The Continent is born. After many millions of tons had been thus ground up and tossed about and mingled with the waters of the seas, the earth, in a fit of fiery anger, turned and baked them, with intense heat, out of all semblance to their former appearance. These baked masses, in the course of time, were thrust up out of the seas, mashed and macerated once more, again deposited as sand, silt, pebbles and boulders, and again burned. These processes followed each other, how many times we do not know, the earth all the while keeping up her steady uplift of the children of her bosom out of the great sea. Higher and higher came the land. Further and further receded the sea, until, in due course, the sun shone upon a vast area of land that was the rude skeleton of what is now the continent of North America.

It would have taken a keen eye, however, to have imagined from that which we see to-day what was there. The Gulf of California reached far up, even into Nevada, and covered what are now the Mohave and Colorado Deserts; there was no California Coast Range; the Gulf of Mexico was vastly larger than it is to-day, covering all Florida, and reaching up the Mississippi Valley half-way to the Great Lakes.