the author of this unscientific work has assumed the task to contradict theories that to him have seemed wrong, although long accepted from scientific authorities.
the world is given to taking statements for granted that emanate from some professional man’s brain, and published in some newspaper or book, whether of real or fictitious origin.
the stories of wm. tell, robinson crusoe, washington and his little hatchet, jack the giant killer, samson and the foxes, joseph sold into egypt, st. patrick’s extermination of toads 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 prodigies 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 marine 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 progeny. 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 conscientious men of all times who have said and done very silly and unwise things, which, at the time and in the age they were enacted, 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 ridicule. 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 steamship excels in completeness and power the first attempts of fulton, or the harmonious 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 incur divine wrath, or commit a skeptic into the hands of him who walketh in darkness, or to an eternity of pain or woe.
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 providence, may be turned into gardens of beauty, and furnish fruits and sustenance 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] groves, blooming gardens, and generous fountains of pure sparkling waters, and not the thirsty abode experienced by dives.
while on this earth, nature has supplied with prodigality for this life’s wants, land and water, light and darkness, floods and drouth, and, as learned from paul, four kinds of flesh (and he didn’t say how many kinds of vegetables) reptiles, insects, worms, bugs, microbes, poison and its antidotes, good people and bad, heat and cold, salt and fresh water, scientists, cranks and fools, yet with all this profusion of gifts, we would be no better off than dives in sheol without the indispensable blessing of water supplied by symmes’s hole.
a few more questions and done. why should sea soundings five miles deep be at temperatures below freezing, if, as is claimed, such a depth in land borings would be in a molten condition, and going much farther the prevailing theory would make hell an ice house in comparison with the laurentian strata?
where does the fresh water come from admitted to exist in the bottom of the oceans?
where is the source of fresh water that abounds in the highlands of islands in all latitudes?
where does the water come from that feeds all[100] the coral reefs and throws up atolls hundreds of miles in extent and nourishes the roots of trees and smaller vegetation?
why are the atoll inclosures filled with different varieties of fish from the ocean outside?
why are most of the great lakes at high elevations and commonly on top of divides?
why are springs more numerous all over the earth on the hills and mountains than in the valleys?
why are the shallowest and most enduring wells on the highlands instead of the low?
why when a country is below sea level is it a desert?
why did abraham succeed with his flocks, while lot (as he deserved) was dried up and burnt out? answer, abraham was the smarter of the two, and took to the hills, where he no doubt had observed the waters lasted.
where did moses look for water when his followers were famishing for it? he went where water can almost invariably be found, at the foot of a rocky upheaval which he discovered in horeb.
how could water be cast up from a deep artesian well, bored on a plain with no high land in sight to produce a pressure claimed in explaining their nature and reasons why they flow?
[101]where do all the rivers found in large caves have their origin?
where and how does rain water soak into the ground, turn around and come back again with the force shown in bubbling springs and artesian wells?
why does moss only grow in unfailing wells, and cresses, peppermint, cattails, and water lilies in living waters?
why in digging wells anywhere in striking gravel do they always find water?
why do hills and mountains produce more verdure and forests than the plains?
why are all the volcanoes extinguished by water?
these questions can none of them be answered by any other hypothesis than through a belief in the existence of symmes’s hole. into such a hole sufficient water could flow to supply all the fountains of the earth, and, what is more, it does flow, and furnishes the wonderful quantities that leap down the mountain sides in stupendous waterfalls, that feed the millions of springs that pour their sweet influences in rippling streams through valleys and meadows. it supplies the great volumes that make lake superior and its grand associates in america, and similar great lakes throughout the earth. last, but far from[102] least, the phenomenal gulf stream that floats the navies and commerce of the world like toys and modifies the climate across an ocean. to supply such resources needs something more than occasional showers that ordinarily evaporate in forty-eight hours, or than equinoctial or shearing sheep storms, of which nine-tenths of their volume runs into the streams and rapidly to the ocean, the great and general reservoir of supply and distribution.
having endeavored to explain the philosophy of heat and its cause, also other phenomena in brief, i will conclude by paying tribute to the great exterior waters, for their important participation in nature’s munificent work. the oceans, after tossing in the fury of the storms and rocking from continent to continent, kissed by tropical winds and frozen by arctic cold, sunk in caverns, and dashed upon high rocks, after drinking up all the rivers, washing every shore, and visiting every clime, are filtered at the ice belt and enter the bowels of the earth, to come out again by centrifugal force in a fresh and renewed form to contribute to man’s necessities in an even greater benefit than when rolling in majestic waves or floating the commerce of the world.
