Changes In The Earth's Surface

It has been provea that the whole f aciflc coast, especially California, with all its mountains, is perpetually rising, and that at a comparatively rapid rate. The land contamine; in its boaom our gïeat Americsn.lñkes Is filcrvïly sihking; while Southern Indiana, Kentucky and the suïrounding States are rising. ÖeoIbgical investigation? prove, thftt öur great lakes, exeept Ontario, had formerly a southern outlet; until, by gradual northern depressions and southern upheavals, a northern outlet was formed f rom Lake Erie into Ontario, about 40,000 years ago. This outlet, the Niagra river, is still wearinft its ohannel. Tbe división line of the vater-shedj Hptttli of tho lakes and the Mississippi valley, has since that time been steadily traveling southward; and when Chicago recently turned the water of Lake Michigan through the j (jhicagö river, into the Mississippi ley, the old state of affairswasartificially re-es tablished. New Jersey is sinking, with New York city and Long Island, at the estimated rate of about sixteen inches per century. The coast of Texas is ascending ot a comparatively very rapid rate, some observers statiñg that it is as much as thirty or forty inches in the lnst half centüryi Combining these obsèrvations with the resülts of the recent deep soundings of the United States steamer Ttlscarora in the Pacific ocean, we find that the bed is evidentiy a sunken continent, nbouna ing in vblcanic mountains some 12,000 i feethigh, many of them not reaching tho surface of the ocean, and others which do so, forming tho numberless islands of the Pacific. The study of coral rocks proves that the sinking has continually been taking place during several centuries, and obsèrvations of the coast will undoubtedly reveal the fact that it has not ceased. The most eminent Germán geologists and ethnologists now maintain that .the locality of man's primitive origin, the so-called Paradise, was in the Pacific oceau south of Asia, westwardto África, and eastward to Australia. When the great Pacific continent slowly sank, so that ihe ocean commenced filling up the vaileys, man retreated to the mouutainp, which by continued sinking were transformed into islands, and now form the mauy groups of Polynesia. The insularity of the thus-preseryed races was not productive of civilization, which requires conflict, in which the superiors in the end gain the victory over inferiors. In those islands the inferior races were preserved for want of this conflict, henee their savage condition even at the preseat day ; while, primitively, the greatest advanco took place at the spot of the most intense conflict, the continent of Southern Asia.