The world is given to taking statements for granted that emanate1 from some professional man’s brain, and published in some newspaper or book, whether of real or fictitious2 origin.
The stories of Wm. Tell, Robinson Crusoe, Washington and his little hatchet3, Jack4 the Giant Killer5, Samson and the foxes, Joseph sold into Egypt, St. Patrick’s extermination6 of toads7 and snakes, Newton’s discovering the “law of gravitation” by an apple dropping on his head, Noah’s flood, etc.—all of these and hundreds more have passed for current facts by being oft told. Plain stories and simple unadorned tales have small circulation without lies enough mixed in to make them interesting.
Every age has its learned prodigies8 and[96] scientific minds that are ready to answer any question and solve all obscure matters. When men of early ages discovered on hills and mountains marine9 shells and other deposits which showed evidence of the bottom of a sea or ocean, and fossil deposits and footprints in rocks, they naturally inquired of the wise men how they came there. Hence quite likely the story of the flood.
When they asked how the people of Europe were white, Asia, yellow, and Africa, black, the solution was, that Noah had three sons who settled, one in each country and produced such progeny10. The geography of the world in those early times represented the Earth as having four corners, and surface flat with “jumping off” places on all sides. It is evident the solvers of this “race problem” had no knowledge of America and Australasia. (Time has developed the fact that they either knew about it and lied, or lost sight of two sons that Noah should have had to represent the red and brown races.) It is expected of us to believe that Japheth was white, and peopled Europe; Shem yellow, and settled down to farming in Asia, and Ham black, and went into the monkey and elephant business in Africa. Whether the two other boys, the brown one, that raised Malays, and the red one, that[97] bred and introduced the American Indian, were ever married, I never learned, but conclude it was unnecessary, as they seemed to have as good success in settling up their respective countries as the favorite boys that Noah took, with other live stock, on his yachting trip.
Noah should have really been the man to write on the subject about which this paper treats, as his experience on the “cold-water” question must have given him superior advantages over the writer.
There have been conscientious11 men of all times who have said and done very silly and unwise things, which, at the time and in the age they were enacted12, were considered by public and private consent right and just.
The hanging of witches, buying and selling of slaves, the burning of John Rogers at the stake, his wife and nine small children, one at the breast, as spectators, were considered as just and necessary as an act put in force to destroy crows and kill sheep dogs.
As age succeeds age, new ideas crop out, and what to a former generation appeared true and consistent to their successors oft become a subject of criticism and ridicule13. It is to be hoped that future minds will take up the subject of this crude work and make as much advance in the[98] development of Earth’s mysteries as the modern steamship14 excels in completeness and power the first attempts of Fulton, or the harmonious15 modern orchestras the hollow music of a Hindoo tom-tom.
To believe what is here written will not insure eternal joys, or to doubt will not incur16 Divine wrath17, or commit a skeptic18 into the hands of him who walketh in darkness, or to an eternity19 of pain or woe20.
These modest hints are given with the hope that millions of miles of land on Earth now barren and useless, by tapping the generous fountains of water so wisely stored by Providence21, may be turned into gardens of beauty, and furnish fruits and sustenance22 in plenty for coming generations.
While many look upon the Earth as “a vale of tears,” it is the best world we have any reliable knowledge of, and seems well adapted to the wants of animal and vegetable life, if we avail ourselves of the wise and ample provisions Nature has put in our way.
If there is another and better world to come, it is hard to imagine that pearly gates and golden streets can conduce as much to our comfort, or will be as goodly a heritage as one of “sweet fields arrayed in living green,” with shady[99] groves23, blooming gardens, and generous fountains of pure sparkling waters, and not the thirsty abode24 experienced by Dives.
While on this Earth, Nature has supplied with prodigality
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XVIII. SURFACE INFLUENCES OF WATER, AND CHANGE OF POLARITY.
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