Between the Orient and Occident, and yet to the south of both, lay the Libya of the ancients, exposed to the sun’s direct rays. In the very middle of the earth, on both sides of the equator, and not at the South Pole, is the true South. There we must seek the phenomena of the tropical world in their culminations. As high noon, the middle point in the hour, is the consummation of the day, so the torrid climes of the equatorial belt, at the very middle of the earth, afford the extremes of luxuriant growth. The broad tracts of land at the northern polar regions formed the true physical contrast to the Orient and the Occident, as well as to the great South of central Africa. They lay around the North Pole like a vast shield of earth, unbroken except by the comparatively insignificant seas and gulfs of that region. And even where the water has broken its way and severed those northern lands, a submarine volcanic activity is, even now, constantly at work to restore the break, and bind the coasts together. At about 70° N. lat., all the countries of the north are brought into great nearness, and that parallel is a highway of little else than land crossing the North Cape of Europe, Cape Chelagskoy, in Tchooktchee, at the northeastern extremity of Asia, and touching Cape Bathurst, and the Fury and Heckla Straits of North America. North of this highway and of the Georgian Archipelago begins the great group of circum-polar islands. The break between Asia and North America, at Behring’s Straits, is but fifty-six miles wide; it is the mere outlet of the Sea of Kamtckatka into the Arctic Ocean. The space between the northeast of America and the northwest of Europe is much greater indeed, but, in comparison with the distance between the southernmost points of the old and the new world, insignificant. The distance from northern Norway to Greenland is but about 940 miles. It is noteworthy that, at the north of the great continental land-mass, where minor seas and channels break through, great volcanic forces are constantly at work, as hinted at above, to restore the unity. In the Sea of Kamtchatka lie the Aleutian islands, extending more than 950 miles, and forming what has been happily termed a bridge from the old world to the new. It consists of more than a hundred rocks and islands, some of which have been thrown up within the memory of man. In 1806, von Langsdorf and Tilesius witnessed the emergence of one of these, with a cone-shaped center, and about twenty miles in circumference. Grewingk has counted more than fifty volcanoes in activity within the limits of this island chain. The Curile islands, more to the south, form another similar volcanic group, extending from Japan to Kamtchatka. In this range there are known to be at least ten volcanoes, 10,000 feet in height.