Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/76

52 the Carboniferous. The great depth of the sea in the western portion of the North Atlantic also seems to indicate that the floor of the sea is more ancient in this region. The contrast of the Spanish peninsula with the opposite American coast has also the same bearing. The Azores, Canary Islands and Cape Verde Islands are to be conceived as fragments of the continental margin comparable to the pieces of calf-ice in front of a floating iceberg. Thus Gagel also came to the conclusion, in the case of the Canaries and Madeira, “that these islands are pieces broken off the European-African continent, from which they were first separated in comparatively recent time.”

Farther to the north we find in immediate succession three old zones of folding which extend from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and offer another very impressive confirmation for the assumption of a former immediate contact. The most striking to the eye are the Carboniferous folds, which E. Suess calls the Armorican mountains, and which make the coal deposits of North America appear as the direct continuation of the European. These strongly