The Hollow Earth

Part 1

THE HOLLOW EARTH

BY F. T. IVES

Author of “Yankee Jumbles.”

BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY AT 835 BROADWAY NEW YORK

Copyrighted, in 1904. BY F. T. IVES,

All Rights Reserved.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. Cranks 1

II. Fire and Water 5

III. Icebergs 19

IV. Gulf Stream 28

V. Daily Motion 36

VI. Earthquakes 38

VII. Volcanoes 40

VIII. Rainfalls 44

IX. Springs 55

X. Glaciers 61

XI. Caves 67

XII. Artesian Wells 68

XIII. Oases 71

XIV. Things That Puzzle Us 73

XV. Meteors 80

XVI. Attraction of Gravitation 81

XVII. Scientific Theories 86

XVIII. Surface Influences of Water, and Change of Polarity 88

XIX. Conclusion 95

APPENDIX 103

Part 2

THE HOLLOW EARTH.

CRANKS.

Cranks are appliances to turn things round.

A Crank that revolves only half way will not always accomplish much of a change, and in many cases would only aggravate the situation. Were it not for Cranks nearly all mechanical appliances would be motionless.

Men’s thoughts and opinions would all be the same, without some such device to get them out of the old notions, grooves and ruts in which they long have indulged and plodded. The world has known Cranks ever since our first parents adopted the wearing of fig leaves, and Noah took up ship building on the weather bureau suggesting cloudy weather and showers in Eastern Turkey. Moses was a Crank when he forbid the eating of pork, salt water eels, turkey buzzards, owls and all other unclean birds, fish or animals of any kind, but there is no doubt that these commands were none of his mistakes.

Sacred writ gives a plenty of such characters, but, by skipping to times more recent, we find such Cranks as Copernicus, Galileo, Columbus, Newton, Franklin, and, during the last century, the Crank family has greatly increased with Daguerre, Watt, Howe, Edison, Marconi and Tesla and scores of others, who, in some of the earlier times, would have been hung or burned as wizards and sorcerers.

Political, historical and religious Cranks have sprung up, turning over and upsetting many old-fogey and absurd notions and beliefs of the past.

In former times Cranks were the subject of ridicule and persecution for trying to inject some new ideas into the public mind. History is profuse with abuses of some of the best thoughts and discoveries that have come to the human race.

Supposing Copernicus had never advanced and enforced a conclusion that the Earth was round and revolved on its axis, such motion causing the apparent rising and setting of the Sun. Only for this we might to this day believe in the story of Joshua’s command over the sun and moon, and associate believers with Parson Jasper that “De sun do move.” It is pleasant to realize that we are living in a time when new thoughts do not frighten people, and we are not scared at what we cannot understand, even if it does not harmonize with antiquated ideas purporting to be 4,000 to 6,000 years old.

The humble and obscure individual who presumes to offer the few succeeding pages of crude ideas may be classed among pigmy Cranks, but, nevertheless, feels impelled to sow a little thoughtful seed on a subject that, to his knowledge, has never been discussed; and with a hope that such seed may some of it fall in good ground, and spring up a crop of criticism that may ultimate in some better mind taking it up and demonstrate with the success that the writer believes it merits.

To prove that the Earth was round required a long time and a serious amount of persecution. Now, to assume that it is hollow, may require more time than the brief discussion in this small book. Yet it is hoped the ideas here may take root in the enlightenment of the present day and start a growth productive of good fruit in the future. In order to discuss this question involves a task that in the outset may look discouraging, as follows:

The ax must be laid at the root of many favorite and long accepted beliefs laid down by scientific authorities to explain the principal phenomena of disturbances on and in the Mother Earth, and to overthrow nearly all accepted theories on the following subjects:

The assumption that the Earth is intensely hot or in a molten state in its interior;

The presumption that it is a solid ball;

The supposition that there is an actual pole;

That hills and mountains are always results of volcanoes;

That volcanoes are a prime or natural existence;

That living springs and lakes are results of surface influence;

The theories of the Gulf Stream;

Icebergs and the Ice belt, their formation;

Glaciers, how formed;

Equable condition of the Mediterranean Sea;

And the Law of Attraction of Gravitation,

Or that the Sun is a mass of heat.

II.

FIRE AND WATER.

The two elements of fire and water are evidently the source of all created things.

It is the purpose in this plain and homely dissertation to review and criticise some theories set forth by scientists, and to introduce some new ones more acceptable to the mind of the writer, and to be submitted to observing minds to decide upon their merit.

Part 3

It is a generally believed assertion that the Earth has been a molten mass at or near its origin, except from the rather doubtful story of creation related in first chapter of Genesis, where it appears that the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. When or how they were created, the story fails to relate. But, admitting the waters to prevail to such an extent as to incline God’s spirit for a voyage thereon, would make the idea of a molten Earth rather improbable.

The Earth is said to be undergoing a cooling process for the past thousands of years, but at some remote time in the past it was covered with ice and traversed by glaciers.

There are various explanations of the phenomena of icebergs, glaciers, volcanoes, the Gulf Stream, and why the Mediterranean Sea does not fill up or change its conditions through the thousands of years known to history. The philosophy of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, increase of heat in digging deep in the earth, artesian wells, springs and lakes, all have various solutions for being as they are, but this discussion proposes to throw into the waste-basket nearly all of the accepted conclusions on the subject, and, in order to go to an extreme limit of Crankism, will dispute the law of Attraction of Gravitation. To dispute the long accepted conclusions on most of these topics would be presumptuous without an effort to give good and sufficient reason for such skepticism.

The first element to consider will be fire, or heat, without which, it seems safe to assert, nothing can be produced from the Earth, or by the devices of man. To draw a base line to work from, we will begin at the polar center of the Earth’s motion. The Earth, unlike any other object that perpetually revolves that we see or know of, does not have a shaft, or axle, or anything to create friction, and, therefore, heat. There is but one word in the English language that tells what will produce heat; that is friction, which may claim motion for its parentage. Now, this proposition is offered for a starting point. All heat is produced by friction, in the absence of which there can be no heat. This claim made, and presumably well established, how can there be any central heat of the Earth, revolving on nothing but an imaginary center? Will any scientist explain at what point heat begins to generate? It would appear as difficult as to accurately fix the point where moral responsibility commences in a child, or just when the wheel of time will cease to revolve. At whatever point heat begins, is it supposable that it works internally or outward? Any observing mind can give but one answer.

It is claimed, to prove the molten condition of the Earth’s interior, that the various borings for artesian wells and diggings in mines show a uniform increase of heat as greater depths are attained. All these ratios of increase differ somewhat in different localities, but not enough to have ever banished the idea that at a few thousand feet of depth everything would be a liquid mass. This idea ought to be absurd enough to make a brazen image smile.

Let us consider what these explorations into the bowels of the Earth amount to. The deepest holes bored or dug are, without exception, less than a mile deep. Admitting a mile, that is 1-4000 of the distance toward the center. Imagine a puncture on an orange, or on a ball eight inches in diameter being four inches to the center. Is there any man living could see a hole as small in proportion to its size to 1-4000 of one-half of its diameter? How insignificant such a test. Reasons for this delusion will be given later on, under treatment of Volcanoes.

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