And while all this grand and complete arrangement supplies vegetation with its bathing and drinking, as said before, it has nothing to do with the living and lasting supply of our springs, lakes and rivers. They are fed from a never failing and almost unchanging source—that is, by the immense supply taken in at the polar holes in a river over 4,000 miles wide at each end of the Earth’s axis.
That the presumption of rainfall furnishing the supply for all of our lakes, springs and wells has never been questioned seems almost discreditable to the observing talent of our age. Whatever the character of rainfall, either by protracted storm or sudden and copious showers, it cannot escape our notice that the largest portion of the water runs from the highlands to the lowlands into the gulches and small streams, and thence to the rivers, into the ocean; so that the percentage of water retained by the soil is much smaller than that which runs away.
In our Western prairies, the country formerly called the Indian Territory, the soil was covered with an almost waterproof matting of grass roots, on which, when showers fell, the penetration was so slight that in a very few days evaporation left them parched and dried. Since the settling up of our territories, which were once termed deserts, the soil has been broken by the farmer’s plow, thus admitting the rainfall to be longer retained in the surface soil, which fact has led to the development of lands once considered barren to become some of the most fruitful grounds in our domain.
Another peculiar feature of climatic change may be mentioned here, whereas until recent years thunder showers and storms were almost unknown in many of our Western States and in the Pacific States also, till now these storms and showers, with their electrical disturbances, are nearly as common as in older States.
Another feature of weather which has seemed to develop in recent years is that of milder winters in our Northern States and colder freaks in the Southern; snows and frosts reaching States which rarely ever had such experiences, and the burdens of snows becoming much less in States which always expected a long season of sleighing.
It is proposed to venture the following reasons as conducive to much of this change in weather conditions of the country at large. First, the general denuding of our forests, which evidently has much influence on the water courses. Next, the settling up of the whole country, and location of cities and towns from ocean to ocean, all quite evenly distributed, and in a great portion of them large amounts of machinery, composed of iron and steel, producing a great amount of friction and electrical influence in their workings; besides the almost innumerable fires from furnaces, factories and households, discharging their heat into the upper air. Again, the railroad system, with its millions of tons of steel rails, make a magnetic connection between every State and almost every county in forming one grand combination. The rush of thousands of trains all over the country, with their friction by wheels on the tracks, and the rush through the atmosphere, cannot fail to influence in largely equalizing the same. Still another potent influence must exist in the almost unlimited number of wires for telephone and telegraph purposes, which make all the electrical combinations more complete than anything else. If all these things combine, it does not seem strange that magnetic and electric currents and conditions of our weather throughout the country should be somewhat modified.
IX.
SPRINGS.
The person in full enjoyment of health rarely ever appreciates it to the fullness that he will on being deprived of it and have its welcome return.
The bounties of Nature are so great and common that they fail to attract our attention to the extent of some trifles that come new into our way from day to day. One of the greatest provisions of Nature, as universal as air and Earth, is the millions of springs gushing up through the pores of the Earth in every country and clime. To make this provision of fresh water ample, needs very large reservoirs for supplies. The amplitude of this reservoir, if the situation is as claimed in this book, it is believed everybody will admit. To prove that this supply comes from such a general source a class of witnesses must be brought out. One of the most important must be the feeding of our great lakes on high altitudes. These great bodies of fresh water are universally credited with enormous depths of pure, clear water, such as never could exist as the result of shed water. Many of them practically have no streams feeding them, but, without regard to weather conditions of seasons, pour forth enormous bodies of water without change of volume. Lake Superior will be taken again as a prominent witness. Here is an inland sea, on the highest ground between the ocean and Rocky Mountains, so large that vessels can sail on it for days out of sight of land. Not a river of any importance flows into it, the country around it not admitting the formation of a large stream.
The water during the hottest summer months sustains a uniform temperature of forty-five degrees, and is as clear as crystal.