o other.

On another occasion you may remark that Europe, Asia, Africa, and
Australia lie in an almost continuous curve in the eastern hemisphere,
while America has the western hemisphere all to itself. There it lies as
a huge dividing wall between two oceans. You wonder why the New World
has such a peculiar form stretching from pole to pole.

Perhaps you think that the Creator must have changed His mind at the
last moment, and decided to make two distinct continents of America. You
seem to see the marks of His omnipotent hands. With the left He held
North America, and in the right South America. Where Hudson Bay runs
into the land lay His forefinger, and the Gulf of Mexico is the
impression of His thumb. South America He gripped with the whole hand,
and there is only a slight mark of the thumb just on the boundary
between Peru and Chile. It almost looks as if He grasped the continent
so tightly that its western border was crumpled into great wrinkles and
folds which we men call the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. If we did not
know that it is the ocean winds that feed the rivers with rain, we
should be tempted to believe that the Mississippi, Amazons, Rio de la
Plata, and other rivers were moisture still running out of the mountains
under the pressure of the Creator's hands.

And so He has divided America into two. In one place the connection
broke, but the fragments still remain, and we call them the West Indies
or Antilles. In other places the material was too tough. Mexico thins
out southwards as though it were going to end in the sea, and Central
America is stretched like a wrung-out cloth. Between Guatemala and
Honduras it is almost torn through, and the large lake of Nicaragua is
another weak point. But where Costa Rica passes into the Isthmus of
Panama the connection between the two halves of the New World has been
almost broken and hangs only by a hair. The peninsula, however, resisted
the pull, and has held, though reduced to a breadth of forty miles.

Then, of course, man must come and help the Creator to finish the work
which He Himself found very good. It was long before men ventured on so
gigantic an undertaking, but as they had succeeded in separating Africa
from Asia, it was no doubt feasible to blast a canal through the hills
of the Isthmus of Panama, 300 feet high. It has cost many years and many
millions, but the great cutting will soon be ready which will sever
South America from the northern half