have expected certainly; ἄριστον μὲν πῦρ should be his order of the day. For, be it a continent, a hill, a dale, or a river, fire is his word. His continents have a PYRamidal configuration' from fire. He stratifies his coal-beds by fire.* On fire-inflated bladders his single mountains rest. On fire-formed fissures he supports his mountain ranges. In his river courses he leads the flow of water by fire, and he fissures forth his terrestrial valleys by fire, still fire. But in his oceanic valleys, he turns short round to the Pindaric ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ.

running water.

Our Atlantic ocean presents all the indica- And formed by tions of a valley. It is as if a flow of eddying waters had been directed first towards the northeast, then towards the north-west, and back again to the north-east. The parallelism of the coasts north of 10° south latitude, the projecting and receding angles, the convexity of Brazil opposite the Gulf of Guinea, that of Africa under the same parallel, with the Gulf of the Antilles, all favour this apparently speculative view. In this Atlantic valley,' &c.

This beats me. This is aqueous denudation'

*Humboldt says (Cosmos') 'the eruption of quartzose porphyry overthrew with violence the first great vegetation, from which the material of our present coal measures 'formed.'

was

6

with a vengeance. 'Ye gods, it doth amaze me that such a man as this should so get the start of the majestic world.' Three swoops, and the valley is complete. I wonder where the flow of eddying waters' came from? and I wonder where the solid rocks, which formerly filled this little valley, were washed to? Some day, I suppose, a mountain, or chain of mountains, a cordillera, or tierra or sierra Humboldtiana, will be discovered, equivalent in size to the surface and depth of 'our' Atlantic. I think Humboldt is too modest here; he should call it my Atlantic. The surface of our' Atlantic is about twenty-five millions of square miles, and unless it was a sea before it was formed into a sea, it must have been surmounted by a continent when it fell a victim to the 'eddying waters.' Besides, therefore, the depth of the sea, the height of the old continent must be added to the new one.

Theoretically, the formation of this particular continent, the Tierra Humboldtiana, would differ from that of continents in general. For they, according to Humboldt, were formed by the fusion of separate, smaller, continental masses.' Practically, the difference of formation would be found great indeed. For this huge heap would be formed by the confusion of vast masses of disrupted rock, which would clearly distinguish it

from all boulder drifts and alluviums, and from all continents of stratified beds. Aqua fortis must have been the water of those days, or it could never, at a swoop, have torn up these solid rocks to the depth of 30,000 feet.

It is lamentable to find an Englishman imposed on by such bombastic trash. Keith Johnston, in his Physical Atlas, says the Atlantic ocean occupies the great longitudinal valley, extending,' &c. If this is not an abuse of terms, we may say that three quarters of the surface space of the globe are occupied by one valley, and that the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Antarctic, Indian, China, Mediterranean, Black, White, Yellow, Red, Baltic, Caribbean seas, with all their innumerable gulfs, bays, straits, and rivers, are only parts, particular nooks, corners, and lanes in this one valley. That the valley of the Thames is part of the same valley as the China sea and the Yang-tse-Kiang.

is.

In my view, seas are no more valleys than val- What a valley leys are seas. Valleys are subaerial hollows, and not subaqueous hollows. A valley is, in my view, a waterslope, and this waterslope must be continuous to the sea, or to an inland lake. If you overstep a ridge which separates two waterslopes, I think you overstep the border of two valleys. Thus, if you stand on the chalk of the North Downs, south-east of London, where the Medway

London, Paris,

and Hampshire, are not valleys.

passes through them, and look to the chalk of the Anglian heights, east of Cambridge, when north of the Essex heights, you overstep the valley of the Thames, though you are still within what is absurdly called the basin of London. The valley of London would be the valley of the Thames; but the basin of London is quite another affair, and is no valley at all. The north-east half of The basins of the basin of London is out of the valley of the Thames, and the north-west half of the valley of the Thames is out of the basin of London. The basins of London, Paris,* and Hampshire, have no relation whatever to valleys, river-courses, or basins. They only refer to those parts of these neighbourhoods which are still undenuded, and covered with tertiary strata, and these strata pass over hill and dale, and are not, as is usually stated, patches deposited in hollows. The origin of this opinion is twofold. First, some author has dubbed these tertiary regions basins, and his readers have naturally supposed that the basins

*The Paris basin runs nearly 200 miles from north to south, and passes over not only the heights which divide the valley of the Seine from the valley of the Loire, but it passes and includes the Loire and the country south of Orleans, even as far as Sancerre, so that the Seine and the Loire traverse the same basin, one to Havre the other to Nantes. But because tertiary strata must be deposited in 'depressions of the chalk,' gentlemen of the closet join together these two distinct and magnificent river valleys and call them one basin.

are hollow, which they are not. Second, tertiary strata being frequently of soft material, are easily denuded from ridges and declivities, and remain only on those heights which are flat-topped, or table-land.

The hollows formed in the original igneous elevation of land above the sea are infinite and innumerable. But they are not valleys. Water instantly occupies them, and turns them into seas or lakes, or fills them with drift and alluvium, or transforms them into valleys. That is, the moment any part of the bed of the sea is raised, rain shapes it into ridge and furrow.

If England and Ireland were raised so as to lay dry the part of the sea between them, this hollow could not be claimed as formed by running water. But though running water had not formed the one hollow, it would immediately transform it into two valleys. From some middle part the waters would flow in opposite directions to the sea. They would instantly fill all minor hollows with water, and gradually with drift and alluvium, at the same time wearing down the sides of the hollows next the sea, and would continue for ever to deepen these two valleys from the sea upwards. The cross ridge, from which the waters flowed north and south, being least exposed to the wash of rain, that is, having no accumulation of wash

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