Читать книгу The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream онлайн

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“In our day we have been called on to deplore the ravages caused by the eruptions of Mt. Pelee and La Soufriere, on the Islands of Martinique and St. Vincent, and it is natural to insist that regions which have a precarious autonomy, in which such volcanoes can exist, must be regarded with diffidence, as permanent geographical areas.

“It was pointed out by Prof. Robert T. Hill that the current, and formerly undisputed, conception that the Rocky Mountains of North America and the Andes of South America were not only analogous physiographically, but univalent in fact; that the continuous elevation of Central America brought them into an oblique alignment; and that their mutual prolongations met in the Isthmus of Panama, was erroneous. It involved a complete misconception. It was a geographical fallacy, and leads to misleading conclusions as to the permanency of this intermedian region, itself pre-eminently individualized and liberated from the circumstances and implications of either the Rocky Mountain Continent or the Andean Continent. This area has a different geological ancestry. To-day it invokes an especial treatment, and possibly expects a future, contrasted with that of the two great Continents whose longitudinal extension it contravenes by its east and west lines, by the prerogatives of a separate origin.