mashed them.

Although the great earth folds were slowly raised, and no doubt
eroded in their rising, they formed in all probability a range of
lofty mountains, with a width of from fifty to a hundred and
twenty-five miles, which stretched from New York to central
Alabama.

From their bases lowlands extended westward to beyond the Missouri
River. At the same time ranges were upridged out of thick
Paleozoic sediments both in the Bay of Fundy region and in the
Indian Territory. The eastern portion of the North American
continent was now well-nigh complete.

The date of the Appalachian deformation is told in the usual way.
The Carboniferous strata, nearly two miles thick, are all infolded
in the Appalachian ridges, while the next deposits found in this
region--those of the later portion of the first period (the Trias)
of the succeeding era--rest unconformably on the worn edges of the
Appalachian folded strata. The deformation therefore took place
about the close of the Paleozoic. It seems to have begun in the
Permian, in, eastern Pennsylvania,--for here the Permian strata
are wanting,--and to have continued into the Trias, whose earlier
formations are absent over all the area.

With this wide uplift the subsidence of the sea floor which had so
long been general in eastern North America came to an end.
Deposition now gave place to erosion. The sedimentary record of
the Paleozoic was closed, and after an unknown lapse of time, here
unrecorded, the annals of the succeeding era were written under