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Updated: June 5, 2025
The fact of the general proximity of volcanoes to the sea is one which has frequently been pointed out by geographers, and may now be regarded as being thoroughly established. Many of the grandest mountain-chains have bands of volcanoes lying parallel to them. This is strikingly exhibited by the great mountain-masses which lie on the western side of the American continent.
The complex of conditions over a continental area of rivers and lakes and mountain-chains is too vast for us to decipher; it inheres in the nature of things. It is one of the potencies and possibilities which matter possesses. We can take no step beyond that. There seems to me to be false reasoning in the argument from analogy which William James uses in his lectures on "Human Immortality."
These older rocks are still as flat and horizontal as when first formed; yet, since their origin, not only have most of the actual mountain-chains been uplifted, but some of the very rocks of which those, mountains are composed have been formed, some of them by igneous and others by aqueous action.
"It is further to be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either glaciers or great torrential streams have descended.
The Caucasus, the Elburz, the Kopetdagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate mountain-chains of Sayan, with those of the Olekma, Vitim, and Aldan, all of which are ranged en échelon, the former from north-west to south-east, and the others from south-west to north-east all these belong to one immense Alpine belt bordering that of the plateaus.
The text he deciphers is written large, written across the face of the continent, written in mountain-chains and ocean depths, and in the piled strata of the globe.
This is easily understood, when we remember that all mountains and mountain-chains are the result of upheavals, and that the violence of the outbreak must have been in proportion to the strength of the resistance.
While the others were resting and partaking gayly of the wine and food which the women and girls of the neighboring villages had brought to them with joyous readiness, Andreas Hofer ascended a peak from which he had a full view of the mountain-chains all around and the extensive plain at his feet.
Their course is determined by laws of temperature, and so have we also seen that the motion of glaciers is mainly determined by conditions of temperature, although, in this case, an internal mechanical action is combined with external influences; and while it is true that glaciers, as they now exist, are dependent upon the shape of the valleys in lofty mountain-chains, yet under different geographical conditions the same phenomena may be produced over level, open countries.
On each continent, also, we see the same fact; for on the opposite sides of lofty and continuous mountain-ranges, and of great deserts, and sometimes even of large rivers, we find different productions; though as mountain-chains, deserts, &c., are not as impassable, or likely to have endured so long as the oceans separating continents, the differences are very inferior in degree to those characteristic of distinct continents.
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