The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1885-10-03
THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.
A Picture of Our Continent just Before the
Advent of Human Life.
The coming years work of the Geo.
logical Survey has been mapped out
by Major Powell, and the plans have
received the approval of Secretary
Lamar.
The work of the map makers, while
serving the many important ends,
State and municipal, of the most exact
geographical surveys upon a large
scale, is, so far as the Government is
concerned, merely designed to lay
the necessary foundation for the
studies of the savants of the institution.
The early functions of the Geological
Survey, and of the organizations which
few years ago were merged into it.
were limited to the survey and
study of the public domain, and of the
six hundred thousand square miles
about one-fifth of the area of the
Internationally covered by the sur
veyors and biologists, five hundred
thousand lie west of the one hun
dredth meridian. This region has
proved a rare school of science, the
physical conditions having been such
as to preserve unchanged the earliest
rock forms, so that the history of the
globe far back toward its genesis may
be read from the mountain sides as
from an open book. When the study
was begun there was nothing iii geo.
logical literature to show that similarly
favorable regions existed elsewhere,
and it was for time believed that our
plateau districts were in many respects
unique. 1t is now known, however,
that portions of Abyssinia, of northern
Spain, of China and of the Great
Sahara, present like conditions, both as
to the formations and their state of
preservation.
The picture in outline of the young
continent in quarternary time, just be-
fore the advent of human life, into
which, as one of a series, these scien-
tific men are now painting the details,
has but few familiar features. The
great mountain systems were already
uplifted, and were vastly more rugged
and higher than now. The Southern
Sea, now the Gulf of Mexico, had pos
session of an immense strip of the lower
country, and of the great valley and
the Atlantic Coast. The Pacific Slope
was region of steep glaciers. The
Great Basin was an inland ocean, or,
rather, two great inland seas were
found within it, of one of which the
Great Salt Lake is a petty remnant.
This region and that to the south, now
so sterile and dry,was then one of great
humidity, and, where not covered with
water, was very fertile. An ice sheet
extended over the northern portion of
the eastern and middle country, cover
ing the great lakes and the bordering
regions to the south for hundreds of
miles. Continually moving southwark,
this sheet deposited its cargoes of det-
ritus century after century, forming
the subsoils of what are now the East
ern, Middle and Northwestern States;
and heaped up a terminal moraine, still
distinctly traceable as range of hills
through New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and thence north
westward along the present line of the
Missouri through Dakota, and up into
the British possessions. Great tongues
of ice shot off from this sheet far to the
southwark, while an island region,
comprising much of the present State
of Wisconsin, remained bare. There
were, in fact, two great ice periods,
with an intervening season longer than
the time which has elapsed since the
disappearance of the last sheet, and
during the interval forests of large
cOnifers covered the face of the earth.
Long Island, which was covered by
glacial deposits, marks the southeastern
limit of the sheet.
The climatic conditions of the coun.
try south of the great ice belt were
much the same as at present, and the
flora was similar, though coniferous
more abundant. Through the forests
along the borders of the ice sheet
roamed strange animals, among which
were the huge, hairy and more than
elephantic mammoth; the horse, a
smaller animal than his relative of to-
day, having well-formed hoofs, but
still bearing in rudimentary form one
or two of the toes of his primeval an
cestors; the great buffalo, two or three
times larger than his descendant of to-
day; the pig, more nearly resembling
the peccary of South America than the
familiar hog of our own country, and
other creatures curiously related to the
modern camel and rhinoceros. Then
came man, but his early footprints are
too few and indistinct to reveal within
a few thousand years just when he
came, while whence and how he came
few venture even to guess Washing
ton Cor. ~ Y. SAN.