Part 13

Why are most of the great lakes at high elevations and commonly on top of divides?

Why are springs more numerous all over the Earth on the hills and mountains than in the valleys?

Why are the shallowest and most enduring wells on the highlands instead of the low?

Why when a country is below sea level is it a desert?

Why did Abraham succeed with his flocks, while Lot (as he deserved) was dried up and burnt out? Answer, Abraham was the smarter of the two, and took to the hills, where he no doubt had observed the waters lasted.

Where did Moses look for water when his followers were famishing for it? He went where water can almost invariably be found, at the foot of a rocky upheaval which he discovered in Horeb.

How could water be cast up from a deep artesian well, bored on a plain with no high land in sight to produce a pressure claimed in explaining their nature and reasons why they flow?

Where do all the rivers found in large caves have their origin?

Where and how does rain water soak into the ground, turn around and come back again with the force shown in bubbling springs and artesian wells?

Why does moss only grow in unfailing wells, and cresses, peppermint, cattails, and water lilies in living waters?

Why in digging wells anywhere in striking gravel do they always find water?

Why do hills and mountains produce more verdure and forests than the plains?

Why are all the volcanoes extinguished by water?

These questions can none of them be answered by any other hypothesis than through a belief in the existence of Symmes’s Hole. Into such a hole sufficient water could flow to supply all the fountains of the Earth, and, what is more, it does flow, and furnishes the wonderful quantities that leap down the mountain sides in stupendous waterfalls, that feed the millions of springs that pour their sweet influences in rippling streams through valleys and meadows. It supplies the great volumes that make Lake Superior and its grand associates in America, and similar great lakes throughout the Earth. Last, but far from least, the phenomenal Gulf Stream that floats the navies and commerce of the world like toys and modifies the climate across an ocean. To supply such resources needs something more than occasional showers that ordinarily evaporate in forty-eight hours, or than equinoctial or shearing sheep storms, of which nine-tenths of their volume runs into the streams and rapidly to the ocean, the great and general reservoir of supply and distribution.

Having endeavored to explain the philosophy of heat and its cause, also other phenomena in brief, I will conclude by paying tribute to the great exterior waters, for their important participation in Nature’s munificent work. The Oceans, after tossing in the fury of the storms and rocking from continent to continent, kissed by tropical winds and frozen by Arctic cold, sunk in caverns, and dashed upon high rocks, after drinking up all the rivers, washing every shore, and visiting every clime, are filtered at the Ice Belt and enter the bowels of the Earth, to come out again by centrifugal force in a fresh and renewed form to contribute to man’s necessities in an even greater benefit than when rolling in majestic waves or floating the commerce of the world.

APPENDIX.

To demonstrate the size of icebergs, fields of ice and glaciers.

Ocean depths, different estimates of.

The character of volcanic eruptions respecting material thrown out and final result of filling with water.

For evidences of how long heat will remain when covered after great fires, the same as in old times when people covered the backlog, and to show the reason for judging the interior to be molten when the heat is developed at insignificant depths by friction leading it to a further volcanic development, or else from an extinct volcano from long time past.

Artesian Waters, Caverns, Earthquakes, Gulf Streams, Lakes, Springs, Wells, Islands, etc.

This appendix is added showing cases something in harmony with the arguments here presented on all these subjects, to which could be added several times as many more.

While most of the points intended for a brief discussion in this book have been hit upon, a few words, with some newspaper clippings on mysterious things, are thought best to be added as a sort of appendix, and of such a character as to prove of benefit to some readers that see fit to avail themselves of a few hints to obtain water, for domestic or irrigating purposes, in an easy way, and where they would naturally least expect to find it.

At my old home, on the farm where I was born, our well, some thirty feet deep, nearly every season went dry. I have lugged hundreds of pails of water from neighbors’ wells and from a spring near the foot of the hill, one-third of a mile away, during my early life.

The hill is little over a half mile long, and less than one-fourth a mile wide from its furthest bases. It is shaped like a box turtle, rising 100 feet or more. There used to be a place near the top, on the east slope, that looked springy. The recent owner, a few years ago, dug into this wet spot, and at a few feet found living water, which is now piped to his house and barns in plenty.

Some years ago my cousin owned the adjoining farm on the north end of this hill, and employed a man to blast out several large iron rocks, scattered about on the surface of the hill. One of these rocks, nearly a rod square, lay almost exactly on the highest part of the hill. This big rock was full of large cracks, which, in my boyhood, I took a young visitor to see, explaining to him that these cracks, no doubt, occurred at the time of the crucifixion, of which pious information I was frequently reminded in later life. This rock was some eight feet deep in the ground. When the last blocks were hauled out the space partly filled with clear water, so cold that it was made available for drinking. Being in the dryest time of the year, the supply appeared to be permanent, which induced the laying of pipes one-third of a mile to barns for watering stock, which before had to be drawn mostly from the wells.

A man in the town of Durham--Henry Page--for years obtained water for his house and stock by a hydraulic ram; but, getting a new idea, took advantage of a knoll, shaped like an inverted bowl, an acre or two in extent, lying across a field some forty rods from his house. He dug into the top of this knoll some fifteen feet, striking plenty of water, which was easily piped all over his premises in abundant supply. West of his home rose the Besek Mountain, in a gradual rise for three-fourths of a mile, where it stopped in precipitous ledges, on the west side, nearly 200 feet high. I have hunted up to the top of these ledges. Near the top of the mountain is quite a section of swamp, and nearby descending is a spring that runs a short distance, falling over a shelving rock, and in two or three rods more is lost in the loose stones. It is there in the dryest seasons. Similar to this is a lake on Talcott Mountain, a short distance from Wadsworth Tower, and only a few rods from the abrupt ledges that overlook the towns of Simsbury and Farmington. Hundreds of such cases are in evidence all over the country, and it is quite sure that a large majority of those interested by reading this book will think of various similar cases that have been a query in their minds, “Why they were so.”

While a great number of peculiar features of this kind can be recorded, I will take time to relate a case or two farther from home.