Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/79

Rh there lies the still older (Algonkian) gneissic mountain system of the Hebrides and North-west Scotland. On the American side the gneiss folds of Labrador, of similar age, which reach to the Straits of Belle Isle towards the south and extend far into Canada, correspond to these. The direction of strike is north-east–south-west in Europe; in America it varies from this to east–west. Dacqué remarks: “From this one can conclude that the chain extended across the North Atlantic Ocean.” According to former ideas, the supposed submerged connecting-link must have had a length of at least 3000 km. and the direct continuation of the European portion is, in the present position of the continents, in the direction of South America, several thousand kilometres aside from the American portion. According to the displacement theory, the American portion, in the restoration of the original conditions, undergoes such a transverse movement and simultaneous rotation, that it is directly attached to the European portion, and appears as its continuation.

Again, in the region just dealt with occur the terminal moraines of the great Pleistocene inland ice-cap of North America and Europe. In our reconstruction these also unite without leaving a gap or break, a circumstance which would surely be improbable if the coasts had at the time of their formation their present distance apart of 2500 km. especially as the American termination lies to-day 4$1⁄2$° of latitude south of the European.

The correspondences of the Atlantic coasts already mentioned, namely, the folding of the Cape mountains and of the Sierras of Buenos Aires as well as the correspondence between the eruptive rocks, sediments, and strike-lines in the great gneissic plateaus of Brazil and