the stream, the outer portion of the current must necessarily be more rapid than the inner, or that nearest the main land. The retardation of the inner belt gives more time for the deposition of its sediments, and we accordingly find a submarine bank of mud gradually raised. When the summit of this bank reaches to within about two hundred feet of the surface, the coral-builder plants his foundations upon it, and patiently rears his massive reef to the ocean's surface, "Unconscious, not unworthy instrument By which a hand invisible is rearing In the mean time the ocean stream is crowded farther toward the south, where the waters are deeper. Simultaneously the mud deposits extend southward, and upon these stretches southward also the "masonry imperishable" of the little coral architect. As with all coral reefs, those of Florida are gradually being covered with the materials of a soil, and clothed with a tropical vegetation. Thus the land at this point is continually extending itself. When we inquire for what length of time and over what distance this growth of the land has taken place, we find that half the peninsula of Florida is underlaid by a reef which is absolutely continuous with that now forming, and that the species of polyps which worked upon that foundation of a state were identical with those now laboring to extend the area of American freedom. It appears, therefore, that the same processes which have resulted in the formation of that peninsula are still extending it southward. The time can not be infinitely remote when the "ever blessed isle" will be peacefully annexed to the dominions of the American eagle. These are events and phenomena whose history reaches down to the present, and whose promises extend into the future. Let us turn back our thoughts for a moment, and reinspect the phenomena and results wrought out by the ocean on occasion of his last supremacy over the land. It seemed, indeed, as if the work of Nature had proved a failure; but this very inundation had been embraced in the plans of infinite Beneficence. I have already alluded to the assorting action exerted upon the loose materials left upon the surface by the retiring glacier. Large portions of the drift were completely worked over, and redeposited under a semi-stratified arrangement. Who has not stood in a railroad-cut through a bank of these materials, and witnessed the bands of variously-colored sands and clays exposed in the walls of the cut? From such an exposure of the internal structure of these hills and ridges one may learn that they consist of beds of clay of various extent, and variously inclined in reference to each other, between which the spaces are filled up with sand and pebbles. Now this circumstance, accidental as it seems to be, has contributed immensely to human convenience. The rains which fall upon the surface of the earth percolate through the superficial layers of sand and gravel, but always, sooner or later, reach one of these strata of clay, by which the farther downward progress of the water is arrested. Upon the top of such a bed of clay the water accumulates. It saturates the overlying sands. It is true that it will slowly follow the descent of the clay bed, and will reach its margin, and begin another descent. It will soon be arrested again in a similar manner, and will form a deeper-seated reservoir, which in turn will overflow and contribute to a third. Thus every clayey stratum, whether of great or small ex |