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XIV.
The Geographical Development of Coast-lines. ¹¹⁹

Amongst the many questions upon which of late years light has been thrown by deep-sea exploration and geological research, not the least interesting is that of the geographical development of coast-lines. How is the existing distribution of land and water to be accounted for? Are the revolutions in the relative position of land and sea, to which the geological record bears witness, due to movements of the earth’s crust or of the hydrosphere? Why are coast-lines in some regions extremely regular, while elsewhere they are much indented? About 150 years ago the prevalent belief was that ancient sea-margins indicated a formerly higher ocean-level. Such was the view held by Celsius, who, from an examination of the coast-lands of Sweden, attributed the retreat of the sea to a gradual drying up of the latter. But this desiccation hypothesis was not accepted by Playfair, who thought it much more likely that the land had risen. It was not, however, until after Von Buch had visited Sweden (1806-1808), and published the results of his observations, that Playfair’s suggestion received much consideration. Von Buch concluded that the apparent retreat of the sea was not due to a general depression of the ocean-level, but to elevation of the land – a conclusion which subsequently obtained the strong support of Lyell. The authority of these celebrated men gained for the elevation theory more or less complete assent, and for many years it has been the orthodox belief of geologists that the ancient sea-margins of Sweden and other lands have resulted from vertical movements of the crust. It has long been admitted, however, that highly-flexed and disturbed strata require some other explanation. Obviously such structures are the result of lateral compression and crumpling. Hence geologists have maintained that the mysterious subterranean forces have affected the crust in different ways. Mountain-ranges, they conceive, are ridged up by tangential thrusts and compression, while vast continental areas slowly rise and fall, with little or no disturbance of the strata. From this point of view it is the lithosphere that is unstable, all changes in the relative level of land and sea being due to crustal movements. Of late years, however, Trautschold and others have begun to doubt whether this theory is wholly true, and to maintain that the sea-level may have changed without reference to movements of the lithosphere. Thus Hilber has suggested that sinking of the sea-level may be due, in part at least, to absorption, while Schmick believes that the apparent elevation and depression of continental areas are really the results of grand secular movements of the ocean. The sea, according to him, periodically attains a high level in each hemisphere alternately, the waters being at present heaped up in the southern hemisphere. Professor Suess, again, believing that in equatorial regions the sea is, on the whole, gaining on the land, while in other latitudes the reverse would appear to be the case, points out this is in harmony with his view of a periodical flux and reflux of the ocean between the equator and the poles. He thinks we have no evidence of any vertical elevation affecting wide areas, and that the only movements of elevation that take place are those by which mountains are upheaved. The broad invasions and transgressions of the continental areas by the sea, which we know have occurred again and again, are attributed by him to secular movements of the hydrosphere itself.

Apart from all hypothesis and theory, we learn that the surface of the sea is not exactly spheroidal. It reaches a higher level on the borders of the continents than in mid-ocean, and it varies likewise in height at different places on the same coast. The attraction of the Himalaya, for example, suffices to cause a difference of 300 feet between the level of the sea at the delta of the Indus and on the coast of Ceylon. The recognition of such facts has led Penck to suggest that the submergence of the maritime regions of north-west Europe and the opposite coasts of North America, which took place at a recent geological date, and from which the lands in question have only partially recovered, may have been brought about by the attraction exerted by the vast ice-sheets of the Glacial period. But, as Drygalski, Woodward, and others have shown, the heights at which recent marine deposits occur in the regions referred to are much too great to be accounted for by any possible distortion of the hydrosphere. The late James Croll had previously endeavoured to show that the accumulation of ice over northern lands during glacial times would suffice to displace the earth’s centre of gravity, and thus cause the sea to rise upon the glaciated tracts. More recently other views have been advanced to explain the apparently causal connection between glaciation and submergence, but these need not be considered here.

Whatever degree of importance may attach to the various hypotheses of secular movements of the sea, it is obvious that the general trends of the world’s coast-lines are determined in the first place by the position of the dominant wrinkles of the lithosphere. Even if we concede that all “raised beaches,” so-called, are not necessarily the result of earth-movements, and that the frequent transgressions of the continental areas by oceanic waters in geological times may possibly have been due to independent movements of the sea, still we must admit that the solid crust of the globe has always been subject to distortion. And this being so, we cannot doubt that the general trends of the world’s coast-lines must have been modified from time to time by movements of the lithosphere.

As geographers we are not immediately concerned with the mode of origin of those vast wrinkles, nor need we speculate on the causes which may have determined their direction. It seems, however, to be the general opinion that the configuration of the lithosphere is due simply to the sinking-in and doubling-up of the crust on the cooling and contracting nucleus. But it must be admitted that neither physicists nor geologists are prepared with a satisfactory hypothesis to account for the prominent trends of the great world-ridges and troughs. According to the late Professor Alexander Winchell, these trends may have been the result of primitive tidal action. He was of opinion that the transmeridional progress of the tidal swell in early incrustive times on our planet would give the forming crust structural characteristics and aptitudes trending from north to south. The earliest wrinkles to come into existence, therefore, would be meridional or submeridional, and such, certainly, is the prevalent direction of the most conspicuous earth-features. There are many terrestrial trends, however, as Professor Winchell knew, which do not conform to the requirements of his hypothesis; but such transmeridional features, he thought, could generally be shown to be of later origin than the others. This is the only speculation, so far as I know, which attempts, perhaps not altogether unsuccessfully, to explain the origin of the main trends of terrestrial features. According to other authorities, however, the area of the earth’s crust occupied by the ocean is denser than that over which the continental regions are spread. The depressed denser part balances the lighter elevated portion. But why these regions of different densities should be so distributed no one has yet told us. Neither does Le Conte’s view, that the continental areas and the oceanic depressions owe their origin to unequal radial contraction of the earth in its secular cooling, help us to understand why the larger features of the globe should be disposed as they are.

Geographers must for the present be content to take the world as they find it. What we do know is that our lands are distributed over the surface of a great continental plateau of irregular form, the bounding slopes of which plunge down more or less steeply into a vast oceanic depression. So far as geological research has gone, there is reason to believe that these elevated and depressed areas are of primeval antiquity – that they ante-date the very oldest of the sedimentary formations. There is abundant evidence, however, to show that the relatively elevated or continental area has been again and again irregularly submerged under tolerably deep and wide seas. But all historical geology seems to assure us that the continental plateau and the oceanic hollows have never changed places, although from time to time portions of the latter have been ridged up and added to the margins of the former, while ever and anon marginal portions of the plateau have sunk to very considerable depths. We may thus speak of the great world-ridges as regions of dominant elevation, and of the profound oceanic troughs as areas of more or less persistent depression. From one point of view, it is true, no part of the earth’s surface can be looked upon as a region of dominant elevation. Our globe is a cooling and contracting body, and depression must always be the prevailing movement of the lithosphere. The elevation of the continental plateau is thus only relative. Could we conceive the crust throughout the deeper portions of the oceanic depression to subside to still greater depths, while at the same time the continental plateau remained stationary, or subsided more slowly, the sea would necessarily retreat from the land, and the latter would then appear to rise. It is improbable, however, that any extensive subsidence of the crust under the ocean could take place without accompanying disturbance of the continental plateau; and in this case the latter might experience in places not only negative but positive elevation. During the evolution of our continents, crustal movements have again and again disturbed the relative level of land and sea; but since the general result has been to increase the land-surface and to contract the area occupied by the sea, it is convenient to speak of the former as the region of dominant elevation, and of the latter as that of prevalent depression. Properly speaking, both are sinking regions, the rate of subsidence within the oceanic trough being in excess of that experienced over the continental plateau. The question of the geographical development of coast-lines is therefore only that of the dry lands themselves.

The greater land-masses are all situated upon, but are nowhere co-extensive with, the area of dominant elevation, for very considerable portions of the continental plateau are still covered by the sea. Opinions may differ as to which fathoms-line we should take as marking approximately the boundary between that region and the oceanic depression; and it is obvious, indeed, that any line selected must be arbitrary and more or less misleading, for it is quite certain that the true boundary of the continental plateau cannot lie parallel to the surface of the ocean. In some regions it approaches within a few hundreds of fathoms of the sea-level; in other places it sinks for considerably more than 1000 fathoms below that level. Thus, while a very moderate elevation would in certain latitudes cause the land to extend to the edge of the plateau, an elevation of at least 10,000 feet would be required in some other places to bring about a similar result.

Although it is true that the land-surface is nowhere co-extensive with the great plateau, yet the existing coast-lines may be said to trend in the same general direction as its margins. So abruptly does the continental plateau rise from the oceanic trough, that a depression of the sea-level, or an elevation of the plateau, for 10,000 feet, would add only a narrow belt to the Pacific coast between Alaska and Cape Horn, while the gain of land on the Atlantic slope of America between 30° N.L. and 40° S.L. would not be much greater. In the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere, however, very considerable geographical changes would be accomplished by a much less amount of elevation of the plateau. Were the continental plateau to be upheaved for 3000 feet, the major portion of the Arctic Sea would become land. Thus, in general terms, we may say that the coast-lines of arctic and temperate North America and Eurasia are further withdrawn from the edge of the continental plateau than those of lower latitudes.

In regions where existing coast-lines approach the margin of the plateau, they are apt to run for long distances in one determinate direction, and, whether the coastal area be high or not, to show a gentle sinuosity. Their course is seldom interrupted by bold projecting headlands or peninsulas, or by intruding inlets, while fringing or marginal islands rarely occur. To these appearances the northern regions, as every one knows, offer the strongest contrast. Not only do they trend irregularly, but their continuity is constantly interrupted by promontories and peninsulas, by inlets and fiords, while fringing islands abound. But an elevation of some 400 or 500 fathoms only would revolutionise the geography of those regions, and confer upon the northern coast-lines of the world the regularity which at present characterises those of western Africa.

It is obvious, therefore, that the coast-lines of such lands as Africa owe their regularity primarily to their approximate coincidence with the steep boundary-slopes of the continental plateau, while the irregularities characteristic of the coast-line of north-western Europe and the corresponding latitudes of North America are determined by the superficial configuration of the same plateau, which in those regions is relatively more depressed. I have spoken of the general contrast between high and low northern latitudes; but it is needless to say that in southern regions the coast-lines exhibit similar contrasts. The regular coast-lines of Africa and South America have already been referred to; but we cannot fail to recognise in the much-indented sea-board and the numerous coastal islands of southern Chile a complete analogy to the fiord regions of high northern latitudes. Both are areas of comparatively recent depression. Again, the manifold irregularities of the coasts of south-eastern Asia, and the multitudes of islands that serve to link that continent to Australia and New Zealand, are all evidence that the surface of the continental plateau in those regions is extensively invaded by the sea.

A word or two now as to the configuration of the oceanic trough. There can be no doubt that this differs very considerably from that of the land-surface. It is, upon the whole, flat or gently-undulating. Here and there it swells gently upwards into broad elevated banks, some of which have been traced for great distances. In other places narrower ridges and abrupt mountain-like elevations diversify its surface, and project again and again above the level of the sea, to form the numerous islets of Oceania. Once more, the sounding-line has made us acquainted with the notable fact that numerous deep depressions – some long and narrow, others relatively short and broad – stud the floor of the great trough. I shall have occasion to refer again to these remarkable depressions, and need at present only call attention to the fact that they are especially well-developed in the region of the western Pacific, where the floor of the sea, at the base of the bounding slopes of the continental plateau, sinks in places to depths of three and even of five miles below the existing coast-lines. One may further note the fact that the deepest areas of the Atlantic are met with in like manner close to the walls of the plateau – a long ridge, which rises midway between the continents and runs in the same general direction as their coast-lines, serving to divide the trough of the Atlantic into two parallel hollows.

But, to return to our coast-lines and the question of their development, it is obvious that their general trends have been determined by crustal movements. Their regularity is in direct proportion to the closeness of their approach to the margin of the continental plateau. The more nearly they coincide with the edge of that plateau, the fewer irregularities do they present; the further they recede from it, the more highly are they indented. Various other factors, it is true, have played a more or less important part in their development, but their dominant trends were undoubtedly determined at a very early period in the world’s history – their determination necessarily dates back, in short, to the time when the great world-ridges and oceanic troughs came into existence. So far as we can read the story told by the rocks, however, it would seem that in the earliest ages of which geology can speak with any confidence, the coast-lines of the world must have been infinitely more irregular than now. In Palæozoic times, relatively small areas of the continental plateau appeared above the level of the sea. Insular conditions everywhere prevailed. But as ages rolled on, wider and wider tracts of the plateau were exposed, and this notwithstanding many oscillations of level. So that one may say there has been, upon the whole, a general advance from insular to continental conditions. In other words, the sea has continued to retreat from the surface of the continental plateau. To account for this change, we must suppose that depression of the crust has been in excess within the oceanic area, and that now and again positive elevation of the continental plateau has taken place, more especially along its margins. That movements of elevation, positive or negative, have again and again affected our land-areas can be demonstrated, and it seems highly probable, therefore, that similar movements may have been experienced within the oceanic trough.

Two kinds of crustal movement, as we have seen, are recognised by geologists. Sometimes the crust appears to rise, or, as the case may be, to sink over wide regions, without much disturbance or tilting of strata, although these are now and again more or less extensively fractured and displaced. It may conduce to clearness if we speak of these movements as regional. The other kind of crustal disturbance takes place more markedly in linear directions, and is always accompanied by abrupt folding and mashing together of strata, along with more or less fracturing and displacement. The plateau of the Colorado has often been cited as a good example of regional elevation, where we have a wide area of approximately horizontal strata apparently uplifted without much rock-disturbance, while the Alps or any other chain of highly-flexed and convoluted strata will serve as an example of what we may term axial or linear uplifts. It must be understood that both regional and axial movements result from the same cause – the adjustment of the solid crust to the contracting nucleus – and that the term elevation, therefore, is only relative. Sometimes the sinking crust gets relief from the enormous lateral pressure to which it is subjected by crumpling up along lines of weakness, and then mountains of elevation are formed; at other times, the pressure is relieved by the formation of broader swellings, when wide areas become uplifted relatively to surrounding regions. Geologists, however, are beginning to doubt whether upheaval of the latter kind can affect a broad continental area. Probably, in most cases, the apparent elevation of continental regions is only negative. The land appears to have risen because the floor of the oceanic basin has become depressed. Even the smaller plateau-like elevations which occur within some continental regions may in a similar way owe their dominance to the sinking of contiguous regions.

In the geographical development of our land, movements of elevation and depression have played an important part. But we cannot ignore the work done by other agents of change. If the orographical features of the land everywhere attest the potency of plutonic agents, they no less forcibly assure us that the inequalities of surface resulting from such movements are universally modified by denudation and sedimentation. Elevated plains and mountains are gradually demolished, and the hollows and depressions of the great continental plateau become slowly filled with their detritus. Thus inland-seas tend to vanish, inlets and estuaries are silted up, and the land in places advances seaward. The energies of the sea, again, come in to aid those of rain and rivers, so that under the combined action of all the superficial agents of change, the irregularities of coast-lines become reduced, and, were no crustal movement to intervene, would eventually disappear. The work accomplished by those agents upon a coast-line is most conspicuous in regions where the surface of the continental plateau is occupied by comparatively shallow seas. Here full play is given to sedimentation and marine erosion, while the latter alone comes into prominence upon shores that are washed by deeper waters. When the coast-lines advance to the edge of the continental plateau, they naturally trend, as we have seen, for great distances in some particular direction. Should they preserve that position, undisturbed by crustal oscillation, for a prolonged period of time, they will eventually be cut back by the sea. In this way a shelf or terrace will be formed, narrow in some places, broader in others, according to the resistance offered by the varying character of the rocks. But no long inlets or fiords can result from such action. At most the harder and less readily demolished rocks will form headlands, while shallow bays will be scooped out of the more yielding masses. In short, between the narrower and broader parts of the eroded shelf or terrace a certain proportion will tend to be preserved. As the shelf is widened, sedimentation will become more and more effective, and in places may come to protect the land from further marine erosion. This action is especially conspicuous in tropical and sub-tropical regions, which are characterised by well-marked rainy seasons. In such regions immense quantities of sediment are washed down from the land to the sea, and tend to accumulate along shore, forming low alluvial flats. All long-established coast-lines thus acquire a characteristically sinuous form, and perhaps no better examples could be cited than those of western Africa.

To sum up, then, we may say that the chief agents concerned in the development of coast-lines are crustal movements, sedimentation, and marine erosion. All the main trends are the result of elevation and depression. Considerable geographical changes, however, have been brought about by the silting up of those shallow and sheltered seas which, in certain regions, overflow wide areas of the continental plateau. Throughout all the ages, indeed, epigene agents have striven to reduce the superficial inequalities of that plateau, by levelling heights and filling up depressions, and thus, as it were, flattening out the land-surface and causing it to extend. The erosive action of the sea, from our present point of view, is of comparatively little importance. It merely adds a few finishing touches to the work performed by the other agents of change.

A glance at the geographical evolution of our own Continent will render this sufficiently evident. Viewed in detail, the structure of Europe is exceedingly complicated, but there are certain leading features in its architecture which no profound analysis is required to detect. We note, in the first place, that highly-disturbed rocks of Archæan and Palæozoic age reach their greatest development along the north-western and western borders of our Continent, as in Scandinavia, the British Islands, north-west France, and the Iberian peninsula. Another belt of similarly disturbed strata of like age traverses central Europe from west to east, and is seen in the south of Ireland, Cornwall, north-west France, the Ardennes, the Thüringer-Wald, the Erz Gebirge, the Riesen Gebirge, the Böhmer-Wald, and other heights of middle and southern Germany. Strata of Mesozoic and Cainozoic age rest upon the older systems in such a way as to show that the latter had been much folded, fractured, and denuded before they came to be covered with younger formations. North and north-east of the central belt of ancient rocks just referred to, the sedimentary strata that extend to the shores of the Baltic and over a vast region in Russia, range in age from Palæozoic down to Cainozoic times, and are disposed for the most part in gentle undulations – they are either approximately horizontal or slightly inclined. Unlike the disturbed rocks of the maritime regions and of central Europe, they have obviously been subjected to comparatively little folding since the time of their deposition. To the south of the primitive back-bone of central Europe succeeds a region composed superficially of Mesozoic and Cainozoic strata for the most part, which, along with underlying Palæozoic and Archæan rocks, are often highly-flexed and ridged up, as in the chains of the Jura, the Alps, the Carpathians, etc. One may say, in general terms, that throughout the whole Mediterranean area Archæan and Palæozoic rocks appear at the surface only when they form the nuclei of mountains of elevation, into the composition of which rocks of younger age largely enter.

From this bald and meagre outline of the general geological structure of Europe, we may gather that the leading orographical features of our Continent began to be developed at a very early period. Unquestionably the oldest land-areas are represented by the disturbed Archæan and Palæozoic rocks of the Atlantic sea-board and central Europe. Examination of those tracts shows that they have experienced excessive denudation. The Archæan and Palæozoic masses, distributed along the margin of the Atlantic, are the mere wrecks of what, in earlier ages, must have been lofty regions, the mountain-chains of which may well have rivalled or even exceeded in height the Alps of to-day. They, together with the old disturbed rocks of central Europe, formed for a long time the only land in our area. Between the ancient Scandinavian tract in the north and a narrow interrupted belt in central Europe, stretched a shallow sea, which covered all the regions that now form our Great Plain; while immediately south of the central belt lay the wide depression of the Mediterranean – for as yet the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Carpathians were not. Both the Mediterranean and the Russo-Germanic sea communicated with the Atlantic. As time went on land continued to be developed along the same lines, a result due partly to crustal movements, partly to sedimentation. Thus the relatively shallow Russo-Germanic sea became silted up, while the Mediterranean shore-line advanced southwards. It is interesting to note that the latter sea, down to the close of Tertiary times, seems always to have communicated freely with the Atlantic, and to have been relatively deep. The Russo-Germanic sea, on the contrary, while now and again opening widely into the Atlantic, and attaining considerable depths in its western reaches, remained on the whole shallow, and ever and anon vanished from wide areas to contract into a series of inland-seas and large salt lakes.

Reduced to its simplest elements, therefore, the structure of Europe shows two primitive ridges – one extending with some interruptions along the Atlantic sea-board, the other traversing central Europe from west to east, and separating the area of the Great Plain from the Mediterranean basin. The excessive denudation which the more ancient lands have undergone, and the great uplifts of Mesozoic and of Cainozoic times, together with the comparatively recent submergence of broad tracts in the north and north-west, have not succeeded in obscuring the dominant features in the architecture of our Continent.

I now proceed to trace, as rapidly as I can, the geographical development of the coast-lines of the Atlantic as a whole, and to point out the chief contrasts between them and the coast-lines of the Pacific. The extreme irregularity of the Arctic and Atlantic shores of Europe at once suggests to a geologist a partially-drowned land, the superficial inequalities of which are accountable for the vagaries of the coast-lines. The fiords of Norway and Scotland occupy what were at no distant date land-valleys, and the numerous marginal islands of those regions are merely the projecting portions of a recently-sunken area. The continental plateau extends up to and a little beyond the one hundred fathoms line, and there are many indications that the land formerly reached as far. Thus the sunken area is traversed by valley-like depressions, which widen as they pass outwards to the edge of the plateau, and have all the appearance of being hollows of sub-aërial erosion. I have already mentioned the fact that the Scandinavian uplands and the Scottish Highlands are the relics of what were at one time true mountains of elevation, corresponding in the mode of their formation to those of Switzerland, and, like these, attaining a great elevation. During subsequent stages of Palæozoic time, that highly-elevated region was subjected to long-continued and profound erosion – the mountain-country was planed down over wide regions to sea-level, and broad stretches of the reduced land-surface became submerged. Younger Palæozoic formations then accumulated upon the drowned land, until eventually renewed crustal disturbance supervened, and the marginal areas of the continental plateau again appeared as dry land, but not, as before, in the form of mountains of elevation. Lofty table-lands now took the place of abrupt and serrated ranges and chains – table-lands which, in their turn, were destined in the course of long ages to be deeply sculptured and furrowed by sub-aërial agents. During this process the European coast-line would seem to have coincided more or less closely with the edge of the continental plateau. Finally, after many subsequent movements of the crust in these latitudes, the land became partially submerged – a condition from which north-western and northern Europe would appear in recent times to be slowly recovering. Thus the highly-indented coast-line of those regions does not coincide with the edge of the plateau, but with those irregularities of its upper surface which are the result of antecedent sub-aërial erosion.