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.
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.
Again, the Earth’s surface is covered with at least four-fifths water
at depths ranging from one to five miles, including the millions of
springs, lakes and rivers on land, to say nothing of the inexhaustible
quantities of water encountered in the aforesaid boring and mining
operations.
The deepest explorations in mines are the salt mines of Poland, the
Calumet and Hecla copper mines and Comstock Lode. These have all
been on trail of some mineral deposit formed by some remote work of
Nature in the undefinable past, when volcanic or other influences in
Nature’s laboratory left their deposit. These are the only places that
man has explored, only insignificant depths, and formed extravagant
conclusions of the rest of the way.
But let us go back to the oceans, with their great depths and extended
areas, and what do we find? It is this: Whether on the Equator or on
the coasts of Greenland, in the tropics or frigid latitudes the same,
that at the deepest sea soundings the temperature is near or below the
freezing point, being literally liquid ice. These temperatures are at
depths of five times as deep as anybody has bored or dug, and cover
four-fifths of the Earth’s surface, and, instead of being hot, or even
warm, are extremely cold.
If the internal heat is as great as is claimed, it ought to be enough
to set every drop of water in the oceans into a boiling condition
inside of fifteen minutes, but there does not seem to be heat enough to
warm the bottom of the kettle.
It is assumed that the earth originated in a nebulous form, or an
aggregation of small starry bodies, or something else which nobody has
as yet explained clearly.
It is evident that our Earth has come into its present form through a
vast amount of time and changes, and is made up largely of liquids and
plastic substances, which must have had an existence in its origin.
There is little doubt but that all its composition has been revolving
through space in some form for countless millions of years with its
mixtures of liquid, gaseous and solid constituents.
It does not need a long argument to demonstrate that bodies in such
revolutions as the earth is making have a tendency, by centrifugal
force, to throw the heavier elements to the outside, and as this seems
to be a universal law in all scientific experiments by man, it seems
reasonable to suppose the earth’s centrifugal forces are no exception
in their results. Such being the case, leads at once to the supposition
and probability that the Earth is a hollow globe, and not a solid mass,
with points of actual poles at each end that can be explored.
As water is, and has been in all history we know of, so large a part of
the earth’s mass, the object of this writing is to show the wonderful
influence it exerts in the world’s affairs, and the ample provision
Nature has in store, and where it is stored, for man, and animals, and
vegetation to bank on.
But, in passing, it is just that a name for many recent years that has
been a subject for ridicule should be noticed with profound respect for
his wise and superior observations. This man for whom I wish to speak
a word of commendation and admiration is Captain John Cleves Symmes,
who I am prepared to allow the honor of first advancing the theory that
the Earth is hollow, and has been held up as the authority for finding
“Symmes’s Hole.” While the present writer had never seen or read any of
his arguments for such a hole, the idea came originally, as if never
thought of by my worthy predecessor. To avoid any charge of plagiarism,
this topic will, therefore, be treated as if never before thought of.
Assuming that the Earth is hollow, the purpose will be in the
following pages to show how and why, and the great importance to the
inhabitants of the outside that it should be so. The first proposition
is, therefore, a hollow Earth from causes heretofore named by
centrifugal force; next, that the inside is an ocean of fresh water,
with continents of land, and the outside oceans of salt water and its
continents, as we have partially learned of them.
That the ice belts in each frigid zone are the dividing lines between
salt and fresh water. That openings at the approach to either pole
are at least 1,500 miles across, and that a magnetic compass above a
latitude of eighty to eighty-eight degrees will not keep its natural
position at any point within such latitude, but will, in its endeavor
to point the needle to the true center of motion, lift up the point in
order to keep the right bearing, or show some other embarrassment or
irregularity. Whoever explores at these latitudes is, instead of going
in a course directly to the center of motion, unconsciously rounding a
circle toward the inside.
The flattened condition of the Earth at the poles goes to accommodate
both the claims of being hollow and how it came to be so.
We are informed that every raindrop is hollow falling through a short
amount of space, and how more reasonable to suppose the Earth’s great
mass to be so, revolving in an eternity of space.
It is more than presumable to suppose that every planetary body in the
universe is hollow, and made so by the same fixed law for all flexible
bodies in revolution to become hollow. Are not the rings of Saturn thus
produced?
Here is a planet they tell us is seven hundred times as large as the
Earth, but its density only ninety times as great. His mean diameter
about 70,000 miles and compression one-tenth, so that the polar
diameter is 3,500 miles less, and the equatorial 3,500 miles more than
its mean, thus duplicating largely the shape and globular form of the
Earth. Is it not reasonable, then, to suppose that the lack of density
has allowed its revolutions to produce its series of rings, those most
dense being outside? And the whole order being such, that our position
allows us to look through them instead of on to an outside surface?
Jupiter has the same characteristics in diameters. The mean, 85,000
miles; equatorial, 87,800; polar, 82,200, a difference of 5,600 miles,
which means the same influences and same reason to make it hollow.
While 1,233 times as large as the Earth, its density of substance is
only 301 times as much. Here we have the two largest planets, perhaps
yet in their period of development for being inhabited, in very like
form relatively as the Earth.
It may not be ill-timed to assert at this point the belief that all
planetary bodies are hollow and cool, not one in a molten condition or
giving out heat, but only generating heat in their own atmospheres,
thus giving out light, which we, in our ignorance, attribute to a
mass of intense heat or a globe in combustion. Such a condition seems
unreasonable to exist in a body traveling unlimited space, which is
cold beyond any degree of ascertaining. The sun is subject to the same
conditions as the Earth, as far as obtaining heat, and this work will
claim that we receive no more direct heat from the Sun than from Mars
or Venus.
Taking the first proposition, that in the absence of friction there
can be no heat or light, the assumption is that the Sun generates its
heat and light by its wonderful revolution in its own atmosphere. With
a diameter of 860,000 miles, and revolving in 25.38 days, the Sun is
moving through its atmosphere a mile in eight-tenths of a second, and
seventy-five miles a minute, and 4,500 per hour.
With an atmosphere of relative density of the Earth’s, it is easy to
see what a pyrotechnical and electrical display this would reveal
to the lens of a telescope, giving the impression of fire on an
inconceivable magnitude. It seems unreasonable that in the realm of
Nature anything, or that anywhere fuel can be found for an eternal fire
except in an old orthodox Hell.
To an observer on Mars or Venus, the earth would, no doubt, present the
same starlike appearance that those planets do to our earthly eyes.
The electrical sparks on a trolley wire or dynamo give the same
expression to our eyes, though in miniature, with no consciousness of
heat to our feelings.
It is doubtful if, with all the observations of the Sun by telescopes,
we have gained any knowledge of its structure, but only of its
revolutions, size and movements, the same as the Earth. It would be
a very difficult subject to diagnose clearly as to its productions
of animal and vegetable life. The electrical influences through an
atmosphere proportionally deep with ours, with its clouds that must
exist in the same, could very thoroughly obscure the surface of the
Sun. Unless at special intervals, when certain exposures would be
called Sun-spots, either on a great space of continent or ocean.
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.