It is the purpose in this plain and homely1 dissertation2 to review and criticise3 some theories set forth4 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[6] process for the past thousands of years, but at some remote time in the past it was covered with ice and traversed by glaciers5.
There are various explanations of the phenomena6 of icebergs7, glaciers, volcanoes, the Gulf8 Stream, and why the Mediterranean9 Sea does not fill up or change its conditions through the thousands of years known to history. The philosophy of earthquakes, volcanic10 eruptions11, 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 presumptuous12 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 revolves14 that we see or know of, does not have a shaft15, or axle, or anything[7] to create friction16, 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, revolving17 on nothing but an imaginary center? Will any scientist explain at what point heat begins to generate? It would appear as difficult as to accurately18 fix the point where moral responsibility commences in a child, or just when the wheel of time will cease to revolve13. 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 attained19. All these ratios of increase differ somewhat in different localities, but not enough to have ever banished20 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 brazen21 image smile.
[8]Let us consider what these explorations into the bowels22 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 puncture23 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 insignificant24 such a test. Reasons for this delusion25 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 copper26 mines and Comstock Lode27. 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[9] depths, and formed extravagant28 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 frigid29 latitudes31 the same, that at the deepest sea soundings the temperature is near or below the freezing point, being literally32 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 aggregation33 of small starry34 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[10] space in some form for countless35 millions of years with its mixtures of liquid, gaseous36 and solid constituents37.
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 ridicule38 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 admiration39 is Captain John Cleves Symmes,[11] 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 worthy40 predecessor41. To avoid any charge of plagiarism42, 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 partially43 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 latitude30 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[12] right bearing, or show some other embarrassment44 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 flattened45 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 eternity46 of space.
It is more than presumable to suppose that every planetary body in the universe is hollow, and made so by the same fixed47 law for all flexible bodies in revolution to become hollow. Are not the rings of Saturn48 thus produced?
Here is a planet they tell us is seven hundred times as large as the Earth, but its density49 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 dense50 being outside? And the whole order[13] 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 relatively51 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 combustion52. Such a condition seems unreasonable53 to exist in a body traveling unlimited54 space, which is cold beyond any degree of ascertaining55. 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[14] 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 trolley56 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[15] 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 thoroughly57 obscure the surface of the Sun. Unless at special intervals58, 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 atmospheric59 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 flakes60, 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 discriminate61 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[16] 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 briefly62 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 manifestations63 of said force in the shape of the continents, courses of rivers, outlets64 of bays and ranges of mountains. North America gradually swings to the east as it approaches the Equator; South America, at the Equator, bulges65 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 encroachment66 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[17] 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 apparently67 a new production in embryo68 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 Lesser69 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[18] 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 dearth70 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 deference71 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 mammoth72 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.
