CONTENTS.

PAGE
I. Cranks[ 1]
II. Fire and Water[ 5]
III. Icebergs[ 19]
IV. Gulf Stream [ 28]
V. Daily Motion[ 36]
VI. Earthquakes[ 38]
VII. Volcanoes[ 40]
VIII. Rainfalls[ 44]
IX. Springs [ 55]
X. Glaciers[ 61]
XI. Caves[ 67]
XII. Artesian Wells[ 68]
XIII. Oases[ 71]
XIV. Things That Puzzle Us[ 73]
XV. Meteors[ 80]
XVI. Attraction of Gravitation[ 81]
XVII. Scientific Theories[ 86]
XVIII. Surface Influences of Water, and Change of Polarity[ 88]
XIX. Conclusion[ 95]
Appendix[ 103]

THE HOLLOW EARTH.

I.
CRANKS.

Cranks are appliances to turn things round.

A Crank that revolves only half way will not always accomplish much of a change, and in many cases would only aggravate the situation. Were it not for Cranks nearly all mechanical appliances would be motionless.

Men’s thoughts and opinions would all be the same, without some such device to get them out of the old notions, grooves and ruts in which they long have indulged and plodded. The world has known Cranks ever since our first parents adopted the wearing of fig leaves, and Noah took up ship building on the weather bureau suggesting cloudy weather and showers in Eastern Turkey. Moses was a Crank when he forbid the eating of pork, salt water eels, turkey buzzards, owls and all other unclean birds, fish or animals of any kind, but there is no doubt that these commands were none of his mistakes.

Sacred writ gives a plenty of such characters, but, by skipping to times more recent, we find such Cranks as Copernicus, Galileo, Columbus, Newton, Franklin, and, during the last century, the Crank family has greatly increased with Daguerre, Watt, Howe, Edison, Marconi and Tesla and scores of others, who, in some of the earlier times, would have been hung or burned as wizards and sorcerers.

Political, historical and religious Cranks have sprung up, turning over and upsetting many old-fogey and absurd notions and beliefs of the past.

In former times Cranks were the subject of ridicule and persecution for trying to inject some new ideas into the public mind. History is profuse with abuses of some of the best thoughts and discoveries that have come to the human race.

Supposing Copernicus had never advanced and enforced a conclusion that the Earth was round and revolved on its axis, such motion causing the apparent rising and setting of the Sun. Only for this we might to this day believe in the story of Joshua’s command over the sun and moon, and associate believers with Parson Jasper that “De sun do move.” It is pleasant to realize that we are living in a time when new thoughts do not frighten people, and we are not scared at what we cannot understand, even if it does not harmonize with antiquated ideas purporting to be 4,000 to 6,000 years old.

The humble and obscure individual who presumes to offer the few succeeding pages of crude ideas may be classed among pigmy Cranks, but, nevertheless, feels impelled to sow a little thoughtful seed on a subject that, to his knowledge, has never been discussed; and with a hope that such seed may some of it fall in good ground, and spring up a crop of criticism that may ultimate in some better mind taking it up and demonstrate with the success that the writer believes it merits.

To prove that the Earth was round required a long time and a serious amount of persecution. Now, to assume that it is hollow, may require more time than the brief discussion in this small book. Yet it is hoped the ideas here may take root in the enlightenment of the present day and start a growth productive of good fruit in the future. In order to discuss this question involves a task that in the outset may look discouraging, as follows:

The ax must be laid at the root of many favorite and long accepted beliefs laid down by scientific authorities to explain the principal phenomena of disturbances on and in the Mother Earth, and to overthrow nearly all accepted theories on the following subjects:

The assumption that the Earth is intensely hot or in a molten state in its interior;

The presumption that it is a solid ball;

The supposition that there is an actual pole;

That hills and mountains are always results of volcanoes;

That volcanoes are a prime or natural existence;

That living springs and lakes are results of surface influence;

The theories of the Gulf Stream;

Icebergs and the Ice belt, their formation;

Glaciers, how formed;

Equable condition of the Mediterranean Sea;

And the Law of Attraction of Gravitation,

Or that the Sun is a mass of heat.

II.
FIRE AND WATER.

The two elements of fire and water are evidently the source of all created things.

It is the purpose in this plain and homely dissertation to review and criticise some theories set forth by scientists, and to introduce some new ones more acceptable to the mind of the writer, and to be submitted to observing minds to decide upon their merit.

It is a generally believed assertion that the Earth has been a molten mass at or near its origin, except from the rather doubtful story of creation related in first chapter of Genesis, where it appears that the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. When or how they were created, the story fails to relate. But, admitting the waters to prevail to such an extent as to incline God’s spirit for a voyage thereon, would make the idea of a molten Earth rather improbable.

The Earth is said to be undergoing a cooling process for the past thousands of years, but at some remote time in the past it was covered with ice and traversed by glaciers.

There are various explanations of the phenomena of icebergs, glaciers, volcanoes, the Gulf Stream, and why the Mediterranean Sea does not fill up or change its conditions through the thousands of years known to history. The philosophy of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, increase of heat in digging deep in the earth, artesian wells, springs and lakes, all have various solutions for being as they are, but this discussion proposes to throw into the waste-basket nearly all of the accepted conclusions on the subject, and, in order to go to an extreme limit of Crankism, will dispute the law of Attraction of Gravitation. To dispute the long accepted conclusions on most of these topics would be presumptuous without an effort to give good and sufficient reason for such skepticism.

The first element to consider will be fire, or heat, without which, it seems safe to assert, nothing can be produced from the Earth, or by the devices of man. To draw a base line to work from, we will begin at the polar center of the Earth’s motion. The Earth, unlike any other object that perpetually revolves that we see or know of, does not have a shaft, or axle, or anything to create friction, and, therefore, heat. There is but one word in the English language that tells what will produce heat; that is friction, which may claim motion for its parentage. Now, this proposition is offered for a starting point. All heat is produced by friction, in the absence of which there can be no heat. This claim made, and presumably well established, how can there be any central heat of the Earth, revolving on nothing but an imaginary center? Will any scientist explain at what point heat begins to generate? It would appear as difficult as to accurately fix the point where moral responsibility commences in a child, or just when the wheel of time will cease to revolve. At whatever point heat begins, is it supposable that it works internally or outward? Any observing mind can give but one answer.

It is claimed, to prove the molten condition of the Earth’s interior, that the various borings for artesian wells and diggings in mines show a uniform increase of heat as greater depths are attained. All these ratios of increase differ somewhat in different localities, but not enough to have ever banished the idea that at a few thousand feet of depth everything would be a liquid mass. This idea ought to be absurd enough to make a brazen image smile.

Let us consider what these explorations into the bowels of the Earth amount to. The deepest holes bored or dug are, without exception, less than a mile deep. Admitting a mile, that is 1-4000 of the distance toward the center. Imagine a puncture on an orange, or on a ball eight inches in diameter being four inches to the center. Is there any man living could see a hole as small in proportion to its size to 1-4000 of one-half of its diameter? How insignificant such a test. Reasons for this delusion will be given later on, under treatment of Volcanoes.

Again, the Earth’s surface is covered with at least four-fifths water at depths ranging from one to five miles, including the millions of springs, lakes and rivers on land, to say nothing of the inexhaustible quantities of water encountered in the aforesaid boring and mining operations.

The deepest explorations in mines are the salt mines of Poland, the Calumet and Hecla copper mines and Comstock Lode. These have all been on trail of some mineral deposit formed by some remote work of Nature in the undefinable past, when volcanic or other influences in Nature’s laboratory left their deposit. These are the only places that man has explored, only insignificant depths, and formed extravagant conclusions of the rest of the way.

But let us go back to the oceans, with their great depths and extended areas, and what do we find? It is this: Whether on the Equator or on the coasts of Greenland, in the tropics or frigid latitudes the same, that at the deepest sea soundings the temperature is near or below the freezing point, being literally liquid ice. These temperatures are at depths of five times as deep as anybody has bored or dug, and cover four-fifths of the Earth’s surface, and, instead of being hot, or even warm, are extremely cold.

If the internal heat is as great as is claimed, it ought to be enough to set every drop of water in the oceans into a boiling condition inside of fifteen minutes, but there does not seem to be heat enough to warm the bottom of the kettle.

It is assumed that the earth originated in a nebulous form, or an aggregation of small starry bodies, or something else which nobody has as yet explained clearly.

It is evident that our Earth has come into its present form through a vast amount of time and changes, and is made up largely of liquids and plastic substances, which must have had an existence in its origin. There is little doubt but that all its composition has been revolving through space in some form for countless millions of years with its mixtures of liquid, gaseous and solid constituents.

It does not need a long argument to demonstrate that bodies in such revolutions as the earth is making have a tendency, by centrifugal force, to throw the heavier elements to the outside, and as this seems to be a universal law in all scientific experiments by man, it seems reasonable to suppose the earth’s centrifugal forces are no exception in their results. Such being the case, leads at once to the supposition and probability that the Earth is a hollow globe, and not a solid mass, with points of actual poles at each end that can be explored.

As water is, and has been in all history we know of, so large a part of the earth’s mass, the object of this writing is to show the wonderful influence it exerts in the world’s affairs, and the ample provision Nature has in store, and where it is stored, for man, and animals, and vegetation to bank on.

But, in passing, it is just that a name for many recent years that has been a subject for ridicule should be noticed with profound respect for his wise and superior observations. This man for whom I wish to speak a word of commendation and admiration is Captain John Cleves Symmes, who I am prepared to allow the honor of first advancing the theory that the Earth is hollow, and has been held up as the authority for finding “Symmes’s Hole.” While the present writer had never seen or read any of his arguments for such a hole, the idea came originally, as if never thought of by my worthy predecessor. To avoid any charge of plagiarism, this topic will, therefore, be treated as if never before thought of.

Assuming that the Earth is hollow, the purpose will be in the following pages to show how and why, and the great importance to the inhabitants of the outside that it should be so. The first proposition is, therefore, a hollow Earth from causes heretofore named by centrifugal force; next, that the inside is an ocean of fresh water, with continents of land, and the outside oceans of salt water and its continents, as we have partially learned of them.

That the ice belts in each frigid zone are the dividing lines between salt and fresh water. That openings at the approach to either pole are at least 1,500 miles across, and that a magnetic compass above a latitude of eighty to eighty-eight degrees will not keep its natural position at any point within such latitude, but will, in its endeavor to point the needle to the true center of motion, lift up the point in order to keep the right bearing, or show some other embarrassment or irregularity. Whoever explores at these latitudes is, instead of going in a course directly to the center of motion, unconsciously rounding a circle toward the inside.

The flattened condition of the Earth at the poles goes to accommodate both the claims of being hollow and how it came to be so.

We are informed that every raindrop is hollow falling through a short amount of space, and how more reasonable to suppose the Earth’s great mass to be so, revolving in an eternity of space.

It is more than presumable to suppose that every planetary body in the universe is hollow, and made so by the same fixed law for all flexible bodies in revolution to become hollow. Are not the rings of Saturn thus produced?

Here is a planet they tell us is seven hundred times as large as the Earth, but its density only ninety times as great. His mean diameter about 70,000 miles and compression one-tenth, so that the polar diameter is 3,500 miles less, and the equatorial 3,500 miles more than its mean, thus duplicating largely the shape and globular form of the Earth. Is it not reasonable, then, to suppose that the lack of density has allowed its revolutions to produce its series of rings, those most dense being outside? And the whole order being such, that our position allows us to look through them instead of on to an outside surface?

Jupiter has the same characteristics in diameters. The mean, 85,000 miles; equatorial, 87,800; polar, 82,200, a difference of 5,600 miles, which means the same influences and same reason to make it hollow. While 1,233 times as large as the Earth, its density of substance is only 301 times as much. Here we have the two largest planets, perhaps yet in their period of development for being inhabited, in very like form relatively as the Earth.

It may not be ill-timed to assert at this point the belief that all planetary bodies are hollow and cool, not one in a molten condition or giving out heat, but only generating heat in their own atmospheres, thus giving out light, which we, in our ignorance, attribute to a mass of intense heat or a globe in combustion. Such a condition seems unreasonable to exist in a body traveling unlimited space, which is cold beyond any degree of ascertaining. The sun is subject to the same conditions as the Earth, as far as obtaining heat, and this work will claim that we receive no more direct heat from the Sun than from Mars or Venus.

Taking the first proposition, that in the absence of friction there can be no heat or light, the assumption is that the Sun generates its heat and light by its wonderful revolution in its own atmosphere. With a diameter of 860,000 miles, and revolving in 25.38 days, the Sun is moving through its atmosphere a mile in eight-tenths of a second, and seventy-five miles a minute, and 4,500 per hour.

With an atmosphere of relative density of the Earth’s, it is easy to see what a pyrotechnical and electrical display this would reveal to the lens of a telescope, giving the impression of fire on an inconceivable magnitude. It seems unreasonable that in the realm of Nature anything, or that anywhere fuel can be found for an eternal fire except in an old orthodox Hell.

To an observer on Mars or Venus, the earth would, no doubt, present the same starlike appearance that those planets do to our earthly eyes.

The electrical sparks on a trolley wire or dynamo give the same expression to our eyes, though in miniature, with no consciousness of heat to our feelings.

It is doubtful if, with all the observations of the Sun by telescopes, we have gained any knowledge of its structure, but only of its revolutions, size and movements, the same as the Earth. It would be a very difficult subject to diagnose clearly as to its productions of animal and vegetable life. The electrical influences through an atmosphere proportionally deep with ours, with its clouds that must exist in the same, could very thoroughly obscure the surface of the Sun. Unless at special intervals, when certain exposures would be called Sun-spots, either on a great space of continent or ocean.

The great flames of gases in the atmosphere would give the impression, by telescopic view, of a burning mass, when under these atmospheric flames all is cool and calm.

In the writer’s mind there is no doubt but the Sun is as favorable in condition for animal and vegetable life as the Earth, and has both in proportional greater variety and species. Nature having no limit to designs, uses no duplicates, never repeats herself in anything. No two grains of seed, no two snow flakes, are ever just alike. A million bushels of peas will have no two alike, yet every one has its individuality as a pea. Man cannot discriminate one blackbird from another in a flock, but to the birds they are as individual as mankind to each other. For these reasons it is easy to see that every planet may be peopled with different varieties of animal and vegetable life as it is to find the variations in different countries of the Earth. While the climate of the Sun may be hotter than that of the Earth, Nature can adapt itself to any condition of heat or cold.

Thus far the argument has been chiefly in considering the influence of heat by friction on planetary surfaces. Later this influence will be briefly taken up to demonstrate its interior effect in producing earthquakes and volcanoes.

For a diversion, we will for a while consider the effect of centrifugal force on the Earth. The Earth gives many manifestations of said force in the shape of the continents, courses of rivers, outlets of bays and ranges of mountains. North America gradually swings to the east as it approaches the Equator; South America, at the Equator, bulges most to the east. The mountain ranges, the Rocky, Sierra Nevada and Cordilleras, in North America, the Andes, in South America, forming a barrier against the further encroachment of the Pacific Ocean. The West Coast of Africa is protected from the Atlantic largely by the mountains of Morocco, including the Black and White, running south, somewhat protecting Senegambia, and then the Kong, with other mountain ranges in upper and lower Guinea, stop the encroachment on line of Gulf of Guinea. In Asia, Hindustan has the Ghant Mountains for a barrier, while another range of mountains holds the Peninsula of Malacca in place. It will be plainly seen that all these points of countries lean toward the Equatorial center of motion. The islands of Oceanica, strung out on the line of the Equator, also show the effect of the Earth’s revolution.

The Island of Australia is apparently a new production in embryo of a new continent in future connection with some of the large adjacent islands, and ultimately of most of the island groups of Oceanica. The same result is likely to follow with the Greater and Lesser Antilles.

The rivers are marked evidence of centrifugal force on both continents. The largest, the Amazon, running nearly on line of the Equator and emptying there. All the rivers, almost without exception, north of the equator to the Arctic circle run southeast when they can, and at their mouths tend that way. Those south tend northeast where the face of the country will admit. The Nile, a freak river, is about the only marked exception. On the north outflows like the Yukon, McKenzie, and Great Fish in North America; the Yenisei and Lena, and many smaller streams of Europe and Asia flow to the Arctic Ocean.

These last named streams so far from the great center of motion and on account of the marked incline to the country toward the polar centers head that way and no doubt contribute largely to the great inflow of water to the internal ocean. The west coasts of both continents are marked for their dearth of great streams. The open sea that some Arctic explorers have presumed to be about the poles is no doubt the beginning of the fresh water ocean.

The open sea problem introduces the importance of this disquisition. If there is an open sea, which is in all probability true, it must be the open door to an inside world as truly as the coming back from those high latitudes and entering open sea is the evidence of our habitable outside world.

With all deference to the reports of Arctic explorers, it is very doubtful if they really know their actual positions or latitudes with freaky compasses and unfavorable conditions about them, so that their stories and adventures while honestly told need to be taken with a grain of salt. They tell us of witnessing the breaking off of icebergs of mammoth size from glaciers, which, no doubt, is true. It would be true if one was seen big as the Capitol at Washington, or as large as the largest Egyptian pyramid, but doubtful if they ever saw one one-tenth as large as the latter or as large as the former.

III.
ICEBERGS.

The venture will be taken here to consider and explain the character and formation of a big true iceberg which it is supposable change their location to both inside and outside waters.

As already said, the ice belt is the dividing line between salt and fresh waters.

This being the case, large expanses of the ocean in the Arctic region must be frozen over. As water is an exception to most everything else by growing lighter as it grows colder, it rises above its water level. Without this provision of Nature, our lakes would become solid masses of ice, and rivers would become mountains, thus extinguishing fish and producing a mass so deep and solid that a summer season would hardly melt away. This can be evidenced in any tub of water standing out in a cold night. Water does not congeal entirely on the surface, but rises in frozen particles from below like cream on milk. This is shown by its rising and swelling up in the center and pressing the outside of the vessel to bursting.

A pond, lake or river frozen so thickly as to bear up heavy loaded teams of horses, and armies of men with all their equipages will be materially arched as it leaves the banks. An evidence of this comes when rising and cracking with loud reports and at the thawing up and yielding of pressure on the banks when loud explosions like blasts or firing of cannons will occur, caused by the settling and cracking of the ice.

As the ocean depths are great and the Arctic night of long duration, the fresh-water portions to a great depth congeal, and rising form a mass of ice inconceivable to temperate climes, both in height and area. Imagine what an iceberg must have been in starting from seventy-fifth to eightieth parallel of latitude and floated through all kinds of weather till midsummer, arriving off the coasts of Newfoundland, and then 300 to 500 feet high with seven times its height under water and so large as to take hours and even days or weeks to pass the main mass of ice and its fragments that have sloughed off. Has any explorer ever seen such a body of ice break off from a glacier that must have covered scores of miles square when it started?

As an arrow shot into the air bends its course to follow the heavy end, as truly do the heavy elements in the water manifest themselves at the center of the Earth’s motion, and the saltness of the Equatorial waters is much stronger than approaching the polar holes, which last term might be used with good reason instead of poles.

There seems to be with all Arctic explorers the obstacle presenting itself, termed the ice belt. This obstacle is suggestive, and leads the way to base the following conclusions:

That the water at this point has become so freshened, as to admit of such a wide freezing belt, but that the boundary line is made between salt water and fresh.

It is not in place here to describe a glacier until the cause and origin is explained, which will properly come after considering the water influences from inside.

The next purpose will be to show and aim to prove that the Earth is hollow and supplied with an ocean of fresh water and habitable land.

As said before the theory of an open sea gives the inference of a new climate and country, therefore now, what evidence, actual or circumstantial can be adduced?

It is claimed by Arctic navigators beyond all their attempts to reach beyond the ice belt, geese, duck, and other wild fowl continue to fly and seem to be in quest of food which they must obtain in waters beyond the ice belt.

The existence of an open sea beyond the ice belt has for years been conceded. As no explorer has reached much nearer than 750 miles of the supposed poles, it is reasonable to suppose that the open sea, so-called, but really a hole must be nearly fifteen hundred miles in diameter. Various evidences have settled that question in the minds of navigators, the most important of which is that the sea fowls still fly beyond the reach of man’s explorations. The fact alone that wild geese, ducks, and other sea fowl go on to some feeding ground is enough to settle all doubts or arguments for or against the theory of an open sea of fresh water around the supposed poles. Conclusive reasons are that no water fowl or fish can live in an ocean of salt water. Strictly salt waters do not furnish any food; but only in bodies fed by streams of fresh waters, as in bays, inlets and mouths of rivers, and adjacent to the coast line of continents or islands where fresh water from springs and rainfalls contribute to produce growth and substances suitable for food.

It was observed by the navigator, Ross, that moose, reindeer, wolves, musk-ox, white bear, and foxes seek winter quarters toward the north rather than to the south, and return when the season becomes favorable, with their young. Fish are noticed to come south but not to return.

As to water fowl, how far they could follow this opening into the center of the Earth, the writer will leave for others to conjecture.

It has often been a query from whence came the Arctic elephants, the remains of which are found so plentifully on the north shores of Siberia, some of which during the last century have been in such a state of preservation as that their flesh was eatable by bears and wolves.

Why were they protected by a covering of hair if not originating in a colder climate than exists south of the Arctic Circle?

Do they not still exist in the interior, or have they passed out with the great Auk, a former external resident?

Why are the latitudes nearest the poles the favorite fishing grounds for whales? Is not the interior ocean of fresh water their natural breeding ground and from thence passing out through Behring Strait and other channels into the outer waters? Can some scientist give us reliable information as to where whales propagate most, and why it is necessary for whaling expeditions to seek high latitudes for their catch?

The hole, fifteen hundred miles across, would not give any conscious impression of there being such an opening. You could not stand and inspect it like looking down a well. This hole opens into a new world unexplored by man, unless it is possible that Sir John Franklin and the Aeronaut Nansen unintentionally drifted in and were unable to navigate themselves out.

It must also, in marking out this theory, be admitted that as the center of the Earth is approached this opening must be somewhat enlarged, and must assume a concave shape from the center; such being the case, the diameter must increase from one thousand to two thousand miles or more, which is very likely to be the fact. With the motion or revolution of the Earth, the water would assume this condition on principle of the swinging of a pail of water over the head, and would merely be a placid ocean as boundless to the eye as the waters on the surface.

In these expanses of water, it is quite reasonable to presume that islands and large bodies of land may exist the same as outside, and that many fossil specimens thought to have existed on the outer surface in an early antiquity may have originated in the center of the Earth and may even still exist; their ancient skeletons having been thrown to the Earth’s surface by the centrifugal forces of water in the same way that all the different stratas of rock have been cast up and mixed in one grand conglomeration from the Earth’s center to its circumference. These facts seem clearly to prove by these migratory birds and animals: First an open sea; second it must be fresh water or mostly so; third, it must produce or contain desirable food elements different from what exist in the ocean on the outside, on which these birds can live when they reach their breeding grounds from which they are reported to return with largely augmented numbers. Now this consistent query can arise: Do they stop at a near point after passing this great boundary line of ice and find suitable and pleasant feeding grounds, or go on 500 or 1,000 miles farther? At that distance, the water is more likely to be modified in temperature and better adapted to their tastes and comfort. It seems quite right to assume that they come to inland seas, and pleasant bays, and sounds supplied with food from their shores and feeding grounds, rather than being supplied with anything existing on external parts of the Earth; otherwise, their supply must all be drawn under the ice belt or pass through this great Arctic filter. Again this thought comes up. How did these birds get sight of or learn of this internal feeding, and probably breeding ground? As migratory birds usually fly at great height, they would have an advantage over man in seeing this open ocean, as it is reasonable to think they may have bred as well as fed there. It is only a natural sequence of their migration in and out of this belt or ice circle, just as we recognize their flight north and south with the season’s changes.

If they go there by instinct, they merely do what is credited to the realm of life, considered lower in the scale of thoughts than man; but if by exploration and reason, then man must take a lower scale in calculation than the goose. To conclude this point. If birds live on vegetation, there must be an abundant supply of fresh water to produce it. If they live on fish, there must be the same sufficiency of fresh water in which to breed, feed, and live. If the birds breed, they must have hospitable shores on which to dwell and rest, and favoring skies to contribute to their various wants in order to exist.

Their instincts or reason will never take them where the conditions will not admit of food and drink, rest, shelter, and protection.

One other conclusive evidence that our icebergs are not formed by the breaking off from the terminals of glaciers is the fact of frequently finding them in midocean carrying such passengers as wolves, foxes, white bear, and other specimens of Arctic animals. The solidity of the iceberg is much against the glacial origin, the glacier being made up of a conglomerate mass formed by snow, rain and spring waters, so much so as to be impossible to keep intact to any great bulk. The formation of the iceberg in its method must be a solid mass.

IV.
GULF STREAM.

The first witness from the interior will be the Gulf Stream, the most phenomenal stream of water known to the Earth. This great outlet, authorities tell us, is the result of waters rushing around from the Caribbean Sea through the Gulf of Mexico and out through the Strait of Florida, thus giving force enough to be manifest for more than three thousand miles to the coast of Ireland to give her the climate that christened her the Emerald Isle; from Ireland and the British Isles, its influence is felt to the coast of Norway.

The water is much warmer than at other points after leaving the Bahamas with different marine conditions, such as containing no jelly fish, or showing sparkling waters by night and being always avoided by the whales and other tenants that are in adjoining waters. It is also claimed by those who have sailed many times through it that the color of the water is so different as to be quickly noticeable as vessels enter the Stream. How such a stream can originate with such force in a reservoir like the Atlantic, connected around through the Caribbean Sea and returning to itself, is as obscure to the writer’s mind as to how a man can succeed in lifting himself in a bushel basket. A man that can adopt this conclusion ought to apply his energies to developing a machine for perpetual motion.

The Gulf Stream is, no doubt, an enormous spring tainted with sulphur, like many of the springs in Florida and up the coast as far as Charleston, whose waters are warmed from the same influence as the Gulf Stream, from passing up through a deep strata heated by volcanic influences so common in Central America. Its sulphurous taint will account for the absence of whales and jelly fish in its waters, in which waters of similar nature fish are never found. This sulphurous condition may account for the stormy features that prevail along its course. It may be claimed that the waters would smell of sulphur so as to be detected, but such is not necessarily the case; from springs in Florida that flow strong sulphurous water, many visitors will not drink at the spring, but after aërating an hour, it will be drank at hotel tables and from water urns without a suspicion of its being sulphurous. The contact with salt water at the great depth from which the Stream originates diminishes any odor before reaching the surface and quite likely imparts the noticeable change in color. The deep-sea soundings off the coast of Bahama is another reason that the Stream originates there. It is claimed to be almost impossible at the commencement of the stream to get reliable soundings, as evidently sounding leads would be sensibly affected by the powerful current of water flowing outward.

The next evidence offered is, where does the enormous amount of water come from to supply our lake systems? Nearly all of the large lakes of the world are located in the highest parts. Lake Geneva 1,226 feet above the sea level, receives the muddy waters of the Rhone, but has so much other inflow as a spring as to discharge its waters blue and clear. Lake Constance is 1,290 feet above the sea and 912 feet deep; the Rhine rising at an elevation of 7,600 feet enters this lake. In 1770, the waters rose in one hour twenty feet above ordinary limit. It is said to contain twenty-five species of fish, including salmon. Onega and Ladoga are high from sea levels, and by canal, connect with some of the headwaters of the Volga. Titicaca, 12,800 feet above the sea, 720 feet deep near the shore, and probably very deep in the middle, contains many islands and abounds in remains of Peruvian architecture. Superior, 627 feet above the sea and mean depth about 1,000 feet, never freezing over except about the shores, and presents a temperature of about 45 degrees.

These are only a few in different countries to which the position is universal, for both great bodies of fresh water as well as small ones, as the general impression with people is that lakes are usually in low lands, while the opposite is the true state.

How few people in this country ever thought of our great internal seas of fresh water, Superior, Huron, Michigan, and Ontario, being on the highest lands between the ocean and the Rocky Mountains, yet such is the case. From these great fountains flow the waters that plunge down Niagara Falls, while a larger portion, it is thought, has a subterranean outlet through Lake Ontario, and uniting with the Niagara current to form the St. Lawrence.

Whence come these waters into those great lakes? They have no important rivers flowing in, and their waters are frequently highest in August and September when the country is commonly suffering by drouth. If the supply were rain water, this whole surface would freeze, but spring water is exempt until well exposed to the air for some time. The lands about Lake Superior rise quite abruptly, and as you ascend the hills, and riding from Ashland to Duluth, will see hundreds of small lakes, and from Two Harbors north as you ascend for fifty miles you see the same state of things till you come to the divide within less than 100 miles, when the waters go west into the Mississippi valley and north to Hudson Bay, and east and south to the Atlantic. Are these lakes supplied with rain and snows? If so, where does the water collect, and how does it get into this elevation? A subterranean river is supposed to run between Superior and Ontario, on account of similar fish being caught in each lake at particular seasons, but absent in Ontario at other times.

The lakes named are only mentioned for their importance; we will now call attention to lakes universally. Whoever reads this subject will be obliged to come to only one conclusion as to the general locality of lakes. Take our Adirondack region, with its thousands of pure, clear lakes hidden away among the rugged hills. The White mountain country where lakes abound. Chautauqua on its elevated ground, Mt. Desert in the ocean with its Eagle lake and others 1,200 feet above the sea. Lakes and living ponds, full of lilies, on Block Island. All through the mountains and wilds of Maine, and so on in every state the same condition exists, till you get to the level and prairie states where upheavals are rare for producing lakes and springs.

If a reader will peruse in “Picturesque America” the descriptive scenes on the French Broad River and the wonders through Delaware Water Gap, it is very doubtful if the various displays of waterfalls and profusion of springs and lakes will impress him with the idea that they are to be attributed to special rainfall in that locality. One particular evidence ought to be enough to dispel any such conclusion.

To quote from page 100: “As one of the wonders of the Gap must be counted the marvelous lake upon Tammany; a lake so singular that popular superstition has been tempted to add a final touch to its surpassing strangeness, and declare it has no bottom. As if in quaint climax to her wild work, Nature, after riving the mountain to its very base, here places beside the chasm on the very apex of the lofty peak a peaceful lake.”

This feature of lakes could be extended indefinitely, but something must be said about the smaller influences that produce them. Every lake is but a mammoth spring, or reservoir of numerous springs that feed into its base. The provision by nature of this inexhaustible reservoir of fresh water is beyond doubt the most essential of any other bounty bestowed upon every living thing on Earth’s surface. The principle of centrifugal motion and power is here developed to its highest advantage.

Every man that has ever turned a grindstone at early morning to prepare a dull scythe for its day’s work, has no doubt observed the result of frequent pouring on of water. If he turned slow, it would drizzle off at the bottom, supposed to obey the Law of Gravitation; but if he turned just fast enough, he could keep about a pint of water on the surface of a stone four inches thick and two feet in diameter. Increasing the speed results in throwing the water off in all directions.

If yarn or cloth wet from a tank or vat is put in a tub latticed outside and subjected to rapid revolutions, it can be thoroughly dried in a brief time. The process of separating cream from milk is done on the same principle by which butter can be made in ten minutes’ time from milking.

The familiar trick of whirling a pail of water over one’s head, is complete proof in itself that water seeks the surface and center of motion, and that all these results are from centrifugal force. A funnel of large, or any capacity, filled and a plug at the bottom removed to admit its discharge, will evidence that motion at once forms a circle, and that the center is bare while the outside is full.

At this point it may be well to call attention to another feature in the river system. The water on the grindstone will give force to this suggestion. At a certain speed the water will tend to the outside of the stone; below speed required to do that, the tendency will be toward the center of the stone, or strictly toward the center of the Earth’s motion.

Now let us see what the river system says. Look on your maps and see about where the common divide occurs, which is seemingly not far from the 50th parallel, where centrifugal force is apparently not strong enough to carry the waters toward the Equator, and the principal waters flow toward Symmes’s Hole.

Look on your maps.

On the 40th parallel sailors have what they call a roaring sea, which is approximately near the divide of waters, going either toward the poles or toward the Equator.

V.
DAILY MOTION.

Nature seems to have just the right adjustment in all its affairs, whether in coloring of flowers, season for growth, flavoring of fruits, supplies for animal and vegetable life, and instincts for everything created, to adapt them to living purposes.

So in the Earth’s diurnal revolution of 24 hours, supposing it was slowed to 25 hours, we should have less wind and tides, less warmth and more land free from the encroachment of the sea.

Increase the speed to 23 hours would give us more warmth by greater friction, increase the flow of our springs, give higher tides, and make most of the present commercial seaports of the world take seats farther back, as millions of acres of land now available would be flooded every tide.

The moon, we are told, has little or no atmosphere. It is pronounced cold and uninhabitable. This all looks reasonable. Being only a little over 2,000 miles in diameter and a revolution about like the Earth through a thin atmosphere, it is easy to see the lack of friction to produce warmth, and therewith the proper constituents to sustain life. This is an easy one and readily disposed of.

VI.
EARTHQUAKES.

It is doubtful if the Earth’s crust exceeds, or equals 1,000 miles in thickness. The outside is held from flying to pieces by the atmosphere, which is a sort of tire to the earth, while the inside is constantly pressing from effect of centrifugal force. These two factors must meet somewhere.

On the outside, near the ice belt, the water pressure gets the best of the inner forces and drives the waters into Symmes’s Hole. In the Earth the centrifugal force has advantage until reaching the surface; but if a big hole could be cut at the Equator through to the center, no doubt a man could jump into it in safety and cease to fall as he cushioned against centrifugal influence in his descent. Earthquakes are only the effects of internal pressure of water to get to the surface, at times bursting large reservoirs, producing tremblings, and at others with great force throwing up hills and mountains from the tops of which the fountains of water burst forth. At other times they are produced by the contact of water with heated elements in volcanoes, creating the commotion leading to the volcanic eruption, the latter of which can only be produced by contact of fire and water.

It is believed that this is the complete and brief explanation of earthquake causes.

VII.
VOLCANOES.

The volcano is nothing more than a local fire, as much in connection with the Earth’s surface as the furnace fire built in a man’s basement to warm his house, or in his stove to cook his breakfast. When the fuel that is used in either one is consumed, the fire goes out, which is a common result in both cases. Of all the volcanoes known to have existed as evidenced by their craters, fully three-fourths have become extinct.

Now what causes the volcano? The Earth is filled with immense supplies of fuel, consisting in stores of coal, sulphur, oil, gas, limestone, etc. While it is claimed that at the imaginary axis of the Earth there can be no friction, yet when the surface is approached with all its weight of mountains and continents, here friction begins to put in its work. It is very doubtful if any volcano exists, or ever has existed whose fires go to the depth of 500 miles, and more likely not half that distance.

On the outside of this circle, of 25,000 miles it is only reasonable to expect an enormous strain. The abrasion of limestone found in huge masses will, by process of heat, convert them into lime. The contact with water, universal throughout the Earth, will start the volcano, which by slaking, this small amount of rock converted into lime will generate a heat that may ignite and produce more lime, or reach other combustibles, which may be set on fire by this; or when in contact with other substances, this would lead to reservoirs of oil and gas, and deposits of coal and sulphur. These when ignited may remain in a slight slumbering condition and burn for ages, but water will be the constant aggressor and from time to time will manifest itself by coming in contact with these burning forces thus producing the volcanic eruptions and in time will be the conqueror, and the crater of the volcano will become a lake, of which evidences exist all over the Earth. That volcanoes are only local, the same as fires in our houses, is fully evident from the fact that they burn, and go out. This theory of producing volcanic eruptions can be easily demonstrated in every kitchen or casting shop in the country. Kettles of hot fat or melted metals when brought in contact with water will cause a miniature eruption at short notice. It is common to speak of volcanoes emitting smoke, but it is rare that such cases are ever a fact, but instead of smoke, we should say steam. The result of friction to produce effects, we claim, is well illustrated in shipments of cotton. Cotton shipped from India in the vessel’s hold, rarely, if ever, takes fire. From this country it is no unusual thing, and why? In India they bind the bales with jute or hemp, while in this country with straps of iron. In the ship’s hold, there is, of course, a constant motion and rubbing together of great weight of bales which ofttimes generates the fire in the cargo. This is the way the volcano is started, but sooner or later, water will put it out. All volcanic eruptions are credited with throwing out great volumes of water, steam, mud, ashes, stones, lava and sulphur. During earthquake convulsions which generally precede volcanic eruptions, the world over there is a bursting out of fresh springs as well as an increase in the present existing flows.