During this elemental conflict, and the crash and ruin of the submerged continent, many of its component parts must have been reduced to atoms, and dispersed through the swelling waves that usurped its place. The more liquid bitumens must by the agitation have intimately mixed with them. They must also have absorbed the fixed air contained in the bowels of the sunk continent; and further, by this vast continental depression, whose derelinquished space was occupied by water, the level of the whole diluvial ocean must have been sunk, and the summits of the highest mountains must then have emerged In this state of things it is
Source: wiktionary