The Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America, with their Influences on the Oceanic, Atmospheric, and Land Currents, and the Distribution of Races

Abstract

IN this free-speaking record of what Mr. Catlin has seen of American geology, and of his interpretation thereof, we have the results of strong observational powers and of limited scientific knowledge, stated earnestly and ruggedly, with a faithful adherence to what was first mastered in books, and to the views of nature that early teaching gave. Such works are not rare, but they are not often noticed at large, unless, as in this instance, the author's individuality, sincerity, and earnestness are true and striking. We find in this book on the “Rocks of America” that the author believes, first, in the hypothetical granite of a primæval world; secondly, in a “schistoze zone, quite around the globe, and undoubtedly more or less an open and defined fissure between the two systems” of granite below and “sedimentary formations” above (p. 81); thirdly, “that these vast sedimentary beds, underlying secondary rocks on almost every portion of the globe, have been laid by the agency of water, with the disintegrated particles of granite, and by some (as yet mysterious) process become solidified and crystallised much in the same form, and certainly with the same ingredients, as the granite from which they came” (p. 80). It appears, also, that these low-seated sediments comprise the “azoic and palæozoic rocks” of books; “that the remains of rhizopod and algæ life [sic] may be found below gneiss” (p. 140), but not in the limestone in the gneiss; that the acceptation of the Laurentian system of rocks, as worked out and explained by the Geological Surveyors of Canada, is to be deprecated; that the Laurentian limestones have been deposited in “the caverns formed underneath submarine mountains, which are free from all currents of the ocean, by the infiltration of water from the overlying calcareous rocks;” “that in these caverns the first movements of organic life (which could not have existed exposed to the currents of the ocean) began;” and that these limestones were thus “imbedded, and in horizontal strata, beneath azoic rocks, and containing the ’Eozone Canadensis’ [sic] and other rhizopod remains which have excited so much attention of late, and been ingeniously used to undermine the established system of geological formations” (p. 141). Fourthly, “that the granite crust, though cracked at various points, from contraction on cooling, has a limit to which those rents descend, below which, from intense heat, and the hasty and unindurated state that the external border of the molten mass must be in, the contraction has not taken place; and being in an arched shape, and resting on a liquid far more buoyant than water, that no fracture of the crust to the surface of the igneous mass has ever taken place, and that no amount of matter could be concentrated on the surface of the earth to produce that effect” (p. 82). Fifthly, that what any geologist would recognise as the débris of broken granite decomposed in place, Mr. Catlin refers to eruption from his subterranean granite crust, thus:—“In the Rocky Mountains and the Andes granite is very rarely seen, and when met (at the mountain's base, as it most often is, or on its summit), it is uniformly seen in amorphous masses of various sizes, with shapes plainly telling its history, that it has been shattered and torn from its bed by subterranean explosions or other disturbance, and lifted by (or has followed) the rising mass to the summits of the highest mountains, and flowing out from these, is found at the mountain's base, where it has rolled, while the mountain's top is gneiss” (p. 86). Sixthly, that water, getting to the molten mass below the author's granite, has expanded, and not only erupted the granitic boulders, but blown out great cavities, into which vast areas of surface (as the Mexican Gulf and Caribbean Sea) have fallen, making catastrophes, and leaving “subsided rocks” whilst elsewhere the cavern-roofs have been held up as “lifted rocks.” Seventhly. That the mountain floods rush into and along these cavities, leaving but little to reach the plains (p. 11); that such “submontagne currents” as these, “heated by the volcanic furnaces they have passed” (p. 4), rush out into the Caribbean Sea, and make the Gulf Stream. Eighthly. The Caribbean subsidence deluged the whole Antilles and many Aztec cities, dispersed some of the aborigines among the heights of Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, and sent some Caribs to Guiana, Venezuela, and Honduras, whilst others were transported to Florida, Newfoundland, and Scandinavia, in frail craft on the broad back of the new-made Gulf Stream, that still favours us with such of nature's blessings as it has to give.

The Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America, with their Influences on the Oceanic, Atmospheric, and Land Currents, and the Distribution of Races.

By George Catlin. (London: Trübner, 1870.)