THE EARTH'S CRUST.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2163, 9 December 1875, Page 4

THE EARTH'S CRUST.

The Hartford Times lias the following t —Capt. James Riley's Hartford brig, Commerce, was wrecked on the African coast of Morocco in the year 1815 and Capt. Riley and some of his companions were captured by Arabs and driven on foot across a large section of the " Great Desert" of Sahara. Captain. Eiley amid all his sufferings in the interior of the desert, could not fail to notice and be deeply impressed by the remarkable topographical features presented at certain distances, somewhatwidelyseparated, and all indicating unmistakably that the desert itself once formed the ,bottom of the sea. In "Biley's Narrative," a book that was received with some incredulity at the time, but which is sustained in its more important statements by later revelations, these topographical phenomena of the desert are described as consisting of far-sweeping lines of low terraces, presenting exactly the appearance that one would expect to find in a well-preserved ancient sea beach. So real was the appearance tbat the observer could not resist the conviction that these receding terraces were, in fact, what were in former ages lines of a shore which marked the successive limits of an ancient sea. In other words,- it was seemingly evident that, the "Great Desert," a region a thousand miles wide and more than two thousand miles long, had arisen, like mythological Venus, from the waves, not in beauty like the Grecian Aphrodite, but in all the horrors of a naked burning plain, its inhospitable bosom presenting only bard and stony surfaces, alternating with drifting sands. Its higher terraces were the first to be lifted out of tbe sea; then, in due order, and at unknown intervals, came the others until the existing line was reached, and even that seems to be slowly changing. In fact, a constant change seems to be going on in the elevation of nearly all parts of the earth's surface — some regions rising, others very unmistakably sinking. In the latter class, very certainly, appears the greater part of our Atlantic coast, from Cape Cod to Florida. The Connecticut shore, from Connecticut river to New York, as it existed before the Eevolutionary war, 13 now covered by the waters of Long Island sound nearly two rods out from the present shore. The coast of New Jersey has also receded—the sea is now coming up to places that were three rods from the water in 1770. It is said by some geologists that the greater part of the present islands known as the West Indies are really but the higher portions of a vast sunken region that once formed a part of the American continent. Nearer home, the region around the great lakes is also said to be slowly sinking, while southern Indiana, Kentucky, and the surrounding states are rising. It is found that the great lakes once had a southern outlet. Now they discharge their surplus water, not through the Mississippi into the Gulf, but through the Niagara river, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence into the chill seas of the north. The great channel known as Niagara river seems to have been formed as recently as forty or fifty thousand years ago, and the outlet of all the lakes above Lake Ontario to have been simultaneously changed from, tbe southern to the northern gulf—from the Gulf of Mexico-to the Gulf of St. Lawrence—by northern depressions and southern upheavals. These changes are governed by no known law of relationship. California, particularly, and all the Pacific coast to a lesser extent, are found to be rising. But the whole bed of the vast Paciffc, according to recent,, ileep sea soundings, is evidently a sunken continent with numerous volcanic mountains. In Europe the coasts and bottom of the Baltic sea are rising—the ancient shores being now nearly half a mile from • the water; but the shores of Holland, France, and Great Britain are unmistakeably sinking. Greenland, a sort of continent in itself, is said to be rising. The fact is, and geology*shows it that the earth's surface of sea and land has been for unknown ages constantly changing. Slow upheavals of what at first were islands have been followed by the equally slow, increasing appearances of continents ; and th^se have slowly sunk and disappeared, and as slowly risen again— only to sink and rise; and this vast process has gone on, with some ever-recurring changes in the outlines of the land, for countless ages. And it is still going on. ,