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?
Do they not still exist in the interior, or have they passed out with
the great Auk, a former external resident?
Why are the latitudes nearest the poles the favorite fishing grounds
for whales? Is not the interior ocean of fresh water their natural
breeding ground and from thence passing out through Behring Strait
and other channels into the outer waters? Can some scientist give us
reliable information as to where whales propagate most, and why it is
necessary for whaling expeditions to seek high latitudes for their
catch?
The hole, fifteen hundred miles across, would not give any conscious
impression of there being such an opening. You could not stand and
inspect it like looking down a well. This hole opens into a new world
unexplored by man, unless it is possible that Sir John Franklin and the
Aeronaut Nansen unintentionally drifted in and were unable to navigate
themselves out.
It must also, in marking out this theory, be admitted that as the
center of the Earth is approached this opening must be somewhat
enlarged, and must assume a concave shape from the center; such being
the case, the diameter must increase from one thousand to two thousand
miles or more, which is very likely to be the fact. With the motion
or revolution of the Earth, the water would assume this condition on
principle of the swinging of a pail of water over the head, and would
merely be a placid ocean as boundless to the eye as the waters on the
surface.
In these expanses of water, it is quite reasonable to presume that
islands and large bodies of land may exist the same as outside, and
that many fossil specimens thought to have existed on the outer
surface in an early antiquity may have originated in the center of the
Earth and may even still exist; their ancient skeletons having been
thrown to the Earth’s surface by the centrifugal forces of water in
the same way that all the different stratas of rock have been cast up
and mixed in one grand conglomeration from the Earth’s center to its
circumference. These facts seem clearly to prove by these migratory
birds and animals: First an open sea; second it must be fresh water or
mostly so; third, it must produce or contain desirable food elements
different from what exist in the ocean on the outside, on which these
birds can live when they reach their breeding grounds from which
they are reported to return with largely augmented numbers. Now this
consistent query can arise: Do they stop at a near point after passing
this great boundary line of ice and find suitable and pleasant feeding
grounds, or go on 500 or 1,000 miles farther? At that distance, the
water is more likely to be modified in temperature and better adapted
to their tastes and comfort. It seems quite right to assume that they
come to inland seas, and pleasant bays, and sounds supplied with food
from their shores and feeding grounds, rather than being supplied with
anything existing on external parts of the Earth; otherwise, their
supply must all be drawn under the ice belt or pass through this great
Arctic filter. Again this thought comes up. How did these birds get
sight of or learn of this internal feeding, and probably breeding
ground? As migratory birds usually fly at great height, they would have
an advantage over man in seeing this open ocean, as it is reasonable
to think they may have bred as well as fed there. It is only a natural
sequence of their migration in and out of this belt or ice circle, just
as we recognize their flight north and south with the season’s changes.
If they go there by instinct, they merely do what is credited to the
realm of life, considered lower in the scale of thoughts than man;
but if by exploration and reason, then man must take a lower scale in
calculation than the goose. To conclude this point. If birds live on
vegetation, there must be an abundant supply of fresh water to produce
it. If they live on fish, there must be the same sufficiency of fresh
water in which to breed, feed, and live. If the birds breed, they must
have hospitable shores on which to dwell and rest, and favoring skies
to contribute to their various wants in order to exist.
Their instincts or reason will never take them where the conditions
will not admit of food and drink, rest, shelter, and protection.
One other conclusive evidence that our icebergs are not formed by the
breaking off from the terminals of glaciers is the fact of frequently
finding them in midocean carrying such passengers as wolves, foxes,
white bear, and other specimens of Arctic animals. The solidity of the
iceberg is much against the glacial origin, the glacier being made up
of a conglomerate mass formed by snow, rain and spring waters, so much
so as to be impossible to keep intact to any great bulk. The formation
of the iceberg in its method must be a solid mass.