We are told "the present rate of denudation of a continent is known with considerable accuracy from careful measurements of the quantity of solid matter carried down by rivers."

Now it is a considerable tax on our faith in science to believe that the débris of the Mississippi can be so accurately gauged as to give anything like approximate value to the result of one foot of continental denudation in 6,000 years.

Assuming this rate of denudation as certain, and also the estimate of the known sedimentary strata as 177,000 feet in depth, we are to conclude that the formation took 56,000,000 years.

If, as cannot be doubted, denudation by rain has gone on here, for thousands of years, at the same pace at which it goes on now, the amount of soil removed must be very great; so great, that the Naparimas may have been, when they were first uplifted out of the Gulf, hundreds of feet higher than they are now.

what denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter!