side of it—and from which rose these archetypal outlines of the North American continent.
The
extent and parts of the archsean area on the Atlantic border are thus
outlined by Professor James D. Dana: " On the Atlantic border there is
the long Appalachian protaxis, extending interruptedly from Canada
south of the St. Lawrence, along the higher land of Vermont; eastern
Berkshire in Massachusetts; Putnam, Orange, and Rockland counties in
New York, and Sussex in New Jersey, making the Highland Range, which
crosses the Hudson between Fishkill and Peeks-kill; constituting some
ridges in southeastern Pennsylvania; thence continuing southwestward
along the Piedmont Belt, and through Virginia and North Carolina,
constituting in the latter State the Black Mountains; thence into South
Carolina and Georgia (A on the map, Fig. 1).
"
To the northeastward, over New England to Newfoundland, there are
other parallel ranges, bounding broad valleys or basins, as follows:
(1) To the east of the Connecticut valley, at intervals, from Canada to
Connecticut. (2) Farther east, from near Chaleur Bay, on the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, through New Brunswick, southwest to the coast of Maine
(including the Mount Desert rocks) and into eastern Massachusetts. (3)
The Acadian Range, along western Newfoundland and central Nova Scotia;
then submerged off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts; then over
southeastern Massachusetts, and probably along Long Island. (4) A
central Newfoundland range, which may have had a submarine extension
along Sable Island and the shoals about it, east of Nova Scotia. (5, 6)
Two other ranges farther east.
"
The Acadian is the longest of these Archaean ranges; it is the chief
eastern belt of the Archaean on the Atlantic border, and is strictly
the Acadian protaxis. Its partial submergence . is not in doubt; for,
besides indications of this along the sea-bottom south of Nova Scotia,
there is proof of subsidence of several hundred feet in the fiords of
Maine and the coast, in the Bay of Fundy, in Massachusetts, and
Narragansett Bays,
