Chapter VIII: Section 4

How was such a World adapted to Man or strictly speaking,
Man to such a World?

1. The even climate of such a world would tend to his longevity, and be most genial to his feelings.

Man’s nature calls for an even climate. Now by art he tries to even up the climate of the year.

(1.) Less than two-thirds of the lighted hemisphere could have been covered with dry land. Many bodies of water are known to have been included within the areas of land. The pole, pointing directly toward the sun, must have been near Gibraltar. Allowing that land extended in every direction, four thousand miles or more, we should then have an open sea of from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles, intervening between the edge of the hemisphere of land, or perhaps more properly, the quartosphere of land, and the region of perpetual ice.

(2.) On the sunny side of such a globe, being at first entirely water, a rapid evaporation must have taken place; and most, nearest the north pole. This would give rise to currents, both of air and water, to flow toward it, as a source of supply. Counter currents of both would follow. Currents of either starting near the equator would be cold and possess a motion greater than the earth, a few degrees toward the pole. This would send both towards the northeast, until meeting the return currents of wind, which would cause variable winds; but a most genial climate must have surrounded the earth, at least forty degrees wide.

(3.) Such a climate, with such facilities for evaporation, would provide the way for perpetual harvest. The open sea to the edge must have been constantly filled with floating ice. Cold breezes, often laden with thick fog, would float in over the edge of the land. This may account for the long hair which covered the mammoth elephant of Siberia and California. No winds are more penetrating than those coming from large bodies of melting ice; yet under a perpetual sunshine the vegetation must have been abundant.

2. We add by way of recapitulation:

(1.) That everywhere, and with each new discovery in science, the evidence is accumulating that our globe is essentially an immense ball of cold water, with a crust of earth covering the under waters as with a stone; while a portion of water above is held in the earth’s lap.

(2.) Until recently, the continents and islands were together in one vast body, with the axillary center pointing to the sun.

(3.) That fragments of the broken hemisphere have been spread out upon the seas, often standing with just their tops out of water as islands.

(4.) Inasmuch as this Earth is a magnet, the deposit about the pole was of the nature of a load-stone. This existed as a mountain, which by the force of the waters was bodily removed to the present north, nearly three thousand miles. It was thus we had a change of times and seasons.

(5.) That the alternation of day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, are results following this great change in the Earth’s polarity.

(6.) That the existence of the rainbow, caused by the declination of the sun toward the horizon in the Earth’s present motion, is a reminder of what is, and will remain to be, in contrast to what was, and would have been, until the end of time, had no cause occurred making it necessary for this radical change.

Earth’s climate was changed,

(_a_) By changing the magnetic currents of Earth, in removing the pole locally three thousand miles away.

(_b_) By withdrawing the attraction the former pole had for the sun, and pointing it to an empty place in the north, now one degree and a half from Polaris.

(_c_) By inclining the Earth’s pole twenty-three and a half degrees to the ecliptic. “He changeth times and seasons.”