How,again,are we to account for the repetition of the phenomenon exhibited by the larger rivers,in every tributary,small or great,from the glaciers to the sea?They are all as like as pea to pea in principle,though of course varying in detail.Yet every trifling watercourse,as it emerges from mountainous to level ground,presents the same phenomenon,namely,a large gully,far too large for the water which could ever have come down it,gradually widening out,and then disappearing.The general opinion here among the reputed cognoscenti is,that all these gullies were formed in the process of the gradual upheaval of the island from the sea,and that the plains were originally sea-bottoms,slowly raised,and still slowly raising themselves.
Doubtless,the rivers brought the stones down,but they were deposited in the sea.
The terraces,which are so abundant all over the back country,and which rise,one behind another,to the number,it may be,of twenty or thirty,with the most unpicturesque regularity (on my run there are fully twenty),are supposed to be elevated sea-beaches.They are to be seen even as high as four or five thousand feet above the level of the sea,and I doubt not that a geologist might find traces of them higher still.
Therefore,though,when first looking at the plains and river-bed flats which are so abundant in the back country,one might be inclined to think that no other agent than the rivers themselves had been at work,and though,when one sees the delta below,and the empty gully above,like a minute-glass after the egg has been boiled--the top glass empty of the sand,and the bottom glass full of it--one is tempted to rest satisfied;yet when we look closer,we shall find that more is wanted in order to account for the phenomena exhibited,and the geologists of the island supply that more,by means of upheaval.
I pay the tribute of a humble salaam to science,and return to my subject.