Letter from N. D. Stebbins to John Muir, 1872 Oct 4 .

• Main Author: Stebbins, N D
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1872
• Subjects: John Muir; correspondence; letters; author; writing; naturalist; California; correspondent; mail; message; post; exchange of letters; missive; notes; epistle; Arctic; Canada; Great Glacier; Hudson; Hudson Bay; Pacific
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/12147; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmcl/article/37081/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

Coudersport, Potter Co., Pa.,Oct. 4 '72.My good friend Muir,I have just finished the reading of Mr. Dana's new work on "Corals and Coral Islands". He closes up the work by giving his"Geological Conclusions". I was so amused in seeing how he like the Ann Arbor Prof. (Winchell) in his work on "Footsteps of Creation" had been misled by Whitney. I felt I must give you the benefit, thinking you may not as yet [have] met with the work so recently published to the world. The Prof. (Dana gives what he thinks must have been a subsidence in some portion of the Pacific. Among others, one, he thinks. was six thousand miles in length and twenty-five hundred wide reaching from the Sandwich to the Friendly group. This subsidence was in progress, in all probability, during the Glacial era, their origin runs back into the Tertiary. The subsidence connected with the origin of coral islands and barrier reefs of the Pacific amounted to several thousands of feet, perhaps full 10,000. And it may be here repeated that although this sounds large the change of level is not greater than the elevation which the Rocky Mountains, Andes, Alps and Himalayas since the close of the cretaceous era in the early Tertiary; and perhaps it does not exceed the upward bulging in the Glacial era of part of North America. The author has presented reasons for believing (Am. J. Sci.'71) that in this Glacial era the watershed of Canada between the River St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay was raised at least 5500 feet above its present level (1500), and that this plateau thus elevated was the origin of the great glacier which moved southeastward over New England. This region is the summit of the eastern arm of the great V-shaped azoic area of the continent, the earliest elevated land of North America; and it is not improbable that the other arm of the V, reaching from Lake Superior and Huron northwestward to the Arctic, was raised at the same time to a higher elevation and was the source of glacial movements over the more central portions of the continent. We ...