Part 4

The great flames of gases in the atmosphere would give the impression, by telescopic view, of a burning mass, when under these atmospheric flames all is cool and calm.

In the writer’s mind there is no doubt but the Sun is as favorable in condition for animal and vegetable life as the Earth, and has both in proportional greater variety and species. Nature having no limit to designs, uses no duplicates, never repeats herself in anything. No two grains of seed, no two snow flakes, are ever just alike. A million bushels of peas will have no two alike, yet every one has its individuality as a pea. Man cannot discriminate one blackbird from another in a flock, but to the birds they are as individual as mankind to each other. For these reasons it is easy to see that every planet may be peopled with different varieties of animal and vegetable life as it is to find the variations in different countries of the Earth. While the climate of the Sun may be hotter than that of the Earth, Nature can adapt itself to any condition of heat or cold.

Thus far the argument has been chiefly in considering the influence of heat by friction on planetary surfaces. Later this influence will be briefly taken up to demonstrate its interior effect in producing earthquakes and volcanoes.

For a diversion, we will for a while consider the effect of centrifugal force on the Earth. The Earth gives many manifestations of said force in the shape of the continents, courses of rivers, outlets of bays and ranges of mountains. North America gradually swings to the east as it approaches the Equator; South America, at the Equator, bulges most to the east. The mountain ranges, the Rocky, Sierra Nevada and Cordilleras, in North America, the Andes, in South America, forming a barrier against the further encroachment of the Pacific Ocean. The West Coast of Africa is protected from the Atlantic largely by the mountains of Morocco, including the Black and White, running south, somewhat protecting Senegambia, and then the Kong, with other mountain ranges in upper and lower Guinea, stop the encroachment on line of Gulf of Guinea. In Asia, Hindustan has the Ghant Mountains for a barrier, while another range of mountains holds the Peninsula of Malacca in place. It will be plainly seen that all these points of countries lean toward the Equatorial center of motion. The islands of Oceanica, strung out on the line of the Equator, also show the effect of the Earth’s revolution.

The Island of Australia is apparently a new production in embryo of a new continent in future connection with some of the large adjacent islands, and ultimately of most of the island groups of Oceanica. The same result is likely to follow with the Greater and Lesser Antilles.

The rivers are marked evidence of centrifugal force on both continents. The largest, the Amazon, running nearly on line of the Equator and emptying there. All the rivers, almost without exception, north of the equator to the Arctic circle run southeast when they can, and at their mouths tend that way. Those south tend northeast where the face of the country will admit. The Nile, a freak river, is about the only marked exception. On the north outflows like the Yukon, McKenzie, and Great Fish in North America; the Yenisei and Lena, and many smaller streams of Europe and Asia flow to the Arctic Ocean.

These last named streams so far from the great center of motion and on account of the marked incline to the country toward the polar centers head that way and no doubt contribute largely to the great inflow of water to the internal ocean. The west coasts of both continents are marked for their dearth of great streams. The open sea that some Arctic explorers have presumed to be about the poles is no doubt the beginning of the fresh water ocean.

The open sea problem introduces the importance of this disquisition. If there is an open sea, which is in all probability true, it must be the open door to an inside world as truly as the coming back from those high latitudes and entering open sea is the evidence of our habitable outside world.

With all deference to the reports of Arctic explorers, it is very doubtful if they really know their actual positions or latitudes with freaky compasses and unfavorable conditions about them, so that their stories and adventures while honestly told need to be taken with a grain of salt. They tell us of witnessing the breaking off of icebergs of mammoth size from glaciers, which, no doubt, is true. It would be true if one was seen big as the Capitol at Washington, or as large as the largest Egyptian pyramid, but doubtful if they ever saw one one-tenth as large as the latter or as large as the former.

III.

ICEBERGS.

The venture will be taken here to consider and explain the character and formation of a big true iceberg which it is supposable change their location to both inside and outside waters.

As already said, the ice belt is the dividing line between salt and fresh waters.

This being the case, large expanses of the ocean in the Arctic region must be frozen over. As water is an exception to most everything else by growing lighter as it grows colder, it rises above its water level. Without this provision of Nature, our lakes would become solid masses of ice, and rivers would become mountains, thus extinguishing fish and producing a mass so deep and solid that a summer season would hardly melt away. This can be evidenced in any tub of water standing out in a cold night. Water does not congeal entirely on the surface, but rises in frozen particles from below like cream on milk. This is shown by its rising and swelling up in the center and pressing the outside of the vessel to bursting.

A pond, lake or river frozen so thickly as to bear up heavy loaded teams of horses, and armies of men with all their equipages will be materially arched as it leaves the banks. An evidence of this comes when rising and cracking with loud reports and at the thawing up and yielding of pressure on the banks when loud explosions like blasts or firing of cannons will occur, caused by the settling and cracking of the ice.

As the ocean depths are great and the Arctic night of long duration, the fresh-water portions to a great depth congeal, and rising form a mass of ice inconceivable to temperate climes, both in height and area. Imagine what an iceberg must have been in starting from seventy-fifth to eightieth parallel of latitude and floated through all kinds of weather till midsummer, arriving off the coasts of Newfoundland, and then 300 to 500 feet high with seven times its height under water and so large as to take hours and even days or weeks to pass the main mass of ice and its fragments that have sloughed off. Has any explorer ever seen such a body of ice break off from a glacier that must have covered scores of miles square when it started?

As an arrow shot into the air bends its course to follow the heavy end, as truly do the heavy elements in the water manifest themselves at the center of the Earth’s motion, and the saltness of the Equatorial waters is much stronger than approaching the polar holes, which last term might be used with good reason instead of poles.

There seems to be with all Arctic explorers the obstacle presenting itself, termed the ice belt. This obstacle is suggestive, and leads the way to base the following conclusions:

That the water at this point has become so freshened, as to admit of such a wide freezing belt, but that the boundary line is made between salt water and fresh.

It is not in place here to describe a glacier until the cause and origin is explained, which will properly come after considering the water influences from inside.

The next purpose will be to show and aim to prove that the Earth is hollow and supplied with an ocean of fresh water and habitable land.

As said before the theory of an open sea gives the inference of a new climate and country, therefore now, what evidence, actual or circumstantial can be adduced?

It is claimed by Arctic navigators beyond all their attempts to reach beyond the ice belt, geese, duck, and other wild fowl continue to fly and seem to be in quest of food which they must obtain in waters beyond the ice belt.

The existence of an open sea beyond the ice belt has for years been conceded. As no explorer has reached much nearer than 750 miles of the supposed poles, it is reasonable to suppose that the open sea, so-called, but really a hole must be nearly fifteen hundred miles in diameter. Various evidences have settled that question in the minds of navigators, the most important of which is that the sea fowls still fly beyond the reach of man’s explorations. The fact alone that wild geese, ducks, and other sea fowl go on to some feeding ground is enough to settle all doubts or arguments for or against the theory of an open sea of fresh water around the supposed poles. Conclusive reasons are that no water fowl or fish can live in an ocean of salt water. Strictly salt waters do not furnish any food; but only in bodies fed by streams of fresh waters, as in bays, inlets and mouths of rivers, and adjacent to the coast line of continents or islands where fresh water from springs and rainfalls contribute to produce growth and substances suitable for food.

It was observed by the navigator, Ross, that moose, reindeer, wolves, musk-ox, white bear, and foxes seek winter quarters toward the north rather than to the south, and return when the season becomes favorable, with their young. Fish are noticed to come south but not to return.

As to water fowl, how far they could follow this opening into the center of the Earth, the writer will leave for others to conjecture.

It has often been a query from whence came the Arctic elephants, the remains of which are found so plentifully on the north shores of Siberia, some of which during the last century have been in such a state of preservation as that their flesh was eatable by bears and wolves.

Why were they protected by a covering of hair if not originating in a colder climate than exists south of the Arctic Circle?