A. D. 2000

by Alvarado M. Fuller

“I see that you have understood the object of the little dark box on the table. It is a camera-obscura. The single mast of the Tracer is of aluminum, strong, slight, and hollow, and rises to a height of twenty-eight feet. A lens at the top revolves by pushing this button; thus a perfect image of the surrounding water and all upon it is thrown on the white ground within the box. Sitting here and looking in the box, I note the proximity of objects and steer the vessel. The mast also serves to carry an arc light for night traveling, and our flag by day. Further, our air is drawn down through pipes in its interior; for, during heavy seas, we must have the air inlets far above the deck, which is constantly washed by the rollers.”

Some further conversation was indulged in, and then Cobb thanked Mr. Irwin for his kindness, excused himself, and was soon seated, with Lieutenant Sibley, in the latter’s cozy cabin.

Lunch having been disposed of, Rawolle, taking out his watch, remarked to Cobb: “In a few minutes we will be directly over Louisville, Kentucky; and in these few minutes, I will briefly explain the effects of the great cataclysm of 1916, as I promised to do: The gas strata of the Ohio basin,” he began, “extending from above Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River, with pockets innumerable and ramifications in every direction, contained millions of millions of cubic feet of gas under varying pressures from nil to many atmospheres. The catastrophe at Dillenback’s ignited the gas in what appeared to have been the main strata. Explosion followed explosion throughout the region now occupied by the Central Sea. The earth was rent and broken, and the great vacuums, caused by the annihilation of the gases, took away the support of the upper crust, and then atmospheric pressure completed the ruin. The earth sank and crushed into these voids until a new foundation was reached. In some sections the fall of the crust was frightful, terrific. In the vicinity of Cincinnati but one shock was felt, but that shock was terrible, horrible, annihilating. The earth sank 196 feet at one fall. Not a living soul escaped the shock of impact upon the underlying strata. The city was an inconceivable mass of ruins, and in two days, was covered with water. So it was over a region of 100,000 square miles, the earth sinking everywhere, but to different depths and with different rates of depression. Pittsburgh sank 377 feet, but so slowly that few lives were lost, though the destruction of property was very great. At the mouth of the Ohio the earth sank only one foot, increasing toward the east. Millions of lives were sacrificed and untold wealth lost, for the great depression commenced immediately to fill with the waters from the streams flowing into the Ohio basin, and from the underlying strata. Even the Mississippi turned its waters into the old mouth of the Ohio and flowed east, leaving but a small, shallow stream to flow in its old bed until augmented by the streams and rivers emptying into it below Cairo. Even with all these waters it was an insignificant river until it reached the Arkansas and received the mass of water from that river. But in 1918 the river was diverted back to its proper channel; though later on the dam was removed, owing to the rise in the Central Sea, and the natural outlet being at Cairo. This, in brief, Mr. Cobb, is the effect of a single accident in a gun factory, in 1916; though who can tell but that it might have occurred later on from some other cause?”

“But did not those who were not injured by the shocks and falling buildings have time to move their effects before the waters overtook them? for, surely, this immense sea did not fill up in a few days,” ventured Cobb.

“Along the Ohio, from this side of Louisville to above Cincinnati, scarcely any property was saved. The depression was such that the submergence came very quickly. But this was not the case in the surrounding country. In one week the shocks were over and the earth quiet. People recovered from their fears a little, and looked about them. Later on they commenced to rebuild, and it was not until a year after that they found a new foe against which they could not combat: the country was below the level of any outlet, natural or artificial, and was filling up into an inland sea. Surveys were made, and in 1918 the true condition of the country ascertained. Then, and only then, was it found that the region now covered by the Central Sea was destined to be lost to mankind. Human ingenuity could not solve the problem of drainage. There was no drainage. Far below the bed of the Mississippi, the only possible outlet, the country was doomed to inundation. The survey was completed and the true limits established. All within that area began to be abandoned. Property, wherever possible, was removed; but the buildings, at least those which could not be taken apart and moved, still remain under the sea as monuments of a once densely populated area. To be sure, the removal was not rapid. The exact time was known, from the surveys made, when the waters would gain their maximum height, or reach to any particular point.”

“Such an immense basin must have required a considerable time to fill up?” inquired Cobb.

“It did—years. It was a gala day at Cairo, and a day of rejoicing throughout the land, when, on the 14th of August, 1939, the Central Sea reached the dam at that city, and passed over in a gently increasing stream. The dam was removed, the channel opened, and navigation from the ocean to this immense body of water, through the mouth of the old Ohio River, was unobstructed.”

“Why,” exclaimed Cobb, in astonishment, “that was twenty-three years after the disturbances! It took longer to fill up than I had imagined.”

“The area lost,” continued Rawolle, “was about one hundred thousand square miles; the volume nearly one hundred and seventy-five trillion cubic feet. The water-shed of the Ohio produced ten billion cubic feet per day, all of which flowed into the Central Sea. The first two years the Mississippi discharged a like amount into the sunken area. It was estimated that over ninety trillion cubic feet of water were pushed up, so to speak, from the strata of the earth by the subsidence of the upper crust. Thus, one hundred trillion cubic feet of water rushed into the doomed basin of the Ohio in the first two years, making inundation very rapid during that time, and frightfully rapid during the first week. The Ohio water-shed supplied nearly four trillion cubic feet per year, which, to complete the seventy-five trillion necessary to fill the sea, took twenty-one years.”

“This is a most wonderful occurrence, and did I not have ocular proof of its reality, I admit I should be loath to believe it a possibility;” and Cobb seemed lost in a reverie of the marvelous events which had transpired during his long sleep on Mt. Olympus.