The Hollow Earth

by F. T. Ives

WHAT PRODUCES A GLACIER?

Here again the influence of Springs is called into service. As all the hills and mountains, it is here claimed, are the results of water aided by centrifugal force, therefore the hills and mountains become the reservoirs of supply for all the lower parts of the Earth. This arrangement of Nature provided the means for producing a Glacier. At high altitudes in the mountains, whether in the frigid zone or in the temperate, break forth springs; coursing down the mountain side to the valleys, the waters soon become aërated so as to freeze. Springs from different ranges and neighboring heights contribute their streams, all commingling in the deep cañons and freezing in a mass. With the accumulations of snow and rain, this body grows until in time, by the constant supply from the springs, rain and snow, the mountain gorges are filled however wide and large they may be.

This monstrous aggregation of ice must of course seek a lower point by its enormous weight and constant accumulation on top, and naturally begins to crawl down the valley grade. The first inception of a glacier is spring water, which with other contributions named ultimately produces what may be called a river of ice.

Under the ice river is always flowing a stream of water, and many air holes and openings are found upon the surface at different points, no doubt produced by the influence of spring water coming in of temperature above freezing or at the usual fifty-two degrees, about the average of fresh water springs in all latitudes. This conglomeration of influences to make a glacier shows the absurdity of having such solid masses break off, as claimed to be seen by Arctic explorers, large enough to remain intact well down into the Atlantic Ocean. As these mountain ravines fill up, of course the waters involve and cover with ice, every rock and tree, and all such objects in the way must necessarily be carried to some lower point and ultimately left. This faculty of a glacier has given it credit for performing all such apparent transitions, while icebergs which evidently do 1,000 times this amount of work are getting much the smaller share of credit.

It has been reported by sailors in the region of icebergs that by observations taken during a few months, they perceptibly grow many feet higher, which goes to prove the claim that they are constantly being added to from underneath. With change of season, these monsters are floated away from their moorings, toward the Equator to cool and freshen the main oceans, produce electric currents of air, become the wonder and terror of ocean travel, and melting away under tropical suns; or on the other hand, some may seek the interior and contribute themselves to the cooling of the waters that manifest themselves in refreshing springs all over the Earth.

There were newspaper reports of large masses of ice being thrown out during the great eruption in the Island of Java, but such statements may do better for newspaper items than to sustain an argument in this work. How can this equable condition of spring water, with its delicious coolness adjusted to all seasons and tastes, be accounted for if it does not come practically from one common source? Will some scientist answer?

XI.
CAVES.

These peculiar freaks in the Earth are nothing to excite much curiosity or wonder. It is rare to find caves only in limestone formations which by long contact with water gradually wash away and leave monstrous chambers that have formerly been a solid mass.

Sometimes a cave may be formed by a sinking of the floor, leaving the arched top supporting itself, but whatever the cause and wherever caves are found, I never read of any but lead to subterranean rivers of great purity and coolness of water, nearly all the waters of which are credited with blind fish. Where did the fish originate? The stalagmites and stalactites tell of the copious influence of water.

What is the source of these cave rivers? Are they from soakage of rainfalls and do they have any dry season?

XII.
ARTESIAN WELLS.

Here is a subject that is worthy the attention of settlers in our arid and apparently desert regions of country. We are told that the source of an artesian well is from fountains of water gathered and stored in higher lands that run through different strata of rocks till they reach the valleys, and when the boring reaches down to these strata the water naturally comes up toward the height of the fountain it started from. Would it not be a sensible inquiry to make as to where the supply came from to furnish the water in the higher lands? That the accepted theory of supply to artesian wells comes from some higher point is not correct can be demonstrated on the prairies, where no higher land is in sight.

A very good test occurred some years ago at the Hamilton mine, adjoining the great Chapin mine, in Wisconsin. It became almost impossible to work the mine on account of the great influx of water.

Not much more than a half mile away was a lake that was charged with producing this annoying flow.

At the time of a temporary abandonment, the writer disputed this solution, and a survey was proposed to determine the level in the lake and mine, which showed the water in the mine eleven feet the lowest. To overcome this encroachment of water, an ingenious device was adopted by building a chimney over the point of inflow to the height of water level and stopping at the bottom; when completed allowed to fill.

When its true level was reached the rest of the mine was dry some distance above. It is doubtful if any place on the Earth will not respond with a flow of water within a mile in depth and rarely half that distance will need to be bored.

In the Mojave desert it is claimed a depth of 200 feet and often less gets a good flow of water. What sends it up and whence its source? In Michigan, Wisconsin, and many other adjacent States, a depth of 100 or 200 feet will produce large flowing wells. Where does this universal supply come from and why unchanged by wet or dry seasons? The flow from Lake Superior is frequently larger in the dry season of August than in the wet season of spring.

If there is no unfailing supply of water in the Earth, where does the influence come from to produce an Oasis in a desert?

If artesian wells are bored in our arid and now almost worthless lands, wherever a fountain of water is tapped will be an Oasis around which the settler can produce fabulous wealth of crops and obtain forage for live stock. The expense of boring wells will be largely compensated by cheapness of land and bountiful results in vegetation.

XIII.
OASES.

These green spots in the great deserts are the counterparts of Islands in the oceans.

If not thrown up and fed by water upheaval, how are they produced? Are they volcanic? The Oasis of Ammonium, or Siwah, six miles long and eight wide, contains the ruins of the famous temple and oracle of Ammon, visited by Alexander the Great, and celebrated for the fountain of the Sun, whose waters are warm at morning and evening, and cold at noon.

There are several oases not long distances west of the Nile in the Great Desert. The ancients considered them as Islands in a Sea of Sand, but they are really elevated lakes, although not manifesting themselves much at the surface, but underlying so closely as to render the climate too unhealthy to live in during the summer and autumn, being of a swampy character, and yet very productive in winter and spring. Where do these waters soak in to produce such spots in the deserts?

XIV.
THINGS THAT PUZZLE US.

It is frequently a query how the distribution of fish is so general even in the most obscure lakes and springs rising and running from points so isolated as to apparently preclude such specimens from getting there. It seems strange that some species would exist at the head of a stream and not inhabit it throughout. Seas and lakes may, and do exist, without any visible outlets to the ocean, and yet are plentifully supplied with varieties of fish. Now what may be a rational explanation of how they got there. It cannot seem right to say that they originally existed in an adjacent sea or the nearest approach to the ocean, as they are not found in any adjacent waters and are entirely peculiar to their locality, having no neighbors akin. It does not seem as if such would be the case if they became isolated by some remote upheaval and change of surrounding Earth’s surface, as this would only divide up the family and spread the species like immigration from the eastern to the western states.

As asked before, where do these blind fish come from in caves where streams do not seem to have any connection with surface waters? Where do the many specimens come from in the island lakes all over the world? To all these questions there seems a simple answer when we accept the idea that the center of the Earth is the womb that is developing and sending out through every pore, seam, crevice and crack some new seed and form of life to develop a new and strange existence to us on the outside.

It is a Scriptural idea that “We are born of water.”

Creatures that have their inception in the bowels of the Earth cast their eggs as the fish and reptile spawn in our rivers. These eggs or spawn or seeds of life in whatever form are taken in the currents that course through the different strata of the earth by centrifugal force and pressure, taking almost any amount of time in their hermetically sealed transit before they reach an atmosphere in which to develop into a new existence. Any lake, spring, or fountain of water that is a living stream fed by the inexhaustible sources within, may have from that varied storehouse and laboratory of nature any specimen of fish, scale, skin, shell or reptile of any form, that no adjoining or neighboring water may develop.

The spawn or egg may be destroyed on its outward passage or held back by influences preventing its maturity; or landed on the surface under unfavorable conditions of climate, air, and properties in the water.

Why do shad not exist anywhere in similar coast waters? Where do they come from and is the Gulf Stream to be credited with their origin? Where do the different schools of blue fish, mackerel, herring and numerous other fish find their headquarters to breed, and why after seeking other waters for a season, return to some place that seems to be their “sweet home”?

Was Seth Green the pioneer in transportation of spawn to distant waters for their incubation? It is more than likely that he was not; with all credit due to the great service his genius has rendered.

What is said of the dissemination of fish, shells, and reptiles may be consistently said of vegetation.

The earth is filled with the seed of every plant and tree and shrub that ever sprang into life in any place, clime or time. Dig to whatever depth you will, the substance you throw out, whether earth or stone, when exposed to the air, will produce some growth of vegetation. Frequently something entirely new and different from the surrounding vegetation. To assume that streams, winds, and birds carry and distribute all the seeds to their different localities where found in an isolated condition, is too much for human credulity. On the tops of mountains, where streams do not run uphill on the surface, where the birds seldom fly, and on spaces impossible for seeds to be carried by winds, you find species peculiar to their altitude, atmosphere and soil.

Through the channels that eternally pour from never ending supplies, and in which storehouse are mingled the seeds from every valley, plain and mountain top of our Earth; from this source they can be scattered and mixed in every inch of the soil which composes our Earth from center to surface, and when brought into contact with our atmosphere start into new and varied existences.

The question may be reasonably asked if many of the reptilian specimens attributed to remote antiquity as belonging to our Earth’s surface, may not be specimens from an interior world, and even now have representatives of their existence there?

Certain plants and growths require specific treatment and conditions. Wherever pond lilies, peppermint, cattails, flag-root, cresses, and moss in wells are found is unfailing proof of living fountains of water.

The ocean furnishes every facility of transportation through the co-operative system without and within. The millions of seed that mature in different climes on the surface are dropped and carried by floods and currents into the main ocean. Some sink and lie buried for ages, retaining their germs of life, for the outer ocean has its regular currents and motions to such an extent, it would not make a general distribution of seed in countless years.

Through this avenue passing under the ice belt, every variety is more or less drawn into this general receptacle which, in turn carries them inward and outward, and in course of time filters them in their course into every inch of the earth through which the water passes; which is in this way the medium of transportation.

By this means every spoonful of earth is in time prepared to give growth of new life to any plant or tree that has ever existed when exposed to the influence of air and heat or even cold, to revive its species.

In passing to the surface, like the spawn of fish, they may pass through localities of such excessive heat as to destroy their life germs, as is undoubtedly the case with the spawn that should travel through waters like geysers of Iceland or the Yellowstone Park or waters similar to these, whose streams that flow away always show a dearth of fish.

With the Earth formed like this, the writer claims it to be on the principle of a globe for a gas jet, open on both sides and presenting as it turns inward a funnel shaped entrance, which is without doubt over 1,500 miles across; this passage would be just as vast to the eye as the size of, or distance to, the fixed stars, the eye losing all conception of measure, and a thousand miles is just as much beyond our scope of vision as a million.

In almost any position you can imagine the Earth to revolve around the Sun, one of these sides or ends must be partially and at times wholly exposed to the Sun’s rays, and the effect, it seems natural to suppose, would make the interior horizons light as the exterior. The water, it is believed, on any body acts as a reflector and is a giver of light from every planetary body in some degree.

It is all gas, to talk about the gaseous condition and nature of the Sun, and “other worlds than ours.” They would at best be a very poor investment and not worth the labor and genius of a power able to create; 160 acres of good land in any productive locality would be worth more than 1,000 such whirling pyrotechnics of space.

It is altogether too presumptive to suppose that our little Earth with all its boasted cities, and boroughs thrown in, can be the only habitation for poor, vain and sinful man.

XV.
METEORS.

These are nothing more or less than dust particles thrown from volcanic eruptions on some planet, and in countless numbers drifting through time and space till sucked into the atmosphere of some other orb.

Whoever doubts the influence of friction ought to be convinced by watching these meteoric specks falling through our atmosphere of a clear evening, although the process goes on as much in day as night time.

While falling in space this dust must gain an inconceivable speed, as a feather without resistance falls as rapidly as a ball of lead.

The contact with our atmosphere ignites and evidently consumes them into gas before reaching the Earth. They used to be called falling stars, but if they were of inferior magnitude it is quite probable there would have been many a badly bumped head before this time, from the numbers that have fallen.

XVI.
ATTRACTION OF GRAVITATION.

This seems to be a question not fully settled by sufficient authority. It seems as if this term were incorrectly applied and that suction would be a better name for the agency.

That bodies fall to the ground when dropped, or return when thrown or shot into the air is nothing more than a stick of wood thrown into a stream floats with the current and drifts to the bank.

Most people when asked which side of a fan you feel the air from, when fanning yourself, naturally reply from the side toward you, but by trying the experiment you will soon discover that the air comes after the passage of the fan, only filling the space or vacuum the fan has made.

It has often been asked why people trying to board a train in motion are so apt to be drawn under the wheels, and legs and arms crushed. It is the same reason as with the fan, a large vacuum is being produced and proportionate suction occurs to fill it.

A man can stand alongside a train when motionless and lean against it, or put his hand on it, as safely as on the depot, but when in motion of thirty or forty miles an hour, it would be almost sure to cost him his life. Attraction can hardly be possible except by affinity; iron can be attracted by a magnet no more than wood, unless possessed of that peculiar quality of being magnetic. Mr. Edison’s experiments have to be confined entirely to such bodies of ore.

That attraction of affinity exists there can be no doubt, as exhibited in plants, insects, birds and animals, both quadruped and biped, otherwise courtship and marriage and all means of propagating species would be for naught and neglected.

It is a general supposition that we derive our heat from the Sun by direct rays, but it is doubtful if it comes only through its innumerable rays of light through which the Earth and the planets revolve, and here friction puts in one of its special works. The common idea that noon-day is the time for the greatest heat is not always justified, for other influences, such as friction in the atmosphere, can make midnight warmer than noon.

The concentrated rays of the Sun at midday of course bring them so closely together, and direct, that the Earth’s revolution comes squarely across them, as can be demonstrated across the teeth of a comb, thus showing a greater pressure than drawn obliquely.

That heat can come directly from the Sun seems an impossibility without some medium of contact, which through the coldness and a barrenness of space does not seem to exist.

As we arrive at certain altitudes in the mountains, we find perpetual snow and ice, and the same class of atmosphere is encountered anywhere else rising in a balloon to similar heights. It would be natural to expect an increasing warmth as we get away from the Earth toward the Sun, but the reverse being the case, it is hard to imagine what the temperature of space 1,000 miles away must be.

The question is likely to be asked, if the Sun does not send out heat, how is it obtained?

The answer will be in accordance with the first proposition in this brief work. All heat is obtained by Friction, in absence of which there can be no heat. The Earth gets its heat mostly by friction through its atmosphere.

The mass of atmosphere surrounding our planet is like an ocean made up of gases and elements that produce both water and land. The revolution of the Earth through that atmosphere at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, seventeen miles a minute, or nearly four miles every second, is something as incomprehensible to our minds as the distance to the Sun. Only for this friction for a certain distance from the surface, the same condition of cold would no doubt exist on the surface as on the tops of the high ranges of mountains.

The Earth is producing its own warmth by friction in its atmosphere the same as a wagon-wheel would do by being rapidly revolved inside of a loose tire. The atmosphere is virtually a tire surrounding us, through which the Earth revolves, and by Friction produces the warmth as really as a man warms his hands by rubbing them together.

That the Sun can be an inconsumable body of fire, or that it can become extinct is a most preposterous belief.

That the Sun is a vast body of earth and water hardly admits of a doubt, and its warmth and light is due to the same influence largely that the Earth and every other planet experiences.

There is not and cannot be a complete consumption of material in the immutable affairs of Nature, as there must be an eternal and exhaustless interchange of supply and demand. While our forest and other fuel supply is being burned, another is growing and something forming to keep up the balance.

In Nature nothing is lost, neither can there be increase; design is limitless, and resources inexhaustible; duplicates are never known in form, species, features, and thoughts; thus showing one of Nature’s most positive laws, that mankind shall not accept one central thought, creed, or purpose to be universally followed, as such an order of things would entirely preclude the writing of the few hints herein offered, as the encouragement of any new device for man’s benefit of body or mind, thus leaving everything in a state of stagnation wherein thrift, learning, and progress would be unknown.

Nature never repeats her works, and no two grains of sand or flakes of snow have ever been exactly alike, or ever motionless. Motion causes friction. Friction produces heat. Heat produces life.

XVII.
SCIENTIFIC THEORIES.

The Mediterranean Sea, a body of water between Europe and Africa, nearly 2,000 miles in length, surrounded with most of the noted cities of antiquity, has remained during these thousands of years in an unchanged condition from tides, inundations, or any other disturbing causes. Into this sea through the Strait of Gibraltar has been flowing all this time from the Atlantic Ocean, a river 15 miles wide with an average depth of one and one-fourth miles. This river is reported to have so strong a current that a sailing vessel has difficulty of coming out against it without the help of a favorable east wind. This is a sufficient flow of water to fill the basin of the sea almost yearly, besides the help of all the rivers of Southern Europe and Northern Africa. The reason of no change is given for its location, where evaporation carries off all this influx of water; while some think an undercurrent must exist back into the Atlantic. The first reason seems too ridiculous for a child to give. The water of the Atlantic is so salt as to produce over a pound of salt to a common bucket full. If evaporation is the reason of its equable condition, there could be no other result than a mountain of salt big as the Himalayas long before this time.

The claim of a countercurrent is almost as absurd. That the sea discharges its waters in an undercurrent which passes through the neighborhood of the Caspian and Aral Seas, is more likely than that the waters run backward against a powerful current from the Atlantic and against the centrifugal force that governs the movements of relatively every other water course on the Earth.

So much for that subject for any criticisms that may be offered. Intervening lakes between the Caspian and Aral Seas, seasonably fill with salt water, from the evaporation of which immense bodies of salt are gathered. Where does this supply of salt water come from to leave hundreds of thousands of tons of salt each year?

XVIII.
SURFACE INFLUENCES OF WATER, AND CHANGE OF POLARITY.

Very little thought or attention is paid to the insidious changes produced by water on the Earth’s surface.

Not a day passes, or has gone by, but that a large quantity of material is transferred from one locality to another. Every shower carries from some higher point to a lower, and a certain amount of drift goes toward some ocean. Small streams contribute to the larger ones, and all lead to the great ocean reservoirs. In going across our country many important evidences are to be seen of the immensity of work accomplished by water, in the removal of vast areas and depths of land.

One of the most noticeable and apparent seen by the writer is in the valley of the Rio Grande, in passing through New Mexico and at some other points. For more than 100 miles through this valley in the spring and summer you seem to be following an ordinary creek that gives little idea of the importance attached to such a stream as the Rio del Norte. You see a stream, only thirty or forty feet wide, with steep, abrupt banks, of a sort of adobe soil, some six to ten feet high.

At various places, if you observe, in the bends of the stream these perpendicular banks of earth will be caved off into the water, at frequent intervals. When the next annual freshet comes this loosened earth is carried away toward the Gulf of Mexico, and portions of it reach there while other parts will be lodged at different points on the way.

Now this visible, and natural process, has been going on for ages, and the effect of this incessant work and stupendous result is to be seen far as the eye can reach for hundred of miles.

Here follow the proofs of this long and diligent labor. In all directions you see hills, or immense mounds of land, like inverted deep pans, with flat bottoms, of all sizes, so that their flat tops would include from one acre to hundreds. These mounds all have quite precipitous sides, subject to the wash of every rainy season. As you study the character of these high mounds you will soon be convinced they are not upheavals, as their tops in all directions seem to have a common level. Among these mounds will be occasional ones that have been washed away to a point, and here and there one reduced to half its original height. These hill-tops, if they may be so called, were beyond doubt, at some very remote time in the past, the common level of the country for hundreds of miles, and as they will average 100 feet high or more, it is beyond the power of conjecture to estimate the time required to wash all the vast area away that once existed to make up the level of this valley.

Another similar exhibition is at and near River Falls, in Wisconsin, a town on the east bank of the Mississippi, some thirty miles east of St. Paul. Here the same occurrence seems to have taken place, of a washing away of the greatest bulk of the land, and leaving similar mounds with their flat tops, on many of which are quite extensive farms, approached by very precipitous roads at some favorable point on their sides. These mounds seem to have different strata of soft rock, on which they stand, the lowest and thickest of gray sandstone, quite soft, and must, with the others, be gradually wasting away by frosts, and other agencies to disintegrate. Only one yellowish stratum is strong enough to be used for some building purposes.

While there are hundreds of these mounds that must have once been the level of the whole country, that which is now left is a very level and fertile soil, producing some of the finest wheat, and best quality of potatoes in the State.

These instances are only two out of thousands of a similar nature in this country and all over the world.

The tendency of this drift is mostly as the streams of water run toward the Equator or center of greatest motion.

The vast deserts and other accumulations of sand on the Earth are only the deposits of ancient rivers into then existing seas, which by later surface upheavals, by interior hydraulic forces, have been transferred to other beds, and the deserts like Sahara, Atacama, Mojave, and the Steppes of Asiatic Tartary, remain as evidences.

By these enormous changes of soil it seems rational to believe the uniform and unvarying revolution of the Earth could hardly be possible, and that more or less change during great length of years must be made in form as well as time of revolving. Have not both occurred? Riding down the Quinnipiac Valley to New Haven, Conn., a man is likely to inquire in his mind where those sand plains came from. Some think the Connecticut once flowed there, some the Niagara or St. Lawrence; if so, where did they bring the sand from?

Think of the change bound to come in the future, when the Falls of Niagara cut their way back to Lake Erie, thus letting out its waters, enough to construct it into a large river.

Some channel has evidently been lowered to settle the surface of Lake Michigan, as can be plainly seen in leaving Chicago by boat, that the waters on the western banks were once twenty or more feet above present level. Either the lake has settled or the land has risen. As deserts are nearly all below the ocean surface, is it not presumable that this enormous accumulation of sand has had the effect of such depression, while the transference from other localities has thinned Earth’s crust enough to make easy the internal water pressure to lift up the hills and mountains, through which the great water courses of the Earth are supplied? Think of the transportation of soil to the deltas of the Mississippi, Amazon, Ganges and other rivers amounting to millions and millions of tons every year, and imagine when the time will come when the Earth approaches the form of a wheel, or ring, nearer than a globe, and become a small imitation of Saturn.

Assuming that this is, and has been one cause of the great upheavals, is it not suggestive that the original of the Earth’s surface in its formation millions of years past, was nearly or quite free from hills, and mountains, and the inside as well as exterior has been undergoing radical changes?

Great masses of earth on the outside accumulated by floods and washed from higher points have dammed up and smothered the flow from inside, while the sections of the Earth that have contributed to this mass have been thrown up into exterior mountains, and the depressions made inheavals to a corresponding extent.

From this reasoning it might appear why Africa and Australia, with their vast area of deserts, are less supplied with rivers and lakes proportionally to other continents; the same deficiency of mountains being noticeable. On the other hand, the rest of the continents and islands abound in mountains, lakes, springs and rivers. The great present groups of Islands of Oceanica, will, perhaps, in the distant future, all be joined to one mass, and while they may rise higher, others in present use may sink.

The legend of Atlantis may be repeated in some coming age, and perhaps a new Bible story will record the seagoing experience of another Noah; but if so, it is hoped he will have a bigger ship, and better provided with modern improvements and other sanitary arrangements than the old boat seemed to be for so long and important a voyage. From what has been written on surface influence of water is it not reasonable that polar variations must have occurred through the millions of years Mother Earth has been whirling through space? The writer does not assume to know all claimed in this discussion, being an agnostic in this as well as in spiritual knowledge; but if some full-grown scientific giant will rise up and give any more plausible reasons for why things are as they are, I shall be delighted to sit on some little stool and let him thrust the information into my bewildered cranium.

XIX.
CONCLUSION.

The author of this unscientific work has assumed the task to contradict theories that to him have seemed wrong, although long accepted from scientific authorities.

The world is given to taking statements for granted that emanate from some professional man’s brain, and published in some newspaper or book, whether of real or fictitious origin.

The stories of Wm. Tell, Robinson Crusoe, Washington and his little hatchet, Jack the Giant Killer, Samson and the foxes, Joseph sold into Egypt, St. Patrick’s extermination of toads and snakes, Newton’s discovering the “law of gravitation” by an apple dropping on his head, Noah’s flood, etc.—all of these and hundreds more have passed for current facts by being oft told. Plain stories and simple unadorned tales have small circulation without lies enough mixed in to make them interesting.

Every age has its learned prodigies and scientific minds that are ready to answer any question and solve all obscure matters. When men of early ages discovered on hills and mountains marine shells and other deposits which showed evidence of the bottom of a sea or ocean, and fossil deposits and footprints in rocks, they naturally inquired of the wise men how they came there. Hence quite likely the story of the flood.

When they asked how the people of Europe were white, Asia, yellow, and Africa, black, the solution was, that Noah had three sons who settled, one in each country and produced such progeny. The geography of the world in those early times represented the Earth as having four corners, and surface flat with “jumping off” places on all sides. It is evident the solvers of this “race problem” had no knowledge of America and Australasia. (Time has developed the fact that they either knew about it and lied, or lost sight of two sons that Noah should have had to represent the red and brown races.) It is expected of us to believe that Japheth was white, and peopled Europe; Shem yellow, and settled down to farming in Asia, and Ham black, and went into the monkey and elephant business in Africa. Whether the two other boys, the brown one, that raised Malays, and the red one, that bred and introduced the American Indian, were ever married, I never learned, but conclude it was unnecessary, as they seemed to have as good success in settling up their respective countries as the favorite boys that Noah took, with other live stock, on his yachting trip.

Noah should have really been the man to write on the subject about which this paper treats, as his experience on the “cold-water” question must have given him superior advantages over the writer.

There have been conscientious men of all times who have said and done very silly and unwise things, which, at the time and in the age they were enacted, were considered by public and private consent right and just.

The hanging of witches, buying and selling of slaves, the burning of John Rogers at the stake, his wife and nine small children, one at the breast, as spectators, were considered as just and necessary as an act put in force to destroy crows and kill sheep dogs.

As age succeeds age, new ideas crop out, and what to a former generation appeared true and consistent to their successors oft become a subject of criticism and ridicule. It is to be hoped that future minds will take up the subject of this crude work and make as much advance in the development of Earth’s mysteries as the modern steamship excels in completeness and power the first attempts of Fulton, or the harmonious modern orchestras the hollow music of a Hindoo tom-tom.

To believe what is here written will not insure eternal joys, or to doubt will not incur Divine wrath, or commit a skeptic into the hands of him who walketh in darkness, or to an eternity of pain or woe.

These modest hints are given with the hope that millions of miles of land on Earth now barren and useless, by tapping the generous fountains of water so wisely stored by Providence, may be turned into gardens of beauty, and furnish fruits and sustenance in plenty for coming generations.

While many look upon the Earth as “a vale of tears,” it is the best world we have any reliable knowledge of, and seems well adapted to the wants of animal and vegetable life, if we avail ourselves of the wise and ample provisions Nature has put in our way.

If there is another and better world to come, it is hard to imagine that pearly gates and golden streets can conduce as much to our comfort, or will be as goodly a heritage as one of “sweet fields arrayed in living green,” with shady groves, blooming gardens, and generous fountains of pure sparkling waters, and not the thirsty abode experienced by Dives.

While on this Earth, Nature has supplied with prodigality for this life’s wants, land and water, light and darkness, floods and drouth, and, as learned from Paul, four kinds of flesh (and he didn’t say how many kinds of vegetables) reptiles, insects, worms, bugs, microbes, poison and its antidotes, good people and bad, heat and cold, salt and fresh water, scientists, cranks and fools, yet with all this profusion of gifts, we would be no better off than Dives in Sheol without the indispensable blessing of water supplied by Symmes’s Hole.

A few more questions and done. Why should sea soundings five miles deep be at temperatures below freezing, if, as is claimed, such a depth in land borings would be in a molten condition, and going much farther the prevailing theory would make hell an ice house in comparison with the Laurentian strata?

Where does the fresh water come from admitted to exist in the bottom of the oceans?

Where is the source of fresh water that abounds in the highlands of islands in all latitudes?

Where does the water come from that feeds all the coral reefs and throws up atolls hundreds of miles in extent and nourishes the roots of trees and smaller vegetation?

Why are the atoll inclosures filled with different varieties of fish from the ocean outside?

Why are most of the great lakes at high elevations and commonly on top of divides?

Why are springs more numerous all over the Earth on the hills and mountains than in the valleys?

Why are the shallowest and most enduring wells on the highlands instead of the low?

Why when a country is below sea level is it a desert?

Why did Abraham succeed with his flocks, while Lot (as he deserved) was dried up and burnt out? Answer, Abraham was the smarter of the two, and took to the hills, where he no doubt had observed the waters lasted.

Where did Moses look for water when his followers were famishing for it? He went where water can almost invariably be found, at the foot of a rocky upheaval which he discovered in Horeb.

How could water be cast up from a deep artesian well, bored on a plain with no high land in sight to produce a pressure claimed in explaining their nature and reasons why they flow?

Where do all the rivers found in large caves have their origin?

Where and how does rain water soak into the ground, turn around and come back again with the force shown in bubbling springs and artesian wells?

Why does moss only grow in unfailing wells, and cresses, peppermint, cattails, and water lilies in living waters?

Why in digging wells anywhere in striking gravel do they always find water?

Why do hills and mountains produce more verdure and forests than the plains?

Why are all the volcanoes extinguished by water?

These questions can none of them be answered by any other hypothesis than through a belief in the existence of Symmes’s Hole. Into such a hole sufficient water could flow to supply all the fountains of the Earth, and, what is more, it does flow, and furnishes the wonderful quantities that leap down the mountain sides in stupendous waterfalls, that feed the millions of springs that pour their sweet influences in rippling streams through valleys and meadows. It supplies the great volumes that make Lake Superior and its grand associates in America, and similar great lakes throughout the Earth. Last, but far from least, the phenomenal Gulf Stream that floats the navies and commerce of the world like toys and modifies the climate across an ocean. To supply such resources needs something more than occasional showers that ordinarily evaporate in forty-eight hours, or than equinoctial or shearing sheep storms, of which nine-tenths of their volume runs into the streams and rapidly to the ocean, the great and general reservoir of supply and distribution.

Having endeavored to explain the philosophy of heat and its cause, also other phenomena in brief, I will conclude by paying tribute to the great exterior waters, for their important participation in Nature’s munificent work. The Oceans, after tossing in the fury of the storms and rocking from continent to continent, kissed by tropical winds and frozen by Arctic cold, sunk in caverns, and dashed upon high rocks, after drinking up all the rivers, washing every shore, and visiting every clime, are filtered at the Ice Belt and enter the bowels of the Earth, to come out again by centrifugal force in a fresh and renewed form to contribute to man’s necessities in an even greater benefit than when rolling in majestic waves or floating the commerce of the world.