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.