It is the land from whence came the great logs of cedar that have been found by explorers in open waters far over the northern edge of the earth's crust, and also the bodies of mammoths whose bones are found in vast beds on the Siberian coast.
Northern explorers have done much. Sir John Franklin, De Haven Grinnell, Sir John Murray, Kane, Melville, Hall, Nansen, Schwatka, Greely, Peary, Ross, Gerlache, Bernacchi, Andree, Amsden, Amundson and others have all been striving to storm the frozen citadel of mystery.
I firmly believe that Andree and his two brave companions, Strindberg and Fraenckell, who sailed away in the balloon "Oreon" from the northwest coast of Spitzbergen on that Sunday afternoon of July 11, 1897, are now in the "within" world, and doubtless are being entertained, as my father and myself were entertained by the kind-hearted giant race inhabiting the inner Atlantic Continent.
Having, in my humble way, devoted years to these problems, I am well acquainted with the accepted definitions of gravity, as well as the cause of the magnetic needle's attraction, and I am prepared to say that it is my firm belief that the magnetic needle is influenced solely by electric currents which completely envelop the earth like a garment, and that these electric currents in an endless circuit pass out of the southern end of the earth's cylindrical opening, diffusing and spreading themselves over all the "outside" surface, and rushing madly on in their course toward the North Pole. And while these currents seemingly dash off into space at the earth's curve or edge, yet they drop again to the "inside" surface and continue their way southward along the inside of the earth's crust, toward the opening of the so-called South Pole.(24)
(24 "Mr. Lemstrom concluded that an electric discharge which could only be seen by means of the spectroscope was taking place on the surface of the ground all around him, and that from a distance it would appear as a faint display of Aurora, the phenomena of pale and flaming light which is some times seen on the top of the Spitzbergen Mountains."—The Arctic Manual, page 739.)
As to gravity, no one knows what it is, because it has not been determined whether it is atmospheric pressure that causes the apple to fall, or whether, 150 miles below the surface of the earth, supposedly one-half way through the earth's crust, there exists some powerful loadstone attraction that draws it. Therefore, whether the apple, when it leaves the limb of the tree, is drawn or impelled downward to the nearest point of resistance, is unknown to the students of physics.
Sir James Ross claimed to have discovered the magnetic pole at about seventy-four degrees latitude. This is wrong—the magnetic pole is exactly one-half the distance through the earth's crust. Thus, if the earth's crust is three hundred miles in thickness, which is the distance I estimate it to be, then the magnetic pole is undoubtedly one hundred and fifty miles below the surface of the earth, it matters not where the test is made. And at this particular point one hundred and fifty miles below the surface, gravity ceases, becomes neutralized; and when we pass beyond that point on toward the "inside" surface of the earth, a reverse attraction geometrically increases in power, until the other one hundred and fifty miles of distance is traversed, which would bring us out on the "inside" of the earth.
Thus, if a hole were bored down through the earth's crust at London, Paris, New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, a distance of three hundred miles, it would connect the two surfaces. While the inertia and momentum of a weight dropped in from the "outside" surface would carry it far past the magnetic center, yet, before reaching the "inside" surface of the earth it would gradually diminish in speed, after passing the halfway point, finally pause and immediately fall back toward the "outside" surface, and continue thus to oscillate, like the swinging of a pendulum with the power removed, until it would finally rest at the magnetic center, or at that particular point exactly one-half the distance between the "outside" surface and the "inside" surface of the earth.
The gyration of the earth in its daily act of whirling around in its spiral rotation—at a rate greater than one thousand miles every hour, or about seventeen miles per second—makes of it a vast electro-generating body, a huge machine, a mighty prototype of the puny-man-made dynamo, which, at best, is but a feeble imitation of nature's original.
The valleys of this inner Atlantis Continent, bordering the upper waters of the farthest north are in season covered with the most magnificent and luxuriant flowers. Not hundreds and thousands, but millions, of acres, from which the pollen or blossoms are carried far away in almost every direction by the earth's spiral gyrations and the agitation of the wind resulting therefrom, and it is these blossoms or pollen from the vast floral meadows "within" that produce the colored snows of the Arctic regions that have so mystified the northern explorers.(25)