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KATURE, 
 
7f;; 
 
 A SERIES OE EAMILIAR SKETCHES, 
 
 CHARLES ADAMS, D. D. 
 
 ^ I meditate on all thy works."" — PsALM CXLIII, $. 
 
 CINCINNA TI: 
 HITCHCOCK AND W^ A L D E N . 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CARLTON AND LAN A HAN. 
 
.A3 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, 
 BY HITCHCOCK & WALDEN, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of Ohio. 
 
I 
 
 e d i; t a 1 1 n » 
 
 WILLIAM H. ALLEN, LL. D., 
 
 President of Girard College. 
 
 My Friend and Classmate: 
 
 WO reasons have specially prompted me to place your 
 name in this little volume. One is the fact that you 
 have so long and so successfully devoted your eminent 
 abilities to the education and welfare of youth — a work 
 in harmony with the genius of this my humble effort; 
 and another reaso7t is founded upon those invariably 
 pleasant relations^ and that sincere friendships which 
 commenced vjith our college days, atid upon which 
 time and separation have^ as I trusty exerted no 
 disturbing influence. 
 
 With profound and affectionate respect^ 
 
Introdujction. 
 
 •-~>V^JW^-'^~ 
 
 HIS book aims to present to young 
 readers, in a familiar style and orderly 
 arrangement, the more prominent nat- 
 ural phenomena of the earth. It lays . no 
 claim to being profound, learned, or original ; 
 while yet it endeavors, by lucid statement 
 and appropriate illustration, to attract special 
 attention to many matters which, from their 
 commonness, are too apt to be but slightly ap- 
 preciated. 
 
 The natural world is full of marvels ; but 
 to the few only, it is to be feared, do these 
 wondrous things' come home with a proper 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 realization, and the great multitude pass on 
 blindfold through this scene of enchantment, 
 their minds and hearts never opening to the 
 charms and wonders wherewith the God of 
 nature hath furnished and adorned this beauti- 
 ful world. 
 
 Happy the writer whose magical pen should 
 so touch these concealed glories as to cause 
 them to flash vividly before the startled eye, 
 and thus constrain the dullness and blindness 
 of millions to give place to a clear and perfect 
 vision ! " Open his eyes that he may see !" 
 prayed the solemn prophet in behalf of his 
 mystified and confused servant. And when 
 the prayer was heard, and the scales fell, and 
 he saw clearly, behold, the mountain was full 
 of horses and chariots of fire round about 
 Elisha ! 
 
 This opening of eyes, this purifying of the 
 vision, is one of the world's great necessities. 
 God is all around us, his marvelous working is 
 every-where. Nature is but his outbeaming, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 and at every motion of ours we touch his 
 goodness, and are ever stepping to the music 
 of his boundless beneficence. 
 
 It is sad, then, that we should tread heed- 
 lessly, when to move along this world care- 
 fully and wakefully is to keep company with 
 God and walk in paradise. 
 
I 
 
 n t ^ r J t s ♦ 
 
 Sketch. Page. 
 
 Salutatory, 13 
 
 I. The Earth, 18 
 
 II. The Earth's Shape, 22 
 
 III. Earth's Shape Illustrated, . . . 26 
 
 IV. Earth's Shape Further Illustrated, . 30 
 V. Earth's Dimensions, .... 34 
 
 VI. Earth's Superficial Dimensions, . . 38 
 
 VII. Earth's Solid Dimensions, ... 42 
 
 VIII. Earth's Motions, 46 
 
 IX. Earth's Motions Imperceptible, -. ' . 52 
 
 X. Diurnal Revolution, 57 
 
 XI. Night, 62 
 
 XII. Day, 67 
 
 XIIT. The Seasons, 71 
 
 XIV. Equinoxes, k 76 
 
 XV. Summer Solstice, 80 
 
 XVI. Winter Solstice, . . . . . .85 
 
 XVII. Zones, 89 
 
 XVIII. Continents, 94 
 
 9 
 
lO A CONTENTS. 
 
 Sketch. Page. 
 
 XIX. Oceans, loo 
 
 XX. Mountain Systems, . . . . io6 
 
 XXI. Dimensions of Mountains, . . . iii 
 
 XXII. Mountain Passes, . . . . 115 
 
 XXIII. Mountain Ascents, . , . .119 
 
 XXIV. Mountain Experiences, ... 123 
 XXV. Sacred Mountains, . . . .128 
 
 XXVI. Plains, ....... 136 
 
 XXVII. Plateux, 140 
 
 XXVIII. Depressions, 143 
 
 XXIX. Valleys, . 146 
 
 XXX. Deserts, 152 
 
 XXXI. Earthquakes, 156 
 
 XXXII. Earthquakes of 1868, . . . 161 
 
 XXXIII. Volcanoes, 165 
 
 XXXIV. Caverns, 171 
 
 XXXV. Rocks, 175 
 
 XXXVI. Minerals — Iron, . . . . 179 
 
 XXXVII. Coal, 184 
 
 XXXVIII. Soils, ....... 188 
 
 XXXIX. Grasses, ....... 193 
 
 XL. Trees, . . . . . . -197 
 
 XLI. Uses of Trees, 202 
 
 XLII. Tides, 206 
 
 XLIII. Rivers, . . . . . . .211 
 
 XLIV. Cataracts, 215 
 
CONTENTS. 1 1 
 
 Sketch. Page. 
 
 XLV. Lakes, 222 
 
 XLVI. Springs, (i,) 227 
 
 XLVII. Springs, (2,) ...... 232 
 
 XLVIII. Water, ....... 235 
 
 XLIX. Clouds, , . . . . . -239 
 
 L. Rain, 243 
 
 LI. Dew, . . 248 
 
 LIL Ice, 252 
 
 LIII. Glaciers, 256 
 
 LIV. Icebergs, 261 
 
 LV. Heat, 265 
 
 LVI. Light, 270 
 
 LVII. Color, 275 
 
 LVIII. Sound, 280 
 
 LIX. Atmosphere, (i,) 285 
 
 LX. Atmosphere, (2,) 291 
 
 LXI. Atmosphere, (3,) 294 
 
 LXII. Climate, 299 
 
 LXIII. Winds, 304 
 
 LXIV. Whirlwinds, 311 
 
 LXV. Uses of Winds, 316 
 
 LXVI. Rain-Storms, ...... 323 
 
 LXVII. Thunder-Storms, 327 
 
 LXVIII. Snow-Storms, 332 
 
 LXIX. Animal Creation, 335 
 
 Valedictory, 339 
 
iUustJ'ations. 
 
 FACE PAGE. 
 
 Nature, . Frontispiece. 
 
 Coral Reefs, 40 
 
 Night, . . . ; 64 
 
 Winter, , . . 75 
 
 The Ocean, . . . . . . . . .102 
 
 The Earthquake, ....... 162 
 
 Crater of Kilauea, 170 
 
 Caverns, 174 
 
 The Rock and the Light-House, . . . .178 
 
 The Tree, 198 
 
 The Tide, . 208 
 
 The Rapids, . . . . . . . . 215 
 
 At the Spring, 234 
 
 The Glacier, 258 
 
 The Winds and the Seas, 308 
 
 The Animal Creation, 336 
 
 12 
 
The Earth and its Wonders. 
 
 Salutatorij* 
 
 Y YOUNG FRIENDS— It has oc- 
 curred to me to prepare specially for 
 you a series of familiar sketches, 
 touching some of the works of God which we 
 see on this earth. The Scriptures declare 
 "Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord 
 God Almighty : in wisdom hast thou made 
 them all." 
 
 These great and marvelous works are all 
 around us. Many of them we see, and very 
 many others are more or less concealed from 
 us. And then, again, many of these works 
 which we see every day are but partially 
 known to us. We do not notice and study 
 
 13 
 
14 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 them as we ought, nor do we sufficiently con- 
 nect them with the great Hand that created 
 them. Thus we are prone too much to con- 
 template the works of Nature as we do those 
 of Art — that is, we confine our attention to 
 the work itself y with but little thought of its 
 Maker or Author. 
 
 Now, we should never for a moment forget 
 that what we call the ''works of Nature," are 
 nothing less than the works of God ; and if 
 there is such an arrangement as that which we 
 call Natiii^e, God himself has established this 
 arrangement, and he upholds it forever. 
 
 These works of Nature, or, more properly, 
 of the God of Nature, are of exceeding interest 
 to all who examine and study them in the 
 proper manner, and with the proper spirit. 
 They are, indeed, one of the means by which 
 God manifests himself to us. They are one 
 of his grand revelations. They tell us, as 
 plainly as words can tell us, of God's greatness," 
 of his wonderful power, skill, wisdom, benevo- 
 lence, and love. Words could tell us of all 
 these, but the works of God ilhcstrate them — 
 show them, and that, too, most clearly and 
 convincingly. 
 
SALUTATORY. 1 5 
 
 And then how interesting to a good youth 
 of either sex, or to any good person, is the 
 study of the Creator s works ! We are all apt 
 to feel the less interest here from the fact that 
 we are so familiar with many of these works. 
 We have always seen them, and had some ac- 
 quaintance with them. They have been, as it 
 were, our companions from the beginning of 
 our lives, and we come to look upon them as 
 things of course, and as we look upon our own 
 hands or feet. They are, so to speak, old to 
 us, and yet all young people should keep in 
 mind that there is much about these old things 
 that would be new to us — much that has never 
 yet entered into our thoughts. And these 
 new ideas about these old things are, many 
 of them, such as would interest us greatly, 
 and would even present them as new and 
 wonderful. 
 
 Let my young friends suppose it possible 
 for them to be transported to the moon, where 
 every thing would be actually new to them. 
 With what intense interest and curiosity would 
 they light down upon that strange world! 
 How eagerly would they notice every thing! 
 How interesting every step would be! And 
 
l6 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 if there were beings, or mountains, and vales, 
 and rivers there, how clearly would every 
 object be mapped upon their minds ! But the 
 earth where we are is at least as wonderful as 
 the moon, and there are, doubtless, as many 
 curious things here to interest, and things, 
 too, as new to us as any object or fact con- 
 nected with the moon. 
 
 Come, then, my friends, and contemplate 
 with me this great earth of ours. Let us walk 
 over it together, and notice a great many 
 things that may be both old and new to us ; 
 let us seek out the less familiar things, and 
 we may be assured that if our eyes are open, 
 and we look and consider attentively, we shall 
 be not only instructed and interested, but we 
 shall be rendered happier and better amid 
 these pleasant walks of ours. 
 
 It is true, I shall be a stranger to most of 
 you, and our rambles will not be to you as if 
 with a father or mother, or some other one 
 known and loved by you. And yet I may 
 promise you that it shall be a friend whom 
 you are to accompany— a friend, too, of your 
 parents, some of whom were my pupils in 
 their own bright morning days of life, and 
 
SALUTATORY. 1 7 
 
 used to roam with me amid some of these 
 same interesting scenes before you had yet 
 begun to be. 
 
 With the kindest remembrances of these 
 fathers and mothers, and with the most re- 
 spectful regard for those of your parents whom 
 I have never seen, as well as with the most 
 ardent wishes for your own best welfare, I 
 subscribe myself, my dear young friends. 
 
 Yours, most truly and affectionately, 
 
 2 C. ADAMS. 
 
The Earth. 
 
 S this earth is to be the subject of our 
 contemplations in these Sketches, let 
 us first glance at it as a whole. 
 The earth, as you are aware, has the appear- 
 ance of a vast plain or level, in the center of 
 which we seem to be living and acting. Over- 
 head is the sky or firmament, which, in the 
 language of Dr. Chalmers, " presents an im- 
 mense concave resting down upon the circu- 
 lar boundary of the world." This is the ap- 
 pearance ; and we can well remember when 
 we thought it was precisely so. To our eye 
 and imagination the earth was the great plain 
 just noticed, spread all around us as a mighty 
 wheel ; and on the circumference of this wheel 
 
 came down the sky, closing in the great round 
 i8 
 
THE EARTH. I9 
 
 world in every direction. And no wonder if 
 it occurred to us more than once, in those 
 sweet days of childhood, that, on some bright 
 and sunny afternoon, we would take a tramp 
 across the intervening fields and pastures, and 
 see how it looked where that solid and beauti- 
 ful sky came down to meet the underlying and 
 substantial earth ! Such was one of the delu- 
 sive imaginings of our life's early morning ; 
 and if, as we grow older and wiser, it may ex- 
 cite a smile, it may be useful for us to remem- 
 ber that many other dreams are still lingering 
 with us, which, however, are equally delusive 
 and baseless. 
 
 On what foundation this great circular earth 
 was resting while the sky was reposing with 
 all its weight upon the huge circumference, 
 came not, perhaps, into our little minds to in- 
 quire. This w^as a question, however, which 
 seems to have bothered many older minds in 
 darker ages of the world's history ; and many 
 a childish theory was invented touching this 
 same mysterious foundation. Some dreamed 
 that the great and far-reaching plain rested 
 upon the shoulders of a huge giant standing 
 beneath ; or on the back of a tremendous ser- 
 
20 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 pent; or some other support of enormous 
 strength. But none of the inventors of these 
 curious theories have ever explained to us the 
 foundation on which rested the feet of the 
 giant himself, or the belly of the awful ser- 
 pent. Happy for us, when little children, that 
 none of these vexatious questions, or theories, 
 ever came into mind. It was enough for us 
 that all beneath our little feet was solid and 
 firm, and that not the shadow of a suspicion 
 arose to trouble us as to the question of our 
 perfect security. With us it was as if we 
 heard and understood that great voice telling 
 of Him "who laid the foundation of the earth 
 that it should not be removed forever.'* 
 
 And right here, perhaps, some bright boy 
 or girl who have read their Bibles and have 
 noticed such passages as I have just quoted, 
 will inquire why the Bible itself should speak 
 of the earth as it looks, as if it were indeed 
 flat and circular, and rested upon some under- 
 lying foundations. 
 
 This is a reasonable inquiry, and we answer 
 it by saying, first, that the Bible was designed 
 to instruct all classes of people, the ignorant 
 as well as the learned ; secondly, it was not 
 
THE EARTH. 21 
 
 designed to teach science, but religion, and 
 religious truth and duty. Hence, thirdly, the 
 Bible is neither arranged scientifically, nor in 
 its allusions to the heavens and earth does it 
 speak of them in such a style or manner as 
 accords with scientific exactness, but, rather, 
 as these things appear to our vision. Thus 
 the Bible, as above, speaks of the earth as 
 having foundation ; as if it were erected upon 
 something, as a house. Science, on the other 
 hand, treats of the earth in this respect, as it 
 really is, and not as it seems to be. The Bible 
 speaks of the "ends of the earth," as if there 
 were really such " ends." Science instructs 
 us that, in fact, the earth has no ends. The 
 Bible alludes to the sun just as it appears to 
 our vision, as rising and setting. But science 
 places it as central and stationary so far as it 
 relates to the earth. The Bible speaks of the 
 stars according to their appearance. Science 
 treats of them as they actually are, and at an 
 infinite remove from the aspect they present 
 to the eye. 
 
II. 
 
 Tli^ Earth^s $hape. 
 
 IF the earth which we inhabit is not 
 flat, as the ancients suppose, and as 
 many even of its present inhabitants 
 believe, what is its actual shape ? As you 
 have already learned, the earth is globular. It 
 is not, indeed, a perfect globe, but so nearly 
 so that were we to see an exact model of its 
 shape, the eye would discern no difference 
 between it and a perfect sphere. It is slightly 
 flattened at the poles, as if you should take 
 between your two hands an orange perfectly 
 globular, and thus apply to it the slightest 
 pressure. Then the diameter from one hand 
 to the other would be an atom less than an- 
 other diameter across this one at right angles 
 to it. This difierence between the two diame- 
 
 22 
 
THE EARTH'S SHAPE. 23 
 
 ters thus represented, is about twenty-six 
 miles. This, though considerable of itself, is, 
 however, a very small quantity when compared 
 to nearly eight thousand miles, the length of 
 the earth's diameter ; and the proportion of 
 the two diameters is thus exactly ' as three 
 hundred and one to three hundred and two. 
 It is not necessary to suppose that this was 
 the exact shape of the earth when first created, 
 or that this shape was otherwise than a perfect 
 sphere ; for, had it been such at the beginning, 
 its swift and constant motion, in entirely re- 
 volving upon its axis every twenty-four hours, 
 would naturally and gradually tend to withdraw 
 the material of the earth from the poles toward 
 the equator, thus forming a slight protuber- 
 ance in the equatorial regions at the expense 
 of the polar regions. 
 
 The process may be well illustrated by im- 
 agining a knitting-needle thrust, at the stem, 
 directly through an orange ; the two ends of 
 the needle would represent the north and south 
 poles of the earth. Now, immerse the orange 
 in a vessel of oil, and then whirl it rapidly on 
 the needle as its axis, and mark the result. 
 The oil will be measurably drawn away from 
 
24 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 around the needle at either end, and sHghtly 
 heaped up on the part of the orange which is 
 equidistant from the two poles, that is, upon 
 the equator. 
 
 In the first chapter of the Bible, where we 
 read the Mosaic account of the creation of our 
 earth as it now appears, we have the globe rep- 
 resented as previously being entirely covered 
 with water. If, as is quite probable, it was 
 then, and afterward, revolving upon its axis, 
 the phenomenon above noticed, of the dimin- 
 ishing of the polar substance and a correspond- 
 ing accumulation at and around the equator, 
 would have been a certain consequence. 
 
 Our earth, then, is of globular shape, not- 
 withstanding it has the seeming of a vast 
 plain ; and it will not be difficult for you to 
 comprehend why it has this appearance. It is 
 because of its prodigious extent. Were we to 
 stand on a great ball of a mile in diameter, 
 and three miles around it, we should not seem 
 as now to be standing upon a plain, but, look- 
 ing hither and thither, we should observe the 
 surface of the ball gradually curving downward 
 in every direction from the point where we 
 might be standing, while, at the distance of a 
 
THE EARTU'S SHAPE. 2$ 
 
 quarter of a mile, more or less, the surface 
 would sink entirely from our sight. 
 
 Not at all so, however, as we stand on this 
 immense ball which we call the earth. Here, 
 on whatever plain or ocean we may be, there 
 is no perceptible curvature downward within 
 the reach of our vision, and hence, wherever 
 we may walk or sail, the aspect is that of an 
 immense plain, varied on the open sea by noth- 
 ing, and interrupted on the land only by hills 
 or forest, as it stretches away to the far 
 horizon. 
 
III. 
 
 Batth^s $hape Illustrated* 
 
 OME of you may not as yet have 
 clearly understood how it is ascer- 
 tained that our world is a globe, since 
 it has scarcely any appearance of being such. 
 There are several very clear and conclusive 
 proofs of this great fact. Let us, in the first 
 place, undertake a long imaginary journey, and 
 as this our journey is to be imaginary, we will 
 start from where we please, and take just the 
 direction we please. The city of Washington, 
 then, shall be our point of departure, and pre- 
 cisely west shall be our direction. Of course 
 we shall go on this line sheer across the conti- 
 nent, and come, some day, to San Francisco. 
 Here, taking one of the steamships now con- 
 stantly plying the great Pacific Ocean, we will 
 26 
 
EARTH'S SHAPE ILLUSTRATED. 2/ 
 
 continue our course due west, and come in 
 about twenty days to Jeddo, in Japan. Thence, 
 still going due west, we will take passage 
 across the Japan and Yellow seas, and starting 
 from Pekin, in China, we will continue our far 
 western way over Asia and the Hellespont 
 to Constantinople ; whence, by land and sea, 
 still westward we will reach Lisbon, in Portu- 
 gal ; where, embarking with our prow exactly 
 west, we will cross the Atlantic, and, land- 
 ing at the mouth of Delaware Bay, and pro- 
 ceeding overland, we will come to Washington 
 again, the place of starting on this long, 
 long journey. We have gone from Washing- 
 ton, on a due western course, 25,000 miles, 
 and, instead of being all that distance away 
 from the city, we are at it again. We went 
 out from the western side, and, without 
 changing our course, we have come to the 
 eastern side of the same city — that is, we have 
 gone round the world from Washington to 
 Washington. 
 
 And now perhaps some one will answer me 
 that I have proved the world to be round in 
 an eastern and western direction, but this does 
 not prove it to be so on a northern and south- 
 
28 THE EARTPI AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 ern line ; and it has never been sailed around 
 by way of the North and South Poles, and 
 probably never can be. Well, then, let us 
 adopt another criterion. If we can not by 
 reason of ice and cold go to the poles and pass 
 beyond them, let us, in our second journey, go 
 as far as possible. We will select the same 
 starting place, the city of Washington, and lay 
 our course, this time, due north instead of 
 west. The latitude of Washington is very 
 nearly 39°, and before starting we will direct 
 our eyes exactly to the northern horizon, and 
 then elevate them the same number of de- 
 grees, 39°, and note a little star lying there, 
 called the North Star. 
 
 We will take with us a little instrument 
 adapted to the purpose of noting the height 
 of the stars above the horizon. Starting on 
 our due northerly course, we presently reach 
 Montreal, in Canada ; and then, with our in- 
 strument, we ascertain that our North Star, 
 instead of remaining at 39°, as when we 
 started, has somehow lifted itself up full six 
 degrees, and stands at 45°. How is this ? 
 Continuing our journey nearly seven hundred 
 miles north from Montreal, and again sighting 
 
EARTH'S SHAPE ILLUSTRATED. 29 
 
 our guiding star, lo, it has ascended ten de- 
 grees further up toward the zenith. How can 
 this be true of a star that we thought was 
 always stationary ? Only thus : it is not that 
 our star has gone upward, but that we, in 
 coming a thousand miles from Washington, 
 have been all the time going downward. For 
 had we been traveling upon a horizontal plane 
 all along this northern tour, the star which, at 
 Washington, was only 39"^ high, would still 
 remain at the same elevation. But we have 
 been traveling on an arc, instead of a straight 
 line, and as on this arc we have gone down- 
 ward under the star, the latter, by the same 
 amount exactly, has gone upward. And should 
 we go on to the pole itself, the North Star will 
 stand directly overhead. 
 
 This means that the path from Washington 
 to the North Pole is an arc ; and the same is 
 true of a path to the pole from any other 
 point. That is, the north and south of the 
 earth are globular as well as the east and west ; 
 and this means that the whole is globular. 
 
IV. 
 
 Earth's $hap^ Futthjet lUustrat^jl. 
 
 IHERE is another consideration as 
 much or more convincing, going to 
 show that our earth is globular in- 
 stead of being flat, cylindrical, or of any other 
 shape. We refer to eclipses of the moon. You 
 have doubtless learned that these eclipses are 
 caused by the earth passing directly between 
 the sun and moon, so that the huge shadow of 
 the earth, projected out into space, hits the 
 moon. And if the three centers, namely, 
 those of the sun, moon, and earth, are in a 
 straight line, when the earth falls between the 
 sun and the moon, the latter will be wholly 
 obscured by the earth's shadow, and continue 
 so for two or three hours. On the other hand, 
 if, in making the passage between the two 
 
 30 
 
EARTH'S SHAPE ILLUSTRATED. 31 
 
 luminaries, the earth fails to pass precisely be- 
 tween them, but its center rises a little above 
 or falls a little below, the straight line joining 
 the other two centers, then the earth's shadow 
 will strike only a part of the moon, and it will, 
 consequently, be but partly eclipsed. Now this 
 shadow of the earth on the moon, when the lat- 
 ter is eclipsed, is always and invariably cwcu- 
 lar. It never has a straight side, never has an 
 angle, never is a mere line across the moon's 
 face, never is concave, never any other shape 
 than exactly circular and convex. And what 
 is the shape of that object that, in any and all 
 directions in which you can place it, forever 
 casts such a shadow.^ To this question there 
 is but one answer. It is a globe, and can be 
 nothing else. 
 
 Other considerations might be adduced lead- 
 ing to the same conclusion ; but these are suf- 
 ficient, and we may settle it in our minds as 
 absolutely certain that the earth which we, for 
 the present, inhabit, is a great globe or ball 
 hanging in the mid heavens. It is also an un- 
 doubted fact that the heavenly bodies around 
 us, the sun itself, the moon, the planets, -and 
 all the stars of the firmament, are of similar 
 
^2 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 shape. Some of these approach nearer the 
 form of a perfect sphere, some others not so 
 near ; but the globular shape, more or less 
 perfect, they all doubtless possess. 
 
 Why the great and all-wise Creator has 
 given to ours and other worlds this character- 
 istic shape is probably but partially known 
 to us. But that there were very important 
 and sufficient reasons for this we may be fully 
 assured. He does nothing in vain, or capri- 
 ciously, or wantonly, and without ample rea- 
 sons ; and though we, with all our eager pene- 
 tration, can see but a part of His ways, a very 
 small part, yet a reason or two for the spheric- 
 ity, or globular shape of the worlds, may not 
 be beyond the perception of mortals. 
 
 These great worlds, and ours with the rest, 
 though apparently so stationary and still, are 
 in motion ; and this motion is a flight through 
 space so swift and awful as to be utterly 
 and immeasurably beyond every human con- 
 ception. And it is very likely, if not quite 
 certain, that the globular shape is best 
 adapted, if not indispensable, to the regu- 
 larity and safety of such motion. Then, as 
 to our globe, it is certain that this "round 
 
EARTH'S SHAPE ILLUSTRATED. 33 
 
 world " is far better adapted to its purposes, es- 
 pecially to the convenience, comfort, and even 
 the safety, of animal nature, than any other 
 conceivable form. To suppose the earth to 
 have had given to it a cubical figure would be 
 to suppose the greatest part of it uninhabit- 
 able. At least two out of the six sides would 
 doubtless have been as desolate as the polar 
 regions of the globe now are, while the eight 
 corners would have projected themselves into 
 space, a sort of pyramidal mountains, many 
 leagues in height, the drear abode of everlast- 
 ing snow, and storms, and whirlwinds, and 
 utter desolation. 
 
 On the other hand, had the earth, instead 
 of being a globe, been an immense plain as it 
 actually appears to be, the present law of 
 gravitation and the daily revolution upon its 
 axis remaining as now, it is not easy to con- 
 ceive how, not merely the animal creation, but 
 the earth itself, could escape confusion and 
 ruin. 3 
 
V. 
 
 Th^ Barth^s i^im«nsians♦ 
 
 UR world, then, is a ball. This is 
 easy to say or write, but who may 
 ever portray, or even begin to im- 
 agine its prodigious dimensions? A simple 
 process of mathematics will give^us the meas- 
 urements, and we can write down the figures 
 that express these measurements, and we can 
 look at the figures and ponder them, and essay 
 to imagine what they actually express. But 
 all in vain. . 
 
 But let us glance a moment at the measure- 
 ments. First, let my young friends form a 
 clear idea of what is termed a great circle of 
 the earth. It is a circle or circumference 
 drawn around the earth in any direction, so as 
 to divide it into two equal parts. Thus the 
 equator is an example of a great circle. We 
 34 
 
THE EARTH'S DIMENSIONS. 35 
 
 will suppose one of these great circles drawn 
 around the earth at right angles to the equator, 
 and, of course, passing through the North and 
 South Poles. We call such a circle as this a 
 meridian. We will now take a position on 
 this meridian at 40° north latitude, and with 
 our eye on the North Star, we will travel north 
 until the star shall stand at 41° instead of 40°. 
 As the star has ascended one degree, so we 
 have traveled just one degree along the great 
 circle. Here we will stop and travel back to 
 the place of starting — measuring, as we go, the 
 distance between the two points. Completing 
 the measurement, we find the distance to be 
 sixty-nine and one-half miles. This is the 
 length of one degree of a great circle of the 
 earth, by actual, careful, and exact measure- 
 ment. Now, as in every circle there are 360 
 degrees, if we multiply this length of one de- 
 gree by three hundred and sixty, we shall have 
 the whole extent of the circle, 25,020 miles. 
 This, then, is the maximum or greatest dis- 
 tance around this ball called earth. From this 
 we deduce, by the ratio of the diameter and 
 circumference of a circle, that the earth's 
 diameter — its distance from one side, through 
 
36 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the center, to the opposite side— is about eight 
 thousand miles. 
 
 But what human mind can form any con- 
 ception of these tremendous measurements or 
 distances ? Sometimes in traveHng we discern 
 an elevation seeming far, very far away in the 
 dim distance before us. By a great effort our 
 minds can, perhaps, take in all the long path 
 leading to that object. Yet it is a conception 
 of only about thirty miles, and this long reach, 
 that requires so positive an effort to conceive 
 adequately, must be multiplied to eight hun- 
 dred and thirty-three times in order to extend 
 around this enormous globe. A train of cars 
 flying a mile a minute would require seven- 
 teen days and a third of a day to traverse the 
 amazing circuit. 
 
 Such is the circumference and such the di- 
 ameter of this ball on which we dwell. And 
 if you wish to proceed further, and ascertain 
 the extent of its whole surface, you have only 
 to find, first, the extent of the surface, or area 
 of the great circle, which is obtained by 
 multiplying its circumference, 25,000 miles, by 
 half its radius or one-fourth of its diameter, 
 8,000 miles, and you have, in round numbers, 
 
THE EARTH'S DIMENSIONS. 37 
 
 for the area of this great circle, 50,000,000 of 
 square miles. Then, as multiplying the area 
 of a great circle of a ball by four gives the 
 area of its whole surface, you will thus have 
 200,000,000 of square miles as the measure of 
 the earth's surface. Now if we wish to pro- 
 ceed a step further, and ascertain the solid 
 contents of our world, the process is direct 
 and simple. We have the surface in square 
 miles, 200,000,000 ; we have the diameter in 
 linear miles, 8,000. We have only then to 
 multiply the surface by half the diameter, 
 4,000, and afterward divide the product by 
 three, and we shall have the mass of our globe 
 in solid miles. How this is so, you will as- 
 certain by the study of geometry. So, by 
 the above multiplying, we shall find the solid 
 contents to be nearly 260,000,000,000 of cubic 
 or solid miles. All this inconceivable mass is 
 under your feet as you walk and play, and 
 spreads itself afar before and behind you, and 
 is the great theater of your present but tran- 
 sient dwelling-place. 
 
VI. 
 
 Earth's ^wpierficial IHmensions, 
 
 C^lba*,^^^ 
 
 AM unwilling to dismiss this idea 
 of the immensity of our earth with- 
 out an attempt or two to illustrate 
 further its inconceivable dimensions. And 
 although all that may be said and written and 
 pictured will never avail to lift our imagina- 
 tions hardly a step toward the great result, 
 yet it may serve to gratify an innocent and 
 laudable curiosity to endeavor, by one and 
 another contrivance or illustration, to approx- 
 imate toward some feeble conception of the 
 earth's magnitude. 
 
 Our preceding sketch, then, has proved the 
 
 surface of this globe to comprise 200,000,000 
 
 of square miles. One square mile is an easy 
 
 conception. In the Western land surveys, it 
 
 38 
 
EARTH'S SUPERFICIAL DIMENSIONS. 39 
 
 comprises what is termed a section, and con- 
 tains six hundred and forty acres — a farm of 
 large dimensions. If you have never seen 
 such a square of land, yet you have in your 
 minds the idea of a mile as it extends along 
 the road that passes your home. From your 
 house to a certain neighbor's is just about a 
 mile, and you have often traveled it, and call 
 up in your minds the whole path with its little 
 turns, its trees, its ups and downs, and each 
 intervening house and brook. You know 
 what a mile is. So if there were a square 
 plain inclosed by a fence along each of its four 
 sides, and each of the four fences were a mile 
 long, you could stand by one of these fences 
 or over in the center of the great lot, where 
 each fence would be a half mile distant, and 
 thus receive into your mind a tolerably fair idea 
 of the magnitude of one square mile. But if, 
 instead of standing in the center of one square 
 mile, you should stand in the center of a hund- 
 red of such, where each fence at its nearest 
 point would be five miles ofi', and, of course, 
 scarcely visible, your idea of this one hundred 
 square miles would be very imperfect, while 
 your comprehension of a thousand of such 
 
40 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 would be entirely inadequate. What, then, of 
 ten hundred thousand, or a million ! What of 
 this million multiplied two hundred fold ! Yet 
 this is the earth's great surface ! Who can im- 
 agine it ? Who can begin to do so ? 
 
 Now let us return to our one square •mile, 
 of which we have so perfect an idea. We will 
 cross it from one fence to the opposite fence. 
 If we walk as fast as men usually walk when 
 going to and from their business, we shall cross 
 the lot in twenty minutes, and should cross 
 three such lots in an hour, and, of course, thirty 
 of them in ten hours, by which time we should 
 be weary, and we should have walked far 
 enough for the day, and would need to rest till 
 to-morrow. Now if we should walk on at the 
 same rate till we had regularly crossed every 
 square mile of the earth's surface, we should 
 be more than 18,000 years old before we fin- 
 ished the enormous tramp, and should we pro- 
 pose to be more particular, and so cross not 
 only each square mile, but each acre of this 
 vast landscape, at the same rate, we should be 
 occupied ten hours every day through 12,000,- 
 000 of years. 
 
 Or should we propose for ourselves a more 
 
EARTH'S SUPERFICIAL DIMENSIONS. 4 1 
 
 speedy and superficial survey of this globe of 
 ours, we will suppose ourselves accommodated 
 with a comfortable seat about a mile aloft in 
 the air, the seat to be stationary while the earth 
 under us is turning eastward in its daily revo- 
 lution. We will choose a position such that a 
 belt of the surface five miles wide shall pass 
 under us and by us, until in each twenty-four 
 hours every such belt of five miles has been 
 successively passed, and been inspected by us 
 as it glided onward. Much of the earth, it is 
 true, will rush beneath us with a velocity that 
 will be frightful to contemplate — houses, trees, 
 lakes, rivers, hills, and plains flying eastward 
 with double the swiftness of a cannon-ball, and 
 we shall need to be wide awake or our observa- 
 tions will be superficial indeed. Yet such an 
 examination, comprising but the merest glance 
 of a moment, will occupy us, in the swift and 
 vast survey, every hour, minute, and second of 
 more than eight long years. 
 
VII. 
 
 Eatth^s $aUd Bim^nsians, 
 
 ROM such calculations and imaginings 
 let us venture a glance away from the 
 surface of this great world, and en- 
 deavor to penetrate down amid the unfathom- 
 able recesses of its awful bulk. While the 
 earth is globular in shape, it is not, like the 
 artificial globes in the schools, a hollow and 
 empty shell, but is a solid mass, with an aver- 
 age weight of about five times that of a globe 
 of water of equal dimensions. 
 
 We have seen that while the earth's surface 
 comprises 200,000,000 of square miles, its 
 mass or bulk comprises 260,000,000,000 of 
 cubic or solid miles. Here again, and here 
 especially, we are lost, and all human ideas 
 and computations are at fault and vain. 
 42 
 
EARTH'S SOLID DIMENSIONS. 43 
 
 We have scarcely more conception of this 
 stupendous mass of our earth than has a worm 
 on the sides of Mont Blanc of that huge and 
 awful eminence. Two hundred and sixty- 
 seven thousand millions of sohd miles! Sup- 
 pose that, in our imagination, we take out one 
 of these solid miles and set it up bodily and in 
 shape on some wide-spread plain. What an 
 object and what a wonder! A mile along, a 
 m.ile through, a mile aloft ! In vastitude what 
 is comparable to it among all the works or 
 erections of man ? 
 
 The greatest of the Egyptian pyramids has 
 a square base of seven hundred and forty six 
 feet on a side, covering about thirteen acres, 
 and was originally about five hundred feet in 
 height, while the weight of this huge structure 
 was seven and one-half millions of tons. And 
 yet, to erect our supposed edifice of one solid 
 mile would require fifteen hundred and twenty- 
 five just such pyramids. Were the great pile 
 hollow, and divided into stories each ten feet 
 in height, and allowing a square yard for each 
 person, it would contain within its walls more 
 than 1,600,000,000 of people, or a third more 
 than all the present inhabitants of the earth. 
 
44 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Look at it: on a favorable day it could be seen 
 a hundred miles away. It is within a few 
 hundred feet of the height of Mt. Washing- 
 ton, in New Hampshire. Place another solid 
 mile upon the top of this, and you have the 
 height of Mt. ^tna. Place still another upon 
 the top of these, and there looms up the awful 
 altitude of Mont Blanc, the loftiest mountain 
 of Europe. And yet these are only three out 
 of the 260,000,000,000 of just such enormous 
 cubes. Now remove the two upper cubes and 
 leave the first one as before. It is solid and 
 comprises a certain amount of matter — such 
 an amount as that to remove this one solid 
 mile a distance of twenty miles would require? 
 through seventy-five years, 100,000 men and 
 200,000 horses. Once more: were this globe 
 of ours resting upon another globe precisely 
 similar, its weight, in tons, pressing upon the 
 other globe would be expressed by the number 
 5,842x10^^ that is, 5,842 multiplied by ten 
 raised to the eighteenth power, that is, 5,842,- 
 000,000,000,000,000,000, or 5,842 millions of 
 millions of millions of tons. 
 
 Of this almost infinite weight you and I, of 
 course, know nothing. We have no conception 
 
EARTH'S SOLID DIMENSIONS. 45 
 
 of even a single one million of all this countless 
 number of millions. The great mathematician, 
 Archimedes, once boasted that if he had a 
 place to stand upon separate from the earth 
 and independent of it, where he might arrange 
 and apply his apparatus, he could move this 
 vast globe. But some curious inquirer setting 
 himself to investigate the matter, came to the 
 conclusion that even were such a feat at all 
 within the limits of possibility, some millions of 
 years would be consumed in moving the globe 
 to the amount of a single inch. How over- 
 whelming, then, is the thought of that Omnip- 
 otent Being who can take up this immense 
 world as a "very little thing;" who upholds it 
 "by the word of his power;" who, in the be- 
 ginning, hurled it away on its swift and ever- 
 lasting flight around its central sun, and who 
 causes it to perform an entire revolution upon 
 its axis every twenty-four hours ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 The Earth^s motions. 
 
 jHE closing remarks of my preceding 
 sketch allude to the fact that this 
 earth, so immeasurably large and 
 heavy, and apparently so still and stationary, 
 is, however, in motion. As suggested, it has 
 two great and principal motions ; one around 
 the sun, and the other a rolling motion upon 
 its axis, like the revolution of a top. Its mo- 
 tion around the sun is of terrible swiftness, 
 and one of these revolutions makes our year. 
 Being about 95,000,000 of miles from the sun, 
 its circuit or orbit around it is more than six 
 times that distance, or about 580,000,000 of 
 miles. This would be 1,600,000 miles every 
 day, about 67,000 miles an hour, and 18J miles 
 every second. 
 46 
 
THE EARTH'S MOTIONS. 47 
 
 Think of such an enormous world flying 
 through space at so fearful a rate. Could we 
 stand off somewhere a thousand miles from 
 the earth and see it go by us at that distance, 
 what an awfully magnificent spectacle would 
 be presented to us ; and who could ever com- 
 pute the force that drives the world through 
 its great circuit forever ? Where resides that 
 force? Only with one Being in all the uni- 
 verse, and that same Being has us in his hands 
 and sacred keeping from moment to moment, 
 and can exert the same power for our loftiest 
 happiness. 
 
 But while the earth is thus flying around the 
 sun, and thus making our year, it has, at the 
 same time, a rolling motion upon its axis, mak- 
 ing our day of twenty-four hours. A top 
 spinning upon the floor, and at the same time 
 circling around the room, well illustrates this 
 double motion of our earth. And while its 
 motion around the sun, as we have just no- 
 ticed, is so terribly swift, this motion upon its 
 axis is much less so, but still of greater rapid- 
 ity than that of any motion upon its surface; 
 for a ball like this great earth can not roll 
 sheer over in twenty-four hours without a 
 
48 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 motion upon the highest portions of its surface 
 far swifter than we have ever witnessed. The 
 rail-cars under full way go by us at the rate, 
 sometimes, of forty miles an hour ; and how 
 sublimely swift, then, is their course ! How 
 soon they are away in the far distance ! In 
 rare instances, their speed is increased to the 
 rate of sixty miles an hour, a mile a minute. 
 But this is a terrible speed, whether we are 
 on board or witnessing it from outside. The 
 pigeon's flight is not far from a hundred miles 
 an hour, and that of a cannon-ball is probably 
 five or six times greater, which, by the earth's 
 daily revolving upon its axis, people on and 
 near the line of the equator are, every hour, 
 borne, by its stupendous rolling, a thousand 
 and forty miles eastward, or i/f miles every 
 minute, or a mile in less than four seconds. 
 Proceeding north or south from the equator 
 toward the poles, the circles or parallels be- 
 come less, as you will see by looking upon an 
 artificial globe ; so that, in rolling over of the 
 globe, the people living on these small cir- 
 cles traverse, in the twenty-four hours, a less 
 distance than those residing on or near the 
 equator. At 20° either way from the equator, 
 
THE EARTH'S MOTIONS. 49 
 
 for example, the circle surrounding the earth 
 corresponding to the 20th parallel of latitude, 
 instead of being, as at the equator, 25,000 
 miles around, is about 23,400 miles. At 30° 
 it is 21,600, at 40^ it is 19,080 miles, and at 
 50° it is 15,840 miles. Consequently, in the 
 daily revolution of the earth upon its axis, 
 those living at or near 20° north and south 
 latitude, are carried eastward, not at the rate 
 of 17! miles a minute as at the equator, but 
 16 J miles ; and those living at 30° go 15 miles 
 a minute, or a mile in four seconds ; those at 
 40^ go 13 J miles a minute, while, up at the 
 50th parallel, the velocity per minute is just 11 
 miles. So the rate of speed goes on diminish- 
 ing toward the poles ; while, if a man shall, 
 sometime, stand upon the north pole — and 
 there is a man or boy living who will stand 
 there — and if he should stand perfectly still 
 for twenty-four hours, and not turn to right or 
 left, he will not be carried a mile nor an inch 
 by the rolling over of the earth, but will sim- 
 ply be turned clear around, his face, as the 
 globe goes round, turning successively in 
 every direction toward the horizon. 
 
 If now you ask how it is that in going, as 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
50 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 we do in our latitude, at the amazing velocity 
 of about 13 miles a minute, twenty-five or 
 twenty-six times faster than the swiftest motion 
 of the cars, how it is that we have no percep- 
 tion of such motion, two considerations may 
 be a satisfactory explanation. First, we are 
 borne along on an immense body and with a 
 motion exactly uniform, and as perfectly quiet 
 as is possible to be conceived. There is not a 
 jar, not the least perceivable disturbance from 
 year to year or from century to century. Then, 
 secondly, the great atmosphere surrounding 
 and enveloping the earth, being held to it by 
 the force of attraction, revolves with the earth, 
 so that the revolving of the latter occasions, 
 in most circumstances, not the slightest fric- 
 tion between it and its atmosphere. Were 
 this otherwise, and the revolving earth re- 
 leased from the overhanging atmosphere, and 
 rushing through it and by it, and leaving it 
 behind, the immediate result would be awful 
 in the extreme. It would be the same as if an 
 east wind were driving by us westward at the 
 rate of a thousand miles an hour, or tenfold 
 the force of the wildest and most awful hur- 
 ricane ; and in less than an hour's time every 
 
THE EARTH'S MOTIONS. 5 1 
 
 tree would be uprooted and prostrate, every 
 movable thing on the earth's surface would be 
 flying in utter confusion through the air, and 
 every human being and every animal would be 
 swept away as with *'the besom of destruc- 
 tion." 
 
 Here, too, then we should not forget to 
 make a note of the great Hand that is ever 
 near us, the hand of infinite power blended 
 with infinite goodness and beneficence. He 
 turns over this great world every day, carrying 
 us and all things with it, while yet this amaz- 
 ing daily revolution goes on with perfect quiet, 
 constancy, and safety. Could we witness the 
 great and swift revolving without participating 
 in it, it would probably be a sight too sublime 
 and awful for endurance. Yet, could we bear 
 it, doubtless the very first conscious reflection 
 would be that the rush of this great world 
 upon its axis must be a rush to utter and dire 
 destruction. But, amid this enormous whirl 
 and this apparent ruin, the infinite One is 
 near, and he '' upholdeth " and we are safe. 
 
IX 
 
 Eatth^s Motions tmpevceptxhU. 
 
 N the preceding sketch I presented 
 reasons why the motion of the earth, 
 so swift as it is, is not perceptible by 
 us who are carried along with it by day and 
 night. Some one may ask why, though the 
 motion is perfectly without jar or disturb- 
 ance, we do not perceive it to be rolling by 
 objects that are distant and stationary, as, for 
 example, the stars at night. Why do these 
 stars, and the sun, and the moon, appear to be 
 going by us .if we are moving instead of them ? 
 The appearance to every one is that these are 
 always drifting westward while we remain sta- 
 tionary. This is true, and is one of those 
 optical illusions which all have experienced. 
 If you can remember the first time you ever 
 52 
 
EARTH'S MOTIONS IMPERCEPTIBLE. 53 
 
 rode in a carriage, you will recollect that the 
 trees, though still as ever, seemed to be all 
 in motion. Elderly people who had grown 
 up before rail-cars began to fly over the 
 country, can call up the curious sensation 
 when they first intrusted themselves to those 
 swift wheels. Looking out through the win- 
 dows, it was as if the landscape were flying 
 by us, instead of our flying through that ; and 
 the hills and trees on land, and the ships away 
 on the ocean, appeared combined in a prodig- 
 ious race, and we seemed as if dropped down 
 in the center of a vast whirl, and all nature 
 was rushing, we knew not where. So often, 
 even now, while sitting in the cars along-side 
 of another train within the depot, and one or 
 the other train begins to move slowly away, it 
 is not so easy for me to tell which of the trains 
 is moving, whether I am gliding one way or 
 the neighboring train the opposite way. So 
 I suppose it is apt to be of all unusual mo- 
 tions, in which we participate. Those who, 
 especially at first, venture to ascend in bal- 
 loons, realize this illusion to perfection. As- 
 cending, it is not that they are rising from the 
 earth, but the great earth is sinking down 
 
54 'I'HE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 from them ; and when far aloft, it is not that 
 they are drifting eastward, but the earth, and 
 cities, and rivers, are all gliding westward ; 
 and being whirled around in their airy car, it is 
 not they that are whirling, but the great under- 
 lying landscape is rushing round like some 
 mighty wheel ; and essaying to descend, it is 
 not that they are coming down to the earth, 
 but the immense earth, with all that is upon 
 its surface, is coming up to where they are. 
 And happy for them if the enormous world 
 does not come up too swiftly, and give them a 
 blow too terrible and deadly ! Indeed, the bal- 
 loon in the air is probably as exact and fine an 
 illustration of our position in space as is pos- 
 sible. The balloon is moving, but appears to 
 its passengers to be utterly still — it is running 
 before the wind, but no breath is felt, for the 
 great silken ball is moving precisely with the 
 breeze. So seems this great solid globe as, 
 upon its surface, we are borne ever onward. 
 The seeming is that we are still, very still, and 
 that it is the sun and stars that are on the 
 wing. 
 
 I have fancied that a simple experiment 
 may, by an effort, dispel for a little moment 
 
EARTH'S MOTIONS IMPERCEPTIBLE. 55 
 
 this inevitable illusion, and show us a transient 
 glimpse of this great earth's motion. You 
 will recollect that this globe, by a motion ex- 
 actly uniform, performs a perfect revolution of 
 360 degrees in twenty-four hours. Of course 
 it revolves 15 degrees in one hour, a motion 
 too slow to be perceptible. Hence, we do not 
 perceive the motions of the stars westward, 
 but only that they have been moving, and that 
 their places are changed from hour to hour. 
 Were they moving westward, instead of 1 5 de- 
 grees an hour, about double that number, their 
 actual moving would be perceptible, and the 
 whole vast starry concave would be seen roll- 
 ing very slowly toward the west, as the earth, 
 at this rate, would be actually rolling eastward 
 upon its axis. And yet by the help of a bright 
 and perspicuous mark the motion, as it is, may 
 seem to be perceived. Assume, for instance, a 
 favorable situation, perhaps an elevated win- 
 dow that looks off, without an obstruction, upon 
 a smooth, eastern horizon. Take your posi- 
 tion just before the full moon is about to rise. 
 As it begins to make its appearance, then, by 
 a determined mental effort, make it stationary ^ 
 and make the great earth move beneath it ; and, 
 
56 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 if you succeed, you shall, for a moment or two, 
 seem to conquer the illusion, and see the great 
 and sublime reality — the motion of the earth. 
 If any one is pleased to affirm that all this 
 is but imaginary, I have only to reply that 
 there are imaginings which are identical with 
 realities. 
 
X. 
 
 iHurnal Ejevolution^ 
 
 T was not until recent times that the 
 revolution of the earth upon its axis 
 was credited as a fact. All mere 
 appearaitceSy you know, are against such a 
 theory. There seems to be nothing pertaining 
 to the earth itself, or to the firmament above us, 
 that would indicate such a curious arrangement. 
 The earth — is it not steadfast, firmly estab- 
 lished, and immovable.^ Is it not as plain as 
 any thing we see that the sun literally rises in 
 the eastern horizon, and goes down at evening 
 in the west t The moon and the stars, also, do 
 they not follow the same order } Thus thought 
 all the world, through long ages. The great 
 world where we live was the center of things, 
 and the sun, and moon, and stars, like Jacob, 
 
 57 
 
58 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 his wife, and sons to Joseph, came and bowed 
 down to this central earth, and made obeisance 
 to it. Or, more Hterally, they arose upon it, 
 circled over it, and set behind it, and passed 
 under it, and came again to the place of be- 
 ginning. The firmament, as was the seeming, 
 was a vast, solid, revolving canopy, bedecked 
 with the greater and lesser lights, and passed 
 over and around us forever. So it looked — so 
 the Bible seemed to teach — so the learned and 
 the wise believed. At length, not far from the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, Copernicus, a 
 German philosopher, having for some time 
 doubted the Ptolemaic system of Astronomy, 
 which had been in vogue for 2,000 years, and 
 which placed the earth in the center of the 
 universe, with the sun, moon, and stars revolv- 
 ing around it, came, by long and careful study, 
 to the clear conviction that the sun, instead of 
 the earth, was the true center, and that the 
 earth was one of the planets, and, like the 
 others, revolved around the great luminary; 
 and that the cause of day and night was not 
 that the sun really rose and set, but that the 
 earth turned regularly upon its axis, thus 
 meeting, as it turned, the sun at morning and 
 
DIURNAL REVOLUTION. 59 
 
 turning away from it at evening. Copernicus 
 declined, for a long time, to publish his theory, 
 and it was not till the last day of his life that 
 his newly published work, in which it was set 
 forth and illustrated, was presented to him. 
 Shortly afterward, in 1564, Galileo, the Italian 
 philosopher and mathematician, was born, who 
 also arose to eminence, and became a con- 
 firmed convert to the Copernican theory, and 
 alleged that the Scriptures, so far as they speak 
 of the connection of the sun and the earth, 
 were to be understood as speaking popularly 
 rather than scientifically ; and thus did not 
 contravene the Copernican theory. A formal 
 charge was presented against him before the 
 Roman Inquisition, and he was compelled to 
 recant his teaching of the Copernican theory. 
 Accordingly he abjured the doctrine with 
 solemn formality, and, clad in sackcloth, and 
 kneeling upon his knees, he swore upon the 
 Gospels never again to teach that the sun was 
 stationary, and that the earth moved. He 
 declared his detestation of the heretical opin- 
 ions, and promised to perform the prescribed 
 penance. Then, rising from his knees, he 
 muttered in an undertone, ''It [the earth] does 
 
60 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 move, for all that /" So absurd is it to attempt 
 by compulsion and persecution to change the 
 well-settled convictions of the human mind ! 
 
 As, then, the sun is the central and station- 
 ary body, and the earth one of the planets re- 
 volving around it, it must, in order to the 
 beautiful alternation of day and night, such as 
 we actually see, turn upon its axis each twenty- 
 four hours. Otherwise the same side of the 
 earth would be always turned toward the sun, 
 and the opposite side be always away from 
 it — an arrangement which would condemn our 
 globe to utter loneliness and desolation, with- 
 out an inhabitant or any green thing — one 
 hemisphere a stark, blazing, frightful desert, 
 and the other a vast and terrible wilderness, 
 bound up in everlasting frosts, and bald, dark, 
 and dreadful forever. To prevent so sad a 
 result, the great Creator, who is blessed for 
 evermore, has given our world its diurnal or 
 daily revolution ; and it is remarkable that 
 whatever other motions among the planetary 
 bodies may be subject to slight perturbations 
 or changes, the uniformity and exactness of 
 the earth's daily rotation upon its axis is abso- 
 lutely perfect. Place anywhere upon the globe 
 
DIURNAL REVOLUTION. 6 1 
 
 an index pointing exactly to a particular star 
 away in the heavens, and if you note the inter- 
 val elapsing between the pointing to-night and 
 to-morrow night to that same star, you may 
 also note that exactly the same interval will 
 elapse between any two successive pointings, 
 while a long century of years shall pass over 
 you. This immense clock, suspended by the 
 Almighty Father in the heavens, contrived, 
 wound up, and regulated by his own hand, 
 varies not a moment from age to age, but, by 
 its own calm and stately revolution, measures 
 off the years and centuries with absolute ex- 
 actitude. What a demonstration is this of the 
 existence and perfection of God ! How other- 
 wise could such an instance of perfection be 
 accounted for.? Here is an effect; and so 
 grave, so astonishing, so beautiful and com- 
 plete, beyond every finite operation. Was 
 there not an operator } and was his power and 
 skill less than infinite f 
 
XI, 
 
 i^^ht. 
 
 |HUS we have day and night. And 
 has any one ever, as yet, appreciated 
 the excellence of this same arrange- 
 ment ? " The evening and the morning were 
 the first day ;" and so it has gone on, with- 
 out a single interruption, through thousands 
 of years. At evening, the part of the earth 
 where we dwell rolls away from the sun and 
 the latter is hidden from sight ; that is, it sets. 
 For a little time, however, it is but just below 
 the western horizon, so that it still illuminates 
 the atmosphere above, causing what we call 
 the twilight. As the earth still rolls further 
 away, and the sun, by consequence, is further 
 beneath the horizon, the twilight grows less 
 
 and less until it entirely ceases, and then we 
 62 
 
NIGHT. 63 
 
 call it night. The sun and his light are now 
 entirely withdrawn, and by the withdrawal of 
 this greater Hght, the stars appear ; and if 
 the sky is clear of clouds, the stars afford 
 some light, so that it is not quite dark through 
 all the night. But if the night is cloudy, and 
 the clouds are heavy, and the moon is absent, 
 the night is very dark, though rarely if ever 
 perfectly so. 
 
 But whether clear or cloudy, how sublimely 
 interesting is the night-time, and the deep, 
 dense, immense shadow that overspreads all 
 the world so far as we can discern ! Darkness, 
 of itself, is deeply and solemnly impressive ; 
 and as, at night, it enshrouds the great land- 
 scape in every direction, it is truly awful to con- 
 template. We fail to recognize this from its 
 perfect familiarity or commonness. We never 
 have known any other arrangement. In our 
 earliest consciousness it was so. Our infant 
 eyes opened and saw the light, and they saw it 
 go away and come again from day to day and 
 from night to night, and we grew up amid the 
 constant and curious alternation, and grew 
 familiar with it, and came to know and love 
 it we know not when or how, and now even 
 
64 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the dark night is welcome to us, and in our 
 long familiarity we have forgotten that it is 
 otherwise than agreeable. Often, indeed, when 
 children, out-of-doors alone in the night-time, 
 its awfulness would impress us painfully, if not 
 frightfully. Even now, as we sometimes, in 
 our wakefulness, rise from our beds at "dead 
 of night," peer out through the lattice and con- 
 template the "shadow of great darkness" that 
 is upon the earth, a feeling of awe comes over 
 us such as we are not generally conscious of. 
 He that would appreciate what the night really 
 is, should endeavor to imagine what would be 
 his sensations if, after having lived always in 
 daylight, he should, for the first time, behold a 
 nigh% such as now comes on us daily, settling 
 over the world ! Then, indeed, would the 
 change be to us such as would be felt. It 
 would be a strange occurrence truly, and as 
 great and marvelous as strange ; and men 
 would think, and talk, and discourse, and print 
 about it long afterward. And tidings of the 
 amazing shadow would be told to children and 
 to children's children, and furnish an impor- 
 tant page in history, and travel down through 
 long generations. 
 
NIGHT. 65 
 
 Some such an unusual night actually comes, 
 at times, to one and another region of the 
 earth. The sun, it is true, is aloft — it may, in 
 fact, be high noon when this night comes on. 
 It is brief, to be sure. The ''hour of dark- 
 ness '' tarries only from one minute to about 
 seven minutes at the longest. People call it 
 solar eclipse, as we know ; but it is a veritable 
 night. It is dark, the sun has set and the 
 stars are out, and the domestic fowls seek 
 their roosting-places, and the birds of the air 
 hush their notes and rest their wings, and the 
 kine go lowing homeward to the steading, 
 wondering that night has come untimely, and 
 people, old and young, forsake their houses, 
 and are all of them abroad in the streets and 
 fields to look on this brief but extraordinary 
 night, and see this huge yet transient shadow 
 come and go. This is al] well, and natural, 
 and proper. At the same time, we may well 
 ask, what is the setting of the sun behind the 
 earth.? this darkness of two or three minutes 
 to the darkness of long hours ? To us the 
 shadow of the moon is strange and greatly 
 noticeable; that of the earth, though vastly 
 greater and larger, and of longer continuance, 
 
 5 
 
66 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 is, however, a daily event, and therefore unap- 
 preciated. 
 
 But sometimes in the dark night we bethink 
 ourselves of what would be if it should con- 
 tinue, and day should delay to return. In 
 such an awful contingency night would begin 
 to assume an aspect inconceivably awful and 
 dreadful. 
 
 " I had a dream, which was not all a dream. 
 The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars 
 Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 
 Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth 
 Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; 
 Morn came and went — and came and brought no day. 
 And men forgot their passions in the dread 
 Of this their desolation ; and all hearts 
 Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light." 
 
 But fear not. The earth that in the west 
 rolled upward last evening, is still rolling 
 calmly, and swiftly, and surely ; and we who, 
 a few hours ago, lost sight of the sun behind 
 us, are hastening around to meet him again in 
 front ; and already arises another twilight in 
 the eastern instead of the western sky, and it 
 is growing brighter and brighter, and there ap- 
 pears the sun again, and the earth, as it rolls 
 on, is already setting beneath the magnificent 
 orb of day. 
 
 £iM>^^ 
 
XII. 
 
 Uaij* 
 
 F the nights on this earth are so in- 
 teresting and subUme, what shall be 
 said of the day? It is early morn; 
 let us rise and dress and issue forth abroad 
 and look and listen. Perhaps it is near the 
 Summer solstice. If so, we were aroused from 
 slumber by the "sweet notes of earliest birds," 
 breathing their little artless songs from a thou- 
 sand tree-tops, and making vocal the surround- 
 ing landscape. The air is balmy, and gentle 
 zephyrs are breathing from the deep pure 
 cisterng of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the 
 dawn is clear and full, and spngeds itself along ^ti^cu^i 
 the eastern heavens, reaching almost from pole 
 to pole. There now comes the sun, at first "a 
 little line of insufferable brightness which, 
 
 67 
 
68 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 before I can write- these few words, has in- 
 creased to half an orb, and now a whole one," 
 and the wide world is illuminated, and, under 
 the genial radiance of the morning sunshine, 
 lies enrobed with beauty. "The manifestations 
 of the power of God," said Daniel Webster, 
 " like his mercies, are * new every morning,' and 
 fresh every evening. We see as fine risings of 
 the sun as ever Adam saw, and its risings are 
 as much a miracle now as they were in his 
 day, and, I think, a good deal more, because it 
 is now a part of the miracle that for thousands 
 and thousands of years he has come to his 
 appointed time without the variation of a mill- 
 ionth part of a second. Adam could not tell 
 how this might be. I know the morning, I am 
 acquainted with it, and love it ; I love it fresh 
 and sweet as it is — a daily new creation break- 
 ing forth, and calling all that have life, and 
 breath, and being to new adoration, new enjoy- 
 ments, and new gratitude." 
 
 Onward and upward' the great warm sun 
 pursues his way, reaching, at length, his south- 
 ern summit, and the day is perfected. How 
 different these underlying lands, and streams, 
 and forests from what they were only last 
 
DAY. 69 
 
 midnight! What a new, bright world has the 
 day so suddenly brought forth ! How strangely 
 has that pall of darkness, so deep and im- 
 mense, been lifted all away, and how blue and 
 pure these skies, in whose vast concave those 
 clouds are gently drifting as when sunlit sails 
 are wafting afar over the Summer sea! On go 
 the pleasant hours, and day is waning. The 
 sun is now hanging in the western firmament, 
 and hastens presently to his "golden rest." 
 What magnificent hours have passed over the 
 world as this mighty sun was circling through 
 the heavens ! It was the luminous, sprightly 
 reign of Day ; and along his brilliant realms 
 Industry was plying her energies — great enter- 
 prises were planning, city streets were swarm- 
 ing with life, and gay with animation and 
 beauty, and country landscapes were joyous 
 with far-reaching ^meadows, golden harvests, 
 waving forests, blushing flowers, silver streams, 
 and all nature's splendid garniture. 
 
 Thus the night and thus the day, and while 
 so extremely opposite and diverse, how pleas- 
 ant as well as necessary their constant al- 
 ternation ! We hinted at how dreadful night 
 would be if, in the midst of it, no morning 
 
70 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 were forthcoming. And constituted as are 
 ourselves and our dwelling-place, how weari- 
 some and ruinous would be incessant day! 
 That great sun always above us, and always 
 beaming down upon us, instead of being a 
 friend, would become a terrible enemy ; and, as 
 suggested in a former letter, would soon trans- 
 form our earthly dwelling-place into a scene 
 of desolation. All the beautiful influences of 
 night upon the animal and vegetable world 
 would be lacking, and its friendly shadow, so 
 helpful to quiet stillness and peaceful and re- 
 freshing sleep, would never come to infold us 
 in its soft arms and bless us. Incessant sun- 
 shine and intense heat would speedily generate 
 mortal sickness, and we should look up in our 
 desolate weariness, and long for night with its 
 cool shadows and the music of its reviving 
 breezes. 
 
XIII. 
 
 The Reasons* 
 
 jHE revolution of the earth upon its 
 axis produces, as we have seen, the 
 alternation of day and night, but does 
 not explain the different Seasoits^ as Spring, 
 Summer, Autumn, and Winter. A simple ar- 
 rangement produces this result, while yet it is 
 difficult of explanation without the aid of an 
 orrery representing the sun and earth in their 
 respective positions relative to each other. 
 
 Suffice it to say that the phenomenon of 
 change of seasons proceeds from two astro- 
 nomical facts combined ; namely, the revolution 
 of the earth around the sun, which makes the 
 year, joined with the fact that the earth, in 
 performing this great round, has its North 
 Pole always directed to the same point in the 
 
 71 
 
^2 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 heavens — this point being very near the North 
 Star. The North Pole being always thus di- 
 rected, the earth's axis, instead of being per- 
 pendicular to its path in space, or upright, 
 leans away from such perpendicular about 23J 
 degrees, so that, at a certain season of the 
 year — the Summer season — the sun shines 
 upon the North Pole and beyond it, while the 
 South Pole is in darkness. In our Winter 
 time, on the other hand, and when the earth is 
 on the opposite side of the sun, the latter 
 shines upon the South Pole, while the North 
 Pole is in darkness. Meantime we dwellers in 
 the temperate zone, occupying an intermedi- 
 ate position between the pole and the equator, 
 experience a gradual transition from Summer 
 to Winter which we call AMtumn, and another 
 from Winter to Summer which we call Spring, 
 and thus we have four annual seasons dis- 
 tinctly marked. 
 
 And this variety of seasons is one of the 
 deeply interesting phenomena belonging to our 
 earth, and is doubtless designed by the Creator 
 to constitute one of its capital attractions and 
 delights. Spring, for example, has a charm 
 which can be felt but never described ; and 
 
THE SEASONS. 73 
 
 few memories of our hearts are so beautiful as 
 those of the Spring-time of our early years. 
 And even in later life, the giving way of stern 
 Winter and the sweet breath of approaching 
 Spring are more than welcome to us. It is 
 not an unnatural suspicion that the present 
 arrangement of the earth began with this- 
 lovely season, and it is quite likely that those 
 first "evenings and mornings'* were vernal 
 ones, fragrant as they were with new-born 
 flowers and young and gorgeous foliage, and 
 the new up-springing of the tender grass over 
 the graceful meadow lands, and amid the 
 whispering groves of paradise. 
 
 This blooming season is the bright emblem 
 of the glad months and years now passing 
 over my youthful readers. You are amid life's 
 happy Spring-time, and its freshness and blos- 
 soming are upon you; while, if good and 
 true, these morning days of yours are the fair 
 promises of still happier years. 
 
 Nor is it less interesting when the Spring 
 season melts away into the glories of Summer, 
 Those suns, how gorgeous are they ; and 
 goodly are the maturing foliage, the waving 
 grain, the ripening harvests, the earth' all 
 
74 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 fruitful beneath, and the skies all blue and 
 brilliant above! And then glance at that 
 dark belt stretching far along the western ho- 
 rizon, and listen to the rumbling of the dis- 
 tant thunder, and note the firmament wild 
 with clouds, and the trees all suddenly surging 
 hither and thither by the rushing blast — fore- 
 runner of the mighty shower now drenching 
 the thirsty landscape. And then, anon, the 
 retiring storm-cloud is seen lying off darkly 
 upon the eastern sky, still fraught with light- 
 nings and vocal with thunders, while upon it 
 hangs the "glorious bow," the magnificent 
 pledge that storms are gone, and that genial 
 sunshine is returning to gild and beautify the 
 rejoicing world. 
 
 And whose heart is not glad at the coming 
 on of the grand Autumnal days ; when Sum- 
 mer heats have passed by, and cooler airs glide 
 over the landscape, and bright September days 
 are here, and blissful October with its ripening 
 fruits and balmy atmosphere, and crimson and 
 golden forests decorating the landscape, as if 
 a vast and magnificent flower-garden were 
 spreading itself far away toward the distant 
 horizon ! 
 
THE SEASONS. 75 
 
 Winter^ it is true, has its snows, and clouds, 
 and storms, and cold, and shortened days, and 
 lengthened nights. Yet this somber season, 
 too, has its comforts and even its charms, 
 its sublime scenery, and its instructive lessons. 
 Artificial heat creates a little Summer within 
 our dwellings — schools open their doors for 
 the young, while the Winter season and its 
 associations are more favorable to study and 
 intellectual progress than other months, and 
 the long evenings invite to useful books, 
 pleasant converse, and innocent recreations ; 
 and then refreshing and healthful sleep pre- 
 pares us to welcome the late-coming sunrise. 
 Even the whitened and ice-bound landscape, 
 with its naked trees and drifting snows, and 
 all its wild and desolate aspect, is irradiated 
 with blissful hope and promise. For as from 
 our comfortable dwellings we gaze abroad over 
 this Wintery desert, delightful visions pass be- U/^^^>^ 
 fore us of all this desolation being lifted off 
 and dissipated, and these same fields and past- 
 ures presently putting on their flowery and 
 fragrant robes once more, while every chilling 
 sight and scene shall pass away, and "all 
 things become new." 
 
XIV. 
 
 (March 20 — September 21.) 
 
 lAVING written of the different sea- 
 sons, let us glance at four important 
 eras of the year which may, in fact, be 
 said to introduce the seasons. These eras are 
 the two Equinoxes^ and the two Solstices, We 
 will first notice the Equinoxes. The term 
 Equinox comes from a combination of the 
 two Latin words equus, equal, and nox^ night ; 
 and hence it means equal nighty and is accom- 
 panied, of course, by equal day. 
 
 Astronomers imagine two great circles in 
 the heavens, and surrounding the earth ; one 
 directly over the earth's equator, which they 
 denominate the Celestial Equator^ and cross- 
 ing this at two opposite points another great 
 1^ 
 
EQUINOXES. jy 
 
 circle termed the Ecliptic, This latter circle is 
 the path which the sun appears to traverse, 
 not in his daily circuit, but in his annual 
 course. Now, these two circles cross each 
 other at an angle of twenty-three and a half 
 degrees ; and the sun, in his yearly round, 
 will reach, of course, one of these crossings 
 or junctions; and six months, or half a year, 
 afterward he will come to the other. Thus he 
 crosses the equator twice a year at nearly 
 equal intervals — the times of crossing being 
 the 20th of March and about the 21st of 
 September. 
 
 At these two periods, the sun, being directly 
 over the earth's equator, shines over the entire 
 globe from pole to pole, so that on the precise 
 equinoctial day of twenty-four hours, every 
 square mile of the earth, as it rolls over from 
 west to east, is illuminated by the sun's rays. 
 So, also, in this particular twenty-four hours, 
 the day and night are equal over all that por- 
 tion of the earth where the sun, on that day,, 
 rises and sets ; that is, every-where except at 
 and near the North and South Poles. At 
 these two localities, on the equinoctial day, the 
 sun neither rises nor sets, but would be seen 
 
78 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 directly in the horizon, one-half of it visible 
 above the line, while the other half would be 
 below the line, and invisible. In this position, 
 during the equinoctial twenty-four hours, it 
 would be seen circling around the entire hori- 
 zon, neither rising nor sinking. A few, say 
 ten, degrees south from the North Pole, the 
 equinoctial sun, to a man who might be stand- 
 ing on our meridian, would be seen rising at 
 the moment of its rising with us; that is, at 
 six o'clock, and precisely in the east. But, 
 instead of mounting promptly up the sky, he 
 would, through all the morning hours, still 
 be creeping near the horizon southward, and 
 ascending but slightly, like as the careful boy 
 in his first attempts at swimming, hugs the 
 shore, fearful to strike out with his more 
 skilled and bold companions into the deep, 
 broad stream. Thus, at high noon, and after 
 six hours upon his course, he would be seen 
 lying in the far south, still only ten degrees — 
 within a hand's-breadth — above the horizon, 
 whence, for the next succeeding six hours, he 
 would go circling down the western horizon, 
 still gradually sinking, till, coming to the exact 
 west, he will disappear. But it will be but a 
 
EQUINOXES. 79 
 
 bare disappearance. All night long — a night 
 of just twelve hours — he will be hugging the 
 horizon, though beneath it, and the man up 
 there at eighty degrees, if he please to watch, 
 may track the sun throughout the night by 
 the twilight halo which he will bear with him 
 to and from the far north, as he goes circling 
 the pole. Another man, standing, that morn- 
 ing, upon the equator, will also behold the sun 
 come up in the precise east. But instead of 
 coursing away toward the south, he will make 
 a sheer ascent upward, at right angles with the 
 horizon, and, at the hour of noon, will be ex- 
 actly in the zenith, and his rays will shoot 
 vertically down to the earth, and this equi- 
 noctial man,, as he walks hither and thither, 
 will bear with him no shadow, and on every 
 spare foot of land or water around him Sol's 
 burning rays will fall with their maximum of 
 intensity and strength. 
 
XV. 
 
 Summer ^oIsUj:!^* 
 
 (June 22.) 
 
 IHE word Solstice comes from two 
 Latin words, Sol^ sun, and sto, to 
 stand ; and means that the sun 
 stands; that is, makes no further progress 
 north or south. There are two of these 
 points, one north, the utmost limit of the 
 sun*s course north ; and the other south, 
 the utmost Hmit of his course south. These 
 two points are called solstitial points ; and 
 the "sun reaches the northern one to-day, 
 June 22d ; and hence, this, theoretically, is 
 the longest day of the year. "Theoretically," 
 we say ; because there is just now, as the al- 
 manacs show us, little or no difference of the 
 
 day's length, for several successive days. If, 
 80 
 
SUMMER SOLSTICE. 8 1 
 
 for example, the sun reaches the solstitial 
 point this day, there will, however, be but the 
 slightest difference between the length of to- 
 day and that of yesterday, and also that of 
 to-morrow. This may be illustrated to some 
 bright boy by supposing his hoop, which some- 
 times bounces against us on the sidewalk, to 
 be notched into 360 equal parts ; and as the 
 hoop should rest upon the ground, and its top 
 be made to lean toward him, a fly should be 
 seen passing, with a uniform motion, over the 
 circumference. As the fly should come up to 
 the top of the hoop, and pass over a few 
 spaces nearest to the observing boy, he would 
 discern no difference in the fly's horizontal 
 progress from right to left. Such is the pict- 
 ure of these passing days. But, still watching 
 our fly after he passes over thirty or forty 
 spaces, and as he is now descending the hoop, 
 although traveling just as fast as before, yet 
 his horizontal progress is decidedly less as he 
 advances from notch to notch. Thus he is 
 picturing to us the philosophy of the shortened 
 days, which shortening will be so perceptible 
 a few weeks hence. The sun will then be no 
 
 longer solstitial, or apparently stationary, but 
 
 6 
 
82 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 will be seen to travel a less distance from ris- 
 ing to setting. 
 
 The solstitial, or longest day is, with us, not 
 far from fifteen hours long; and the farther 
 north we go toward the Arctic Circle, the 
 longer the day. Up at Stockholm and St. 
 Petersburg, eighteen or nineteen degrees far- 
 ther north than Chicago and Boston, the sun, 
 to-day, will be eighteen and a half hours above 
 the horizon. Consequently, this night in those 
 cities will be but five and a half hours in 
 length — the sun setting there about a quarter 
 past nine o'clock, and rising a quarter before 
 three. Also, by reason of the great obliquity 
 of the sun's path, he will dip, at setting, but 
 slightly beneath the horizon. So that the 
 twilight will be visible during most of the 
 brief night. 
 
 A few degrees north of Stockholm, near the 
 head of the Gulf of Bothnia, is a hill from whose 
 summit the sun, to-night, will not disappear 
 at all, but will be seen se tting gradually from 
 the western skies apparently nearer and nearer 
 the horizon as it approaches the due northern 
 point, when it will seem just to touch the 
 earth, and then, as it passes the rocky point, 
 
SUMMER SOLSTICE. 83 
 
 it will begin to ascend again eastward on its 
 long circuit of twenty-four hours. To the 
 spectator upon that hill, Phoebus will seem to 
 take no rest to-night. And many a spectator 
 will be there to witness that great sight ; for it 
 is one that fails not to attract annual steam- 
 boat excursions up the Bothnia from Stock- 
 holm and other places. By proceeding a few 
 miles further north, the excursionists might 
 view the same spectacle without ascending 
 any hill ; while should they journey to Ekon- 
 tikos, about 200 miles above the head of the 
 Gulf, they might enjoy a sunshine of three en- 
 tire weeks, uninterrupted of sunsets — the sun, 
 each twenty-fours, careering all around them — 
 always in sight, and always rejoicing like a 
 strong man to run a race. They would see 
 him passing eastward and upward from our 
 midnight to morning, southward and still up- 
 ward till noon, westward and downward in the 
 afternoon hours, and northward and still down- 
 ward to the " place of beginning," a little dis- 
 tance above the northern horizon. 
 
 Meanwhile, far away southward, along Pata- 
 gonian pampas and forests, there reigns, on 
 this our solstitial day, stern and relentless 
 
84 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Winter. And peering out from their gloomy 
 huts, the dwellers there behold, lying off in 
 the northern skies, the Winter sun traversing 
 speedily his low, brief race, then disappearing 
 through the long and dreary night. 
 
 But let these be of good cheer ! To-day the 
 sun starts away on his southern tour; and, at 
 next Christmas-time, the tables will be turned, 
 and the long nights, and Winter winds, and 
 clouds, and storms, will be ours while the 
 sunny and late-lingering day, and joyous birds, 
 and brilliant flowers, and ripening harvests, 
 will come to cheer the denizens of the South. 
 
 " Great and marvelous are thy works ! 
 In wisdom hast thou made them all." 
 
XVI. 
 
 Wmtet Solstii:!^. 
 
 (December 22.) 
 
 ^OU will perceive that I have again 
 dated my sketch. In the preceding 
 one, I noticed the situation of the 
 earth and sun in relation to each other, as 
 their situation was just six months ago. Let 
 us see how matters are now. The earth has 
 gone half around its great orbit, and we are on 
 the side of the sun precisely opposite to that 
 where we were one^half a year since, and 190,- 
 000,000 of miles distant. And as the North 
 Pole was then turned toward the sun^ and as its 
 direction never changes except very slightly, 
 so now the same North Pole is turned away 
 from the sun and the South Pole is toward it. 
 Now notice the sunshine as it rests upon the 
 
 85 
 
86 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 earth. First, it shines fully upon the South 
 Pole, and beyond it, all the time, and the roll- 
 ing of the earth upon its axis does not hide the 
 sun from this part of the earth through all the 
 twenty-four hours. The sun continues to shine 
 there just the same as if the earth were held 
 perfectly still in that same position in respect 
 to the sun. On, and a little space around the 
 South Pole, the sun has been shining now for 
 three months, ever since the 2ist of Septem- 
 ber; and he will continue to shine there for 
 three months more, or until the 20th of March. 
 To-day, and for several days about this time, 
 the sun shines all the twenty-four hours as far 
 as to a line 23 J degrees from the South Pole. 
 This line you will notice as a dotted line on 
 the map of the world, and it is called the Ant- 
 arctic Circle. Then passing your finger up 
 the map toward the north, you will notice a 
 similar dotted line 23J degrees from the North 
 Pole. 
 
 Now for the appearance of things on the 
 earth on this 22d day of December. Begin- 
 ning at the South Pole it is, as we have said, 
 all sunshine, and has been for three months, 
 and wiH be three nionths more. To-day, 
 
WINTER SOLSTICE. 87 
 
 the sun at the South Pole is at its highest 
 point — that is, it is 23I degrees above the ho- 
 rizon, and will for the next twenty-four hours 
 continue there, jieither rising nor perceptibly 
 sinking. Instead of this apparent motion, it 
 will seem to go entirely around the world 
 parallel to the horizon, and if a man should 
 stand still upon the South Pole for twenty-four 
 hours, beginning this morning, he would ob- 
 serve the sun first directly before him, 2^^ de- 
 grees up ; six hours afterward, over his right 
 shoulder at the same height ; at six hours more, 
 at the same height directly behind him ; at the 
 end of the next six hours, it would be at the 
 same height over his left shoulder, and at the 
 end of the twenty-four hours, it would, with- 
 out any apparent sinking or rising, have come 
 round in front of him again. Thus, for the 
 three coming months, from this 22d day of De- 
 cember till March 22d, the sun, at the South 
 Pole, will appear to be passing round and round, 
 very gradually nearing the earth, until, at about 
 the ninetieth round, it will have dipped half be- 
 neath the horizon, and in that situation, though 
 slowly sinking, it will encircle the whole earth. 
 Then, after another circling or two of twenty- 
 
88 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 four hours, it will entirely disappear, and will 
 be seen no more from March till September 
 2 1 St. Come now from the South Pole 23 J de- 
 grees to the antarctic circle. How is the sun- 
 shine here on this 22d of December.^ At 
 noon the sun is, of course, in the north, and 
 47 degrees above the horizon ; at 6, P. M., it 
 is in the west 23 J degrees above the earth ; 
 at midnight, it lies exactly at the south and in 
 the horizon, half of it being visible ; at 6, A. 
 M., it is in the east, nearly 23 J degrees up, hav- 
 ing ascended thither since midnight, and with- 
 out setting ; at noon it is in the north again, 
 at the place of beginning. 
 
 If, now, we please to transport ourselves 
 away to the arctic circle, the condition of 
 things will be exactly reversed, that is, the sun 
 at noon will be half of it visible in the south- 
 ern horizon — visible a few moments, and all the 
 rest of the twenty-four hours will be night. At 
 the North Pole, the sun will have been three 
 months out of sight, and all this day will be 
 23^ degrees below the horizon ; and though it 
 will begin to ascend from to-day, yet it will not 
 make its appearance until the 22d of next 
 March. 
 
XVII. 
 
 omjes^ 
 
 E have thus attempted to picture the 
 scenery within the polar circles north 
 and south, as the earth pursues its 
 annual circuit around the sun. These dismal 
 portions of the globe are denominated the 
 Frigid Zones^ and they are rightly named. 
 They are realms of eternal frosts and snows, 
 while, at the two poles, and for a consider- 
 able space around them, they have only one 
 day and night in the year, each being six 
 months in duration. 
 
 Thus you have noticed the two polar circles 
 called, upon the maps — the northern, the 
 Arctic, and the southern, the A^itarctic circles. 
 Now, with your eye upon the arctic circle, 
 move it down the map of the world to within 
 
90 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 23J degrees of the equator, and you will notice 
 another dotted circle, and at the same distance 
 below the equator another similar one. These 
 two circles, as you know, are called Tropics ; 
 the northern one, the tropic of Cancer^ and the 
 southern, the tropic of Caprico7it, Glancing 
 at the space on the map between these two 
 tropical circles, and you have what is called 
 the Torrid Zone^ also rightly named, as it is 
 the warmest region of the globe. Then glanc- 
 ing at the two spaces, one between the tropic 
 of Cancer and the north polar circle, and the 
 space between the tropic of Capricorn and the 
 south polar circle, you see the two Temperate 
 Zones — the former called the north temperate, 
 and the latter, the south temperate. These, 
 likewise, are properly named, from the fact 
 that their average temperature is a medium 
 between the cold of the frigid zones and the 
 heat of the torrid zone. 
 
 Thus the earth is divided into five belts, 
 zones, or divisions ; and these are natural di- 
 visions rather than artificial. The torrid belt 
 or zone, for example, comprises all that portion 
 of the earth's surface, over which the sun is 
 perpendicular, or in the zenith, twice a year, 
 
ZONES. 91 
 
 and outside of which, whether north or south, 
 it is never in the zenith. The two temperate 
 zones comprise all that portion of the earth's 
 surface upon which, while the sun shines ob- 
 liquely, yet has the alternation of day and 
 night, both comprising twenty-four hours. 
 The frigid zones are those regions where a 
 day or a night may be each from twenty-four 
 hours to six months in length. 
 
 These last, as we have seen, are cold and 
 dismal regions of the earth, having few human 
 inhabitants, and those ranking low in the scale 
 of intellectual or moral worth. On the other 
 hand, the torrid zone, lying almost directly be- 
 neath the sun, and every point of it being 
 exactly beneath it every six monthS;^. is the 
 warmest region of the earth. Here no Winter 
 ever comes, while there is little that resembles 
 Spring and Autumn ; but an everlasting Sum- 
 mer lords it over these immense regions of the 
 globe. Here, of course, vegetation attains the 
 greatest growth and perfection, and here is the 
 home of the largest and mightiest of wild 
 beasts, birds, and reptiles. Man, too, is here ; 
 but the enervating influence of the hot climate, 
 joined with the little necessity of labor for 
 
92 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 subsistence, renders him indolent and com- 
 paratively weak, effeminate, and inefficient. 
 
 Glancing at the two temperate zones, the 
 south temperate is at once seen to embrace 
 but a very small portion of landed surface. 
 The southern points of South America and 
 Africa, and the southern half of Australia, 
 together with a few smaller islands, are all. 
 The north temperate zone, on the contrary, 
 embraces nearly all of North America, Europe, 
 and Asia, and Northern Africa. This zone, 
 therefore, is the important and main portion 
 of this world of ours. Were this, with its 
 people, to be annihilated or overwhelmed with 
 water, Uttle would be left that would be worth 
 an existence. Here are the genius, learning, 
 enterprise, industry, talent, wealth, happiness, 
 and hope of the world, and ever have been, 
 and will be. 
 
 And here it is that a great and beneficent 
 Providence has placed my y£)ung readers and 
 me. It was utterly beyond our control that 
 we were born and reared somewhere along the 
 most favorable belt of the earth's surface. At 
 the same time of our birth, thousands of other 
 children entered on existence, some in the 
 
 I 
 
ZONES. 93 
 
 depths of Africa and other torrid lands, and 
 others in the far north among the wild Kam- 
 schatdales and Esquimaux, and they grew up 
 amid moral darkness — will live low, and use- 
 less, and hopeless lives, and die "without the 
 sight" of Jesus and his cross. Is it better, 
 infinitely better with us ? Who, then, ordered 
 our earthly habitation ? Whose glorious hand 
 was it that placed us in the midst of the best 
 of all lands, as He said to us, "This is thy 
 dwelling place — thine arena of large benefi- 
 cence — thy stepping-stone to life eternal !" 
 
XVIII. 
 
 igontin^nts^ 
 
 E have thus far noticed the shape, 
 superficies, weight, motions, and dif- 
 ferent seasons of the earth — let us 
 now look at the great world in some of its 
 more familiar aspects. 
 
 Its first obvious aspect is its division into 
 land and water. We hinted, in a former letter, 
 that, at the creation, as described by Moses, 
 the whole globe seems to have been covered 
 by water. He pictures to us the creative 
 work of the third day as thus : " And God 
 said. Let the waters under the heavens be 
 gathered together into one place, and let the 
 dry land appear, and it was so. And God 
 called the dry land Earth, and the gathering 
 together of the waters called he Seas!' And 
 94 
 
CONTINENTS. 95 
 
 these are the two great natural divisions of 
 the globe. 
 
 Let us contemplate the land division. And 
 here, one of the first things that attract our 
 attention is the small proportion of land com- 
 pared to the water. As, at the creation, the 
 waters subsided and left the land exposed, 
 their subsidence ceased when only about a 
 fourth of earth's solid surface was uncovered. 
 To a vision that was capable of contemplating 
 the divine operations, on that third day of 
 the creation, it must have been a sublime 
 scene indeed. The retiring or settling of the 
 waters was probably quiet and gradual. The 
 mountain-tops became first visible, and as 
 the waters settled toward their bases, they 
 loomed up as islands huge and bald. Then 
 the wide-spreading continents slowly came 
 into view, and the numberless islands, great 
 and small, until the vast waters stayed forever. 
 Then the earth was land and water much as 
 it is now, but the land was merely such. 
 Throughout its whole great extent, it was an 
 absolute desert. Not a tree or shrub, nor a 
 blade of grass was there. No green thing 
 as yet appeared, but it was one bare, bald, 
 
96 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 desolate scene over continent and sea, and 
 from pole to pole. The canvas was indeed 
 stretched forth, but nothing more ; it was 
 placed in readiness and waiting for the picture, 
 and then said the great Artist, " Let the earth 
 bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and 
 the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, 
 whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it 
 was so. And God saw that it was good." 
 
 We have noticed how the land was curiously 
 proportioned to the water, and we may add 
 that its distribution was equally curious. It 
 would have seemed likely to us that the dis- 
 tribution of the land would be somewhat equal 
 on the several sides of the immense ball. But 
 this is far from being the fact. For if you 
 should divide the globe into two equal parts 
 by a line passing through the North and South 
 Poles and crossing the island of Iceland near 
 the southern coast of Greenland, you would 
 have on one side of the line all Africa, Europe, 
 and almost all Asia, and the whole great island 
 of Australia, and the neighboring large islands, 
 while on the other side of the line will be only 
 the continent of North and South America, 
 Greenland, and a little corner of Asia. Thus 
 
 I 
 
CONTINENTS. 97 
 
 the number of square miles of land in the 
 American or Western hemisphere of the globe 
 is only about 15,000,000, while the square 
 miles, in the opposite or Eastern hemisphere 
 is not far from 50,000,000 — more than three 
 times the extent of the land of the Western 
 hemisphere. Why this great disproportion 
 between these two halves of the earth, is 
 one of the questions which philosophy fails to 
 answer. 
 
 There is something curious, also, in the gen- 
 eral contour or shape of the several great land 
 divisions of the globe. If you place before you 
 a map of the world on Mercator's projection, 
 you will observe that all these divisions are 
 wide on the northern sides, and that they have 
 a tapering tendency southward until the most 
 of them terminate in the ocean. Thus Green- 
 land and North and South America in the 
 Western hemisphere, and Africa and the sev- 
 eral countries of South Asia, as Arabia, Hin- 
 dostan, and Siam. For the explanation of 
 this peculiarity, so far as any has been prof- 
 fered us, we must refer you to writers on the 
 geological phenomena of the globe. 
 
 It will be observed, further, that the great 
 7 
 
98 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. I 
 
 land divisions of the world are thickly and 
 often deeply indented with water in the shape 
 of seas, gulfs, bays, inlets, etc. This might 
 have been so, to a greater or less extent, when, 
 on the third day of the creation, the waters 
 subsided from a portion of the solid parts of 
 the globe, while it is an undoubted fact, how- 
 ever, that many of these indentations have 
 been greatly extended by the constant action 
 and force of the water operating through a 
 long course of ages. Nor is it at all unlikely 
 that by this same process of the ocean waters 
 very decided changes have been wrought in 
 the character of some or all of the great con- 
 tinents. Probably, for example, the narrow 
 isthmus joining North and South America, 
 now averaging only about forty miles of width, 
 was once very much broader, so much so that 
 the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea had 
 no existence, and Cuba and the other West J 
 India Islands, instead of being islands as now, 
 were a part of the solid continent. So the 
 Asiatic continent once very probably included 
 Australia and the whole archipelago between 
 it and the present southern coast of Asia. 
 And Africa, it is likely, was once joined to 
 
CONTINENTS. gg 
 
 Europe, as it is now joined to Asia, while the 
 present Strait of Gibraltar was an isthmus, and 
 the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Black seas 
 were inland lakes. 
 
 And here, too, my young friends must not 
 be unmindful of the excellent working of our 
 Heavenly Father's hand. These numerous 
 indentations, by the ocean, of the great conti- 
 nental coasts, furnish abundant harbors for 
 shipping, and for the important operations of 
 commerce ; and these operations and facilities 
 would be greatly curtailed but for the arrange- 
 ment we are contemplating. Take a common 
 map of the United States, for example, and 
 compare the thickly indented coasts of Maine 
 with the smooth, bald coasts of South Caro- 
 lina and Florida, and consider how much 
 nearer perfection for commercial purposes is 
 the former coast than are the two latter. Com- 
 pare, also, the entire Hne of coast, from New 
 Brunswick to the Chesapeake, with the oppo- 
 site Pacific coast in the same latitude. 
 
XIX. 
 
 B ce^ns. 
 
 ROM the general view of the land 
 surface of the globe, let us turn to 
 notice briefly the ocean of waters. 
 The ocean surface, as we have seen, monop- 
 olizes nearly three-fourths of the whole, and 
 forms, in fact, but one body, being partially 
 separated into different parts, to which, for 
 convenience, we attach different names, as 
 Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Northern, and South- 
 ern oceans. This boundless expanse of water 
 extends east and west entirely around the 
 globe, and also from pole 'to pole ; and the 
 Eastern and Western continents are, both of 
 them, huge islands reposing amid this vast 
 waste of waters. Our globe, as to its surface, 
 is a world of waters, while the landed surface 
 
 100 
 
OCEANS. 10 1 
 
 is quite a subordinate quantity. The waters 
 are the globe, the land being spots scattered 
 here and there upon the face of the intermi- 
 nable sea. There are positions away from the 
 earth where an eye that could take in the 
 whole hemisphere nearest to it would, out of 
 twenty equal parts of the surface, see one 
 part land and the other nineteen parts water. 
 Afar off in the opposite direction, and where 
 the other hemisphere would be wholly in view, 
 the entire of the great continents would be 
 seen except the southern parts of South 
 America, while, except this portion and the 
 southernmost points of Asia, the whole conti- 
 nental world would appear broadly surrounded 
 by water including a great mediterranean ocean 
 (the Atlantic) nearly as spacious as the whole 
 continental surface. 
 
 Here, again, the why comes in, and again 
 we are unable to answer. We know enough 
 to be assured that the ocean is good and use- 
 ful, but why it is best that it should be so ex- 
 tensive, so predominant, on this planet, I am 
 not clear, nor, perhaps, is any one else ; and in 
 the presence of such an inquiry, as of a multi- 
 tude of others, we can only take shelter under 
 
102 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the one and all-sufficient axiom that *^ He doeth 
 all things well," and arranges nothing vainly, 
 whether in the correct adjustment of land and 
 water, or any other conceivable or inconceiv- 
 able thing. 
 
 Some facts touching this great ocean world 
 are interesting. In the first place, it is, and 
 probably every-where, affected by currents, 
 running in different directions. Sometimes a 
 current upon the surface fiows in one direction, 
 while beneath this same current fiows another 
 in a direction precisely opposite. These cur- 
 rents exert an infiuence to preserve the quality 
 of the sea water all uniform over the globe, 
 and they serve, also, to modify the climates of 
 different countries, rendering some of these 
 warmer and others colder than they would 
 otherwise be. In the second place, the ocean 
 is salt. Whence this saltness is not clearly un- 
 derstood. It may be derived from geological 
 formations with which the waters come in con- 
 tact, or it may not. But whatever its source, 
 there is reason for believing that the saltness of 
 the ocean has a salutary infiuence upon the cli- 
 mates of the world, and this may be one of ^the 
 reasons why this saline quality is made one of 
 
THE OCEAN. 
 
OCEANS. 103 
 
 the characteristics of the ocean, as well as for 
 the ocean's predominating extent upon the 
 globe. 
 
 In the third place, the ocean is the sole 
 fountain of all other water upon the earth, as 
 rivers, lakes, springs, and reservoirs, and all the 
 moisture of the earth, without which it would 
 be utterly barren in respect to every green 
 thing, and be spread forth an entire and 
 uninhabitable waste. From the ocean's far- 
 extended surface is drawn up by the daily sun 
 abundant watery vapors, which are borne by 
 the winds over the continents in the shape of 
 clouds. From these come the frequent rains 
 that water the earth, and a portion of which, 
 sinking through the soil, becomes the supply 
 of springs and fountains, while another portion 
 of the fallen waters flows off over the surface, 
 forming rills, and brooks, and rivulets, and 
 rivers, that empty their waters again into the 
 ocean, whence they originally came. Nor is it 
 for us to say that the ocean, immense as it is, 
 is any too capacious for the great purposes of 
 evaporation and its salutary influences upon 
 earth and atmosphere. 
 
 Then, fourthl}^, the ocean serves as the great 
 
I04 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 highway of nations, and is the grand medium 
 of commerce between countries far separated 
 from each other. Thus what might seem, and 
 once did seem, an impassable barrier between 
 these countries, becomes, in fact, a most facile 
 pathway of communication and commerce, and 
 far superior to such communication by roads 
 upon solid land. A common steamship, for 
 example, will carry from New York to Liver- 
 pool or Havre a thousand tons of merchandise 
 in twelve days. The same amount trans- 
 ported the same distance by land, would re- 
 quire five hundred wagons, and so many men, 
 and two thousand horses, while the time re- 
 quired for such a journey would be, at least, 
 one hundred days. 
 
 The average depth of this great ocean of 
 waters is judged to be not far from two miles. 
 What is its greatest depth is not known, and 
 probably never will be. Beyond a certain 
 depth, it is exceedingly difficult, and perhaps 
 impossible, to effect soundings. Various con- 
 trivances have been invented for making deep- 
 sea soundings, and great depths have been 
 reached and ascertained. A region of the 
 Atlantic lying south-east of Newfoundland, 
 
OCEANS. 105 
 
 and extending from 41° to 33° of North Lat- 
 itude, has been sounded to the awful depth of 
 nearly eight miles, and no bottom reached. 
 Still further south, bottom was found at the 
 depth of eight and three-quarter miles. Two 
 of the main difficulties in sounding these great 
 sea depths are the under currents swaying the 
 weight and line away from a perpendicular 
 direction, and the great amount of friction 
 upon a long line drawn through the water. 
 This friction is greater at vast deptL than near S 
 the surface, as the water grows more dense 
 downward, and the line in drawing up the 
 weight is prone to break by reason of the great 
 strain upon it. 
 
 On the supposition that the average depth 
 of the ocean is two miles, the whole mass of 
 ocean water upon the globe is 240,000,000 of 
 solid miles. A world of water indeed ! yet 
 were the globe hollow instead of being solid, 
 it would be a vessel adequate to contain all 
 this amount of water and about a thousand 
 times as much more. 
 
XX. 
 
 Mountain $tjstems* 
 
 LTHOUGH, for the sake of distinc- 
 tion, we speak of several systems of 
 mountains on the globe, there are, 
 in reality, but two great systems, one upon 
 the eastern, and the other upon the western 
 continent ; and to these two systems nearly 
 all the minor systems properly belong. The 
 grand system of the Old World extends east- 
 erly sheer across Europe and Asia, a distance 
 of 9,000 miles. The great system of the New 
 World runs from Cape Horn nearly parallel 
 with the western coast, northerly through the 
 two continents, 10,000 miles. The African 
 and Australian mountains, however, may be 
 said to be independent of these two great sys- 
 tems of the mountains of the world. 
 106 
 
MOUNTAIN SYSTEMS. lO/ 
 
 Of the European mountains, the Alps are 
 the highest and most celebrated. They ex- 
 tend about 500 miles east and west, and oc- 
 cupy a breadth of from 80 to 200 miles ; and it 
 is a curious fact that their breadth is narrow- 
 est where the mountains are the highest. 
 Mont Blanc is the loftiest summit, reaching 
 a height slightly short of 16,000 feet, or a lit- 
 tle more than three miles. Mont Rosa is 
 nearly as high, 15,223 feet. Besides these, the 
 Alps has, at least, one hundred peaks that are 
 more than 10,000 feet in height, all of which 
 are covered with everlasting snows. Most of 
 these peaks are accessible, though the ascent 
 of some of them is very difficult and danger- 
 ous. There are many passes over these im- 
 mense mountains, the loftiest of which is the 
 Adler Pass, whose height is 12,461 feet. The 
 Pyrenees, between France and Spain, attain a 
 height, in Mt. Maladetta, of over 11,000 feet 
 for its highest peak, while the width of the 
 chain is about the same as that of the Alps. 
 The highest peak of the Carpathian Mountains 
 is about 10,000 feet, and that of the Appen- 
 ines, Mt, Como, nearly as high. The loftiest 
 Scandinavian peak is about 8,000 feet, and the 
 
I08 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 highest summit in the British Isles is Ben 
 Nevis, in Scotland, about 4,000 feet. Passing 
 to the boundary between Europe and Asia, we 
 meet the Caucasus Mountains, the loftiest of 
 which reaches the great height of 17,800 feet, 
 with many other peaks of over 10,000 feet. 
 
 Advancing eastward, we presently come to 
 the tremendous Himalayan range, embracing 
 elevations far exceeding any others on the 
 globe. Here are multitude of summits much 
 higher than Mont Blanc in Europe, while the 
 loftiest elevation, Mt. Everest, attains the enor- 
 mous height of 29,000 feet, about 5 J miles, and 
 is the highest mountain on earth, although 
 several other peaks nearly equal this in height. 
 Farther north is the Altai range of mountains, 
 of which the highest summit is about 10,000 
 feet. 
 
 Of the African mountains, the Atlas range 
 has, for its loftiest peak, a height of 11^400 
 feet. Several other ranges on the continent 
 comprise mountains of much greater height, 
 the loftiest not less than 20,000. 
 
 Returning to our own continent, the mount- 
 ain systems are equally interesting with those 
 of the Old World. In North America we have 
 
MOUNTAIN SYSTEMS. IO9 
 
 the AUeghanies running parallel with the At- 
 lantic coast, and extending, with some inter- 
 ruptions, from Alabama to Vermont. Their 
 height is moderate, unless we include the 
 White Mountains of New Hampshire, whose 
 highest summit is one and a quarter miles. 
 Far away westward, a thousand miles from 
 the AUeghanies, arises the Rocky Moimtains, 
 stretching away 1,800 miles to the Arctic 
 Ocean, with here and there a summit equaling 
 the height of Mont Blanc. Proceeding 500 
 miles farther west and nearing the Pacific 
 coast, we come to the great chain of the Sierra 
 Nevada, taking, as they cross Oregon and 
 Washington, the name of Cascade Mountains, 
 and terminating with Mt. St. Elias in Alaska, 
 a mountain about 18,000 feet high. In Cen- 
 tral America are the Sierra Madre range, and 
 many single peaks. 
 
 Then passing the Isthmus of Darien we 
 encounter the prodigious chain of the Andes, 
 extending along the whole western coast of 
 South America, and, except the Himalayas, 
 embracing the loftiest summits of the world. 
 Here rise the sublime heights of St. Martha, 
 Tolima, Antisane, Cayambe, and Cotopaxi, 
 
no THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 each of them 19,000 feet in the air. Here, 
 too, is Chimborazo, of nearly 22,000 feet, Acon- 
 caqua, 24,000 feet, while, among the Peruvian 
 Andes, are elevations exceeding 25,000 feet 
 above the neighboring Pacific. 
 
 It is proper to add that nearly all lofty 
 mountains are embraced in some one of the 
 great ranges. There are, however, a few such 
 mountains that rise solitary and alone. Of 
 these is Mt. Egmont of New Zealand, a grand 
 example of the almost perfect cone, capped 
 with everlasting snow, and visible far out at 
 sea. Mt. Ararat, of Armenia, the summ^it on 
 which rested Noah's ark, is a partial example, 
 rising 17,210 feet above the level of the sea. 
 The Peak of Teneriffe also stands alone in 
 solitary grandeur, looking from above the 
 clouds, down on the solitary ocean. 
 
XXI. 
 
 iJimensions ^f Mountains* 
 
 AVING taken the preceding general 
 view of the great mountain systems 
 of the world, let us indulge a some- 
 what closer and familiar glance at these deeply 
 interesting objects, the mountains ; for none 
 of us should be* satisfied with general and su- 
 perficial notions of matters so magnificent and 
 grand. 
 
 It is natural to look, first, at the immensity 
 of these wonderful protuberances of the earth's 
 surface. Nearly all the great mountains of 
 the earth are connected with other mountains, 
 so that it is more difficult to estimate properly 
 their real dimensions. Also, it is generally 
 difficult to estimate, by the eye, the height of 
 
 lofty mountains. Standing near such mount- 
 
 111 
 
112 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 ains, we fail to take in only a part of their alti- 
 tude. The summit is invisible, being hidden 
 from sight by the intervening convexities of 
 the mountain surface. The Himalayas must 
 be ascended several thousand feet before their 
 tops can be descried, and he who would see 
 those sublime peaks rising from the level sur- 
 face five or six miles into the air, must need 
 take a position scores of miles away from 
 where the awful ascent commences, while the 
 view from such a distance will necessarily di- 
 minish, to the eye, the actual elevation of the 
 mountains. Yet, think of immense swells, or 
 land billows, a hundred miles wide at their 
 base and towering from one to five miles above 
 the earth's ordinary level, and extending thou- 
 sands of miles along the surface of the globe. 
 And yet, what is the largest and loftiest of 
 these huge mountains to that incredibly large 
 globe on which they rest ? It would take 666 
 mountains like the highest mountain in the 
 world, piled one upon another, to reach from 
 the center to the surface of this earth. And 
 to the eye that could take in the whole lofty 
 reach, what would be one other such mountain 
 piled upon the 666th one.'^ It would be seen, 
 
DIMENSIONS OF MOUNTAINS. 113 
 
 indeed, but seen as a very diminutive affair 
 with the 666 beneath it. It must be the head 
 of a very small pin lying on the surface of 
 a large artificial globe, that would faithfully 
 show the proportion to the globe. Level down 
 the great Pyrenees, says one, and spread 
 them over France, and you will. elevate the 
 surface of that country but nine feet. Tear 
 down the immense Alps, Mont Blane and all, 
 and spread them over Europe; and you have 
 elevated that great continent only nineteen 
 feet. 
 
 But why these mountains ? what is their 
 use.^ Much that we see, and probably much 
 that we do not discern. Piercing far aloft 
 into the humid atmosphere, they thence at- 
 tract to themselves watery treasures, some of 
 which flowing down their sides, and others 
 collecting within their spacious mountain cav- 
 erns, become sources of innumerable rivers 
 flowing out to fertilize the surrounding coun- 
 try. Also, within the bowels of the mountains 
 are gathered immense treasures of the mineral 
 world ; as coal, iron, copper, silver, gold, and 
 other precious things, so necessary to multitu- 
 dinous useful and ornamental purposes. And 
 
114 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 further, it hath pleased our Heavenly Father 
 to enstamp upon this dwelling-place of ours 
 various striking and ornamental features, 
 whereof the mountains are a conspicuous in- 
 stance. How graceful the green hills ! Also, 
 how beautiful as well as grand the landscape 
 ascending far upward, displaying, at first, its 
 verdant openings ; then, farther aloft, dense 
 with far-reaching forests ; then showing, at still 
 loftier heights, a wilderness of gorges, rocks, 
 and precipices, far above which commences the 
 realm of eternal snows, culminating in that 
 glistening peak piercing into the skies ! And 
 how rich, how gorgeous, the spectacle of the 
 mellow clouds rolling up that mountain-side 
 '' before the rising glories of a Summer*s morn- 
 ing !" How grand the mountain when the 
 same cloud envelops it with those golden 
 folds ! And how eagerly we gaze as they lift 
 off, anon, and leave the great mountain naked 
 and alone in his glory ! 
 
XXII. 
 
 Mountain f asses. 
 
 IF course, these lofty mountain ranges 
 of the earth are impassable, except in 
 a few locaUties. These are called 
 Passes; of which there are several, more or 
 less celebrated, leading across the Alps, the 
 Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra 
 Nevadas, and other ranges. These passes 
 rarely cross over the mountain summits, but 
 more commonly follow up the ravines through 
 which the waters flow down the mountains, 
 and descend by a similiar path down the other 
 side. 
 
 There are sixteen passes over the Alps, all 
 of which, except two, can be used with car- 
 riages. The pass which is most noted and ex^ 
 tensively traveled is that of Mont Cenis. Here 
 
 ^15 
 
Il6 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 an admirable road was built by Napoleon in 
 1805. This pass is thirty miles across, eight- 
 een feet wide, and 6,773 feet above the sea. 
 The pass of the great St. Bernard is higher, 
 being nearly 8,000 feet. This is famous for its 
 "Hospice," or hospital, kept up by several 
 monks, and where many unfortunate travelers, 
 overtaken by snow-storms in crossing the 
 mountains, have been rescued by the monks 
 with the assistance of their dogs, and kindly 
 cared for. The loftiest pass over the Alps is 
 that of St. Cervin, which is more than 11,000 
 feet above the sea level. The passes of the 
 Simplon and St. Gothard are also celebrated. 
 The passes over the Himalaya Mountains 
 are, as you might suppose, very much loftier and 
 more difficult than those of the Alps. The 
 lowest of these passes has a height scarcely 
 less than Mont Blanc, while several of them 
 are considerably higher. One is between 18,- 
 000 and 19,000 feet, and another, the highest, 
 is 20,000 feet, nearly three times the height 
 of Mt. Washington. All these passes are, of 
 course, terrific to travel over, while the rarity 
 of the atmosphere, at such great heights, ren- 
 ders breathing very difficult, and the fatigue 
 
xMOUNTAIN PASSES. 11/ 
 
 dreadful to endure. "Animals are as much dis- 
 tressed as human beings, and many die. Thou- 
 sands of birds perish from the violence of the 
 wind, the drifting snow is often fatal to travel- 
 ers, and violent thunder-storms add to the 
 horror of the journey." One traveler, describ- 
 ing his journey over one of these tremendous 
 passes, relates that he, with his guide, had not 
 only to walk barefooted, from the risk of slip- 
 ping, but they were obliged to creep along the 
 most frightful chasms, holding by twigs and 
 tufts of grass, and sometimes they crossed deep 
 and awful crevices on a branch of a tree, or on 
 loose stones thrown across. The scenery in 
 traveling these awful passes of the Himalaya 
 Mountains is said to be a jvfully grand ^.TidCwiAJ 
 magnificent. "During the day," writes Mrs. 
 Somerville, " the stupendous si^e of the mount- 
 ains, their interminable extent, the variety and 
 sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the 
 tender clearness of their distant outline melt- 
 ing into the pale-blue sky, contrasted with the 
 deep azure above, is described as a scene of 
 wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when 
 myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and 
 the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper 
 
Tl8 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Still below the pale white gleam of the earth 
 and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled 
 solemnity, and no language can describe the 
 splendor of the sunbeams at day-break stream- 
 ing between the high peaks, and throwing 
 their gigantic shadows on the mountains be- 
 low. There, far above the habitation of man, 
 no living thing exists, no sound is heard ; the 
 very echo of the traveler's footsteps startles 
 him in the awful solitude and silence that 
 reigns in these august dwellings of everlasting 
 snow." 
 
XXIII. 
 
 fountain JtsiJ^nts. 
 
 ANY travelers, especially of late years, 
 are not content in their mountain ex- 
 cursions to confine themselves to the 
 passes leading across them, but not a few scale 
 them to their summits, and feast themselves 
 to the full with the sublimity of the scenery 
 presented to their view. These ascents of 
 lofty mountains, however, are no mere holiday 
 affair, but they are performed with much labor 
 and fatigue, and are often attended with dan- 
 ger to life and limb ; and lives have frequently 
 been lost in attempts to perform these perilous 
 ascents, while many others have barely es- 
 caped the same frightful destiny. No one 
 should attempt the ascent of lofty mountains 
 
 but such as can uniformly exercise entire self- 
 
 119 
 
120 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 control — who can look down huge precipices 
 without agitation, who can, at will, command 
 their eyes away from what is fearful, and fix 
 them coolly and exclusively upon the perilous 
 steps they must take. The greatest dangers 
 of climbing Alpine steeps are said to be these : 
 The first is in crossing the snow bridges which 
 become formed over deep chasms that yawn 
 amid the glaciers of the mountains. These 
 bridges are apt to yield when stepped upon, 
 and not a few adventurers have thus fallen 
 into unknown depths, and were never seen 
 afterward. A second danger is in slipping 
 upon steep slopes of hard ice. When the feet 
 thus give way, the traveler runs the utmost 
 hazard of sliding over some one of the awful 
 precipices that abound upon the mountain- 
 sides. A third peril is that of being over- 
 whelmed and buried under frightful avalanches 
 of snow and ice that frequently come rushing 
 down from the upper heights. 
 
 To escape the peril from snow bridges and 
 from slipping upon icy slopes, travelers are 
 accustomed to tie themselves together by a 
 strong rope around the waist, so that if one 
 should slump or slip, he will be held by the 
 
MOUNTAIN ASCENTS. 121 
 
 Others, and thus escape the destruction which 
 he would, otherwise, almost certainly meet. 
 And even this precaution does not always 
 avail. A most melancholy disaster occurred in 
 the Summer of 1865 upon the "Matterhorn" 
 Alp. This is perhaps the most remarkable 
 peak of the Alps, if not of the world. From 
 a glacier summit of 11,000 feet ascends a tre- 
 mendous peak sheer up 4,000 feet more, and 
 nearly as steep as a thimble placed upon its 
 open end upon a table. Four men, one of 
 whom was a British nobleman, and another a 
 minister of the Gospel, scaled, by some means, 
 this awful obelisk. They were connected to 
 each other by a rope, and soon after com- 
 mencing their descent, one of the men slipped, 
 which produced so great a strain upon the rope 
 that it parted between the two uppermost men, 
 when all the three that were below the fracture 
 of the rope went immediately over the huge 
 precipice, and fell through the whole 4,000 
 feet. The nobleman and the minister were 
 of the; three that thus miserably perished. 
 
 There are places on this earth that were not 
 designed for men, and where man should 
 never venture ; and he who does thus venture, 
 
122 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 travels away from the arms of a protecting 
 Providence. We think these adventurers must 
 have no sooner commenced the attempt to 
 accompHsh that most perilous descent before 
 realizing that, in all probability, they were lost 
 men. It was a poor ambition that doubtless 
 urged them up thither, and who can avoid the 
 conclusion that they "died as the fool dieth?" 
 
XXIV. 
 
 ^otintain Experieruces* 
 
 OUBTLESS some of my young read- 
 ers, will travel in foreign countries, 
 and will see for themselves, and 
 ascend some of the lofty summits of the 
 Alps or the Andes. If so, your first approach 
 to these sublime eminences will be deeply in- 
 teresting to you. Previously, it may be, you 
 shall have looked only upon hills which, though 
 seeming lofty, were yet smooth and green to 
 their very tops. But the spectacle will be 
 very different as you will approach some one 
 of the great mountain ranges. At first, and 
 when seventy-five or a hundred miles away, 
 they will wear a dim appearance, like clouds 
 lying far off in the horizon ; and their tops 
 
 will put on the aspect of wavy ridges, not 
 
 123 
 
124 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 unlike the ocean billows, as when, off at sea, 
 they are rolling by us, and in the dim distance 
 there will be little or no variety of hue. Ap- 
 proaching nearer, you will begin to observe a 
 striking difference. The summits that, when 
 far off, appeared so rounded and comparatively 
 regular, have now grown jagged and pointed, 
 and the great range has loomed up into an 
 immense wall, and the whole reach of the 
 horizon in that direction is hidden. For a 
 space, perhaps, the protuberances may be 
 nearly equal in height, and then, at right and 
 left of these, tower up far above them mightier 
 eminences surmounted by several peaks or 
 needles piercing the overhanging sky, or some- 
 times some crowning summit, as Mont Blanc, 
 seen from the Brevent, will sit above them all, 
 his top showing a graceful pyramid upon which 
 you might seem to ascend and repose almost 
 without an effort. Or contrasted with this, if 
 you shall be approaching Zermett, then the 
 tremendous Matterhorn will be in full view, 
 springing directly from its mountain base of 
 ii,ooo feet, and shooting almost perpendicu- 
 larly another 4,000 feet into the upper air. 
 Meanwhile the mountain-sides are no longer 
 
MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCES. 1 25 
 
 dim and of uniform hue. Huge dark preci- 
 pices lift themselves far aloft, sometimes as 
 they descend, hiding themselves behind inter- 
 vening and lower eminences, or cut off at right, 
 or left, or both, by grim dark gorges or ravines 
 through which ragged glaciers are slowly mak- 
 ing their way down from the upper regions ; 
 while all aloft, eternal snows, intermingled 
 with the bold, bare rocks and precipices, hold 
 their solitary and desolate reign. Meanwhile, 
 the nearer view shows you that it is not a 
 mere mountain ridge or chain that you are ap- 
 proaching, but, rather, an immense congeries 
 or cluster of mountains — some nearer and 
 lower, and others farther and loftier ; or, when 
 nearer ones appear the loftiest, between the 
 nearer summits other huge peaks are seen 
 lifting themselves in the rear, and appearing 
 embosomed in a mighty embrace of neighbor- 
 ing mountains. 
 
 At length, when all is in readiness, you will 
 commence the ascent of some one of the great 
 summits. Reaching the top of one elevation, 
 another at once presents itself, which, in its 
 turn, is also scaled ; while, after several such 
 ascents, the great summit seems as far aloft, 
 
126 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 and as far ofif, as before you started. Then 
 there comes on a change beneath your feet. 
 You left, at starting upward, green fields, and 
 pasture lands, and fragrant flowers. You are 
 now treading upon moss instead of grass, and 
 the verdant landscape is changed to a russet 
 hue, and the weather has grown cooler, and 
 trees, if any are left, are stunted and unsightly. 
 Presently, still ascending, vegetation mainly 
 ceases, and bald rocks and ledges succeed, the 
 latter sloping off over precipices thousands of 
 feet downward. It now becomes severely cold, 
 and you have reached the realms of snow and 
 ice, and everlasting frosts, and you must not 
 wonder if, aloft upon these dismal heights, you 
 shall encounter storms and whirlwinds more 
 violent and wild than you ever before con- 
 ceived. Passing yet farther upward, you may 
 possibly emerge into a calmer region, where 
 the storms and tempests will be seen raging 
 far beneath you, and you will see lightnings 
 and listen to thunderings in a direction in 
 which you never noticed them before, that 
 is, far below instead of above. Amid these 
 awful heights where you are now groping your 
 way still upward, you will need to be greatly 
 
MOUNTAIN EXPERIENCES. 12/ 
 
 circumspect and careful. Sometimes you will 
 be creeping along the edge of a precipice almost 
 frightful even to think of, and where a single 
 false step might plunge you into ruin. Here, 
 again, the ascent is so steep and slippery that 
 every step must be first cut into the solid ice 
 with a hatchet. Beware as you attempt cross- 
 ing that deep crevasse sinking hundreds of 
 feet down amid the ice depths. But you per- 
 severe, and the great Hand has upheld you 
 on your path of peril, and you have reached 
 the summit. But, alas, you must go down 
 again ! You will need the same Hand along 
 the more perilous descent. 
 
XXV. 
 
 Sajcr^d fountains* 
 
 jOUNTAINS are always sublime ; and 
 it is not so strange that they should 
 be objects of notice in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and more or less associated with 
 the Divine communications to our earth. 
 Some of these Scripture mountains should at- 
 tract the notice of young readers, for the very 
 reason that they are named and noticed in the 
 sacred oracles. 
 
 Of these Mt. Ararat, in Armenia, is first 
 noticed in the Bible. Its great height has al- 
 ready been named, and, also, that it is one of 
 the few lofty mountains of the world that 
 stands partially solitary and alone. It has, 
 however, a double summit though one base, 
 
 the lower summit being 3,000 or 4,000 feet be- 
 
 128 
 
SACRED MOUNTAINS. 
 
 129 
 
 low the higher one, and the two summits are 
 nearly seven miles apart. Many attempts have 
 been made to reach the top of this mountain, 
 all of which were unsuccessful until a German, 
 Dr. Parrot, in 1829, after two vain attempts, 
 succeeded in a third effort and gained the aw- 
 ful apex. The summit was slightly convex, 
 almost a perfect circle, about 200 feet in di- 
 ameter, and composed of smooth, eternal ice, 
 unbroken by a rock or stone. By reason of 
 the immense distances of objects, nothing 
 could be seen distinctly. The permanent 
 snow capping the mountain extends from the 
 top three miles down the sides. 
 
 This mountain is famous as being the emi- 
 nence where the ark rested when the great 
 flood was subsiding, and whence Noah and his 
 family descended after the drying off of the 
 waters, and where the human race and the va- 
 rious tribes of lower animals commenced, a 
 second time, to spread themselves over the 
 earth. 
 
 Mt. Moriah is early named in the Scrip- 
 tures, it being the eminence where Abraham 
 was directed to offer up his son Isaac. From 
 its altitude it hardly merits the appellation of 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 mountain, being one of the hills which make 
 the foundation of the city of Jerusalem. It is 
 the eastern summit, overlooking the vale of 
 Cedron, and was the site of the famous tem- 
 ple of Solomon, and the second temple, and is 
 now the site of a Mohammedan temple, the 
 Mosque of Omar. 
 
 Sinai is noticed in the Bible in connection 
 with Moses and the giving of the law to the 
 Israelites after crossing the Red Sea. Sinai 
 is the name assigned not to one particular em- 
 inence but to a group of mountains in Arabia 
 Petrea. There are numerous peaks ranging 
 from i,ooo to over 9,000 feet above the sea; on 
 which of these summits the great Moses as- 
 cended to meet God and speak with Him " face 
 to face" travelers and writers are not agreed. 
 Dr. Robinson, whose authority is perhaps 
 equal to any other, assigns the honor to the 
 mountain named Ras Sassafeh, a summit be- 
 tween 7,000 and 8,000 feet high, before which 
 open out two wide valleys capable of contain- 
 ing the great host of the Israelites. 
 
 Mt, Hor is also a mountain of Arabia Pe- 
 trea, on the confines of Idumea, and is only 
 mentioned in the Scriptures in connection with 
 
SACRED MOUNTAINS. I3I 
 
 Aaron. It was to the summit of this mount- 
 ain that he was led up to die in the presence 
 of Moses his brother, and his son Eleazar, as 
 described in the 20th of Numbers. The ascent 
 is extremely steep and toilsome, the mountain 
 is craggy and wild, and to one upon the sum- 
 mit, the crags are represented as standing upon 
 every side in the most ragged and fantastic 
 forms, sometimes strangely piled one upon an- 
 other, and sometimes as strangely yawning in 
 clefts of a frightful depth. 
 
 As Mt. Hor was famous by reason of the 
 death of^Aaron upon its summit, Mt. Pisgah is 
 more famous for the death of the great Moses. 
 It is a mountain of Moab commanding a view 
 of the desert eastward and westward, a view of 
 the Jordan and the promised land beyond. It 
 seems to have been nearly identical with Neboy 
 which was probably one of the peaks of the 
 Pisgah range. 
 
 Here was represented to the eye of Moses 
 a panoramic view or vision of Canaan in its 
 length and breadth, and then he died; died 
 alone, and only God was present and officiated 
 at his funeral. 
 
 Mt. Horeb seems identified with Sinai much 
 
lU- 
 
 132 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 as Pisgah is with Nebo, and is illustrious from 
 two or three notable facts of the Bible history. 
 It was upon or near this mountain that Moses 
 was tending the sheep of his father-in-law, 
 when there came to him this solemn call from 
 God to conduct Israel from Egypt to the prom- 
 ised land. Also somewhere here it was that 
 he smote the rock for water, and where, in 
 connection with this transaction, he most 
 unfortunately spoke unadvisedly with his lips, 
 and by reason thereof was forbidden to enter 
 the land of promise. 
 
 Mt, Carmel is a ridge in Palestine, bjanching 
 off from the mountains of Samaria, and extend- 
 ing, by a north-west course, sixteen miles to the 
 Mediterranean. Its highest point is 1,750 feet 
 above the neighboring sea. While the entire 
 ridge of Carmel is represented as wild, and 
 rendered hideous by the presence of wild 
 beasts, many of its slopes are described as 
 very beautiful, being sprinkled with oaks and 
 green with rich pasture-lands, where myriads 
 of wild flowers of every brilliant hue are 
 scattered in abundance over the splendid 
 landscape. 
 
 Repeated and interesting mention is made 
 
SACRED MOUNTAINS. 1 33 
 
 in the Scriptures of Mt. Carmel, and with its 
 beautiful name are associated some of the fair- 
 est of sacred imagery, as well as some of the 
 marvelous transactions of the olden time. The 
 great and solemn Elijah often lingered amid its 
 fragrant groves, and somewhere here he, with 
 his altar, confronted Baal's prophets with their 
 falsehoods, and, invoked the divine fire, and 
 slew them before God, and ascending the sum- 
 mit, offered the "fervent and effectual prayer" 
 for rain until appeared the little cloud like a 
 man's hand. Here, too, at times, sojourned 
 his associate and successor, the mighty Elisha ; 
 who, somewhere in sight of the mountain, re- 
 called to life the Shunamite's little beautiful 
 boy. Also not far off was the scene of David's 
 eventful interview with the graceful and judi- 
 cious Abigail, whereof the sequel was nothing 
 less than a royal wedding after not many days. 
 Lebanon is a celebrated mountain range of 
 Syria, extending from the northern limit of 
 Palestine, north-easterly over a hundred miles, 
 and whose loftiest summit is 10,000 feet above 
 the sea. The mountains of Lebanon are fa- 
 mous both Scripturally and classically, and the 
 view of them from the Mediterranean is said to 
 
134 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 be exceedingly grand. They appear to rise 
 from the bosom of the deep Hke a vast wall, 
 their loftiest summit always covered with snow. 
 To these mountains the allusions in the Scrip- 
 tures are too numerous for specification, and 
 the magnificent cedars clothing their lofty sides 
 were favorite emblems of beauty, grandeur, and 
 prosperity. 
 
 Mt. Olivet, standing out immediately before 
 the east front of Jerusalem, and separated from 
 it by the brook Cedron, is prominent among 
 the sacred mountains. At its base is Geth- 
 semane. Bethany lay just over its principal 
 summit, whither the Savior of men often re- 
 sorted to repose, for an hour or a night, amid 
 the pleasant hospitalities of Martha and Mary, 
 whom, with their brother Lazarus, he specially 
 loved, and whence he called the latter back, 
 for a time, from paradise, and where was the 
 sacred dust, the last that was touched by the 
 beautiful feet of the Master as he went away 
 to his Father. 
 
 Mt, Zion, too, the southern summit of Jeru- 
 salem, is wreathed all over with affecting and 
 sunny associations. "Beautiful for situation" 
 was it in the olden time, and royalty dwelt 
 
SACRED MOUNTAINS. . 1 35 
 
 there, and heavenly song ascended thence, and 
 there was heard the golden harp whose blissful 
 notes were listened to and loved in heaven, 
 and that was the sacred summit honored as 
 the bright emblem of the celestial fold, and the 
 name whereof is assigned to the great spiritual 
 kingdom, whether on earth or in heaven, of 
 God's Messiah. 
 
 "For ye are not come to the mount that 
 might be touched, and that burned with fire ; 
 but ye are come to Mt. Zion, the city of the 
 living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an 
 innumerable company of angels, to the general 
 assembly and Church of the First-born which 
 are written in heaven, and to God the judge of 
 all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 
 and to Jesus." 
 
 Finally, westward of the city, and "without 
 the gate," was Mt, Calvary , named and known 
 only, and forever to be named and known only, 
 as the theater of the great crucifixion. The 
 Cross, the Victim, the Blood, the Death, the 
 Life, the Eternal Salvation, these are its whis- 
 perings. Traveler! tread softly there and lis- 
 ten : " Christ hath redeemed us from the curse 
 of the law, being made a curse for us." 
 
XXVI. 
 
 f lains^ 
 
 IF the mountains of the earth are sub- 
 Hme objects, the great Plains of the 
 several continents are scarcely less 
 so. These plains comprise vast areas mostly 
 level, and comparatively at but a small eleva- 
 tion above the level of the ocean. Through 
 them the rivers mostly flow, and they are, for 
 the most part, the inhabited and cultivated 
 regions of the earth, and are often exceedingly 
 fertile. 
 
 Beginning with our own continent, a com- 
 paratively narrow plain lies between the At- 
 lantic Ocean and the Alleghany Mountains. 
 Crossing the Alleghanies, between these and 
 the base of the Rocky Mountains west, and 
 between Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Ocean , 
 136 
 
PLAINS. 137 
 
 north, and Mexico with the Mexican Gulf 
 south, is a vast plain cut by the Mississippi 
 and its numerous tributaries, and nearly all of 
 which, except the far north, is a land of great 
 fertility and capable of the largest production. 
 East and North, and all along many of the 
 river courses, it comprises extensive forest 
 lands, while immense tracts are destitute of 
 trees and have received the name oi prairie. 
 The most of this immense plain belongs to 
 our country, and comprises nineteen entire 
 States and Territories, besides parts of several 
 others. 
 
 South America is as famous for its prodig- 
 ious plains as for its lofty and magnificent 
 mountains. The great basins of the Oronoco, 
 Amazon, and La Plata Rivers, comprising the 
 greatest portion of that land, may be said to 
 constitute one far-reaching plain, stretching 
 through the entire length of the continent. 
 Much of the portion covered by the inunda- 
 tions of the Amazon is a great forest land, 
 dense with trees, and, by the decay of the 
 forests for ages, it is a land of excessive fer- 
 tility. But much of it is impracticable by 
 reason of the luxuriousness of the vegetation, 
 
138 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 and for this and other reasons is unfavorable 
 for human occupation. As Mrs. Somerville 
 writes : 
 
 "The heat of these extensive regions is 
 suffocating in the deep and dark recesses 
 of these primeval woods, where not a breath 
 of air penetrates, and where, after being 
 drenched by the periodical rains, the damp 
 is so excessive, that a blue mist rises in the 
 early morning among the huge stems of the 
 trees, and envelops the entangled creepers 
 stretching from bough to bough. A death- 
 like stillness prevails from sunrise to sunset ; 
 then the thousands of animals that inhabit 
 these forests join in one loud, discordant roar, 
 not continuous, but in bursts. The beasts 
 seem to be periodically and unanimously roused 
 by some unknown impulse, till the forest rings 
 in universal uproar. Profound silence prevails 
 at midnight, which is broken at the dawn of 
 morning by another general roar of wild 
 chorus. Nightingales, too, have their fits of 
 silence and of song ; after a pause they 
 
 'All burst forth in choral minstrelsy, 
 As if some sudden gale had swept at once 
 A hundred airy harps.' 
 
PLAINS. 
 
 139 
 
 "The whole forest often resounds where the 
 animals, startled from their sleep, scream in 
 terror at the noise made by bands of its in- 
 habitants flying from some night-prowling foe." 
 
XXVII. 
 
 fJateaux^ 
 
 jABLE-LANDS, or Plateaux, are also 
 a prominent feature of the land surface 
 of our earth. These are also plains ; 
 and they differ from those described in the pre- 
 ceding sketch by having a greater elevation 
 above the ocean level. They are a sort of me- 
 dium between common plains and the lofty 
 mountains of the globe ; and are, in many in- 
 stances, inhabited by man, and even comprise 
 extensive and populous cities. 
 
 The highest table-land on earth is Thibet of 
 Asia, lying north of the great Himalaya 
 Mountains, a cold, inhospitable region, where 
 human habitations are found at a height above 
 the ocean about equal to that of Mont Blanc, 
 in Europe. Besides this prodigious plateau, 
 140 
 
PLATEAUX. 141 
 
 Asia contains other immense reaches of table- 
 land. The countries of Mongolia, Persia, Ar- 
 menia, Asia Minor, and Arabia, partake largely 
 of this character. 
 
 Plateaux abound, also, in Europe, although 
 of less elevation than most of the Asiatic table- 
 lands. Much of Spain is an elevated plain, 
 and the city of Madrid stands between 2,000 
 and 3,000 feet above the ocean level ; and the 
 plateau of Bavaria, of Central Europe, has 
 about the same elevation. The southern part 
 of Norway and Sweden is higher still, being 
 about 4,000 feet above the surrounding waters. 
 
 In Africa, Abyssinia is a cluster of plateaux, 
 separated from each other by mountain chains. 
 One of these plains is 9,000 feet aloft. The 
 great Sahara desert is somewhat elevated, and, 
 from five or six degrees south latitude to the 
 Cape of Good Hope, the African continent is 
 supposed to be a vast table-land. 
 
 Passing to our own continent, table-lands 
 are also frequent and extensive. From the 
 Missouri River to the base of the Rocky 
 Mountains is a great plateau gradually as- 
 cending for 500 miles. So also between 
 the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada is 
 
142 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 mainly a table-land, being 4,000 or 5,000 feet 
 higher than the ocean. Turning toward the 
 south we have the great table-lands of Mexico, 
 the most extensive in North America. On the 
 highest of these plateaux stands the City of 
 Mexico itself, 9,000 feet above the neighboring 
 Atlantic and Pacific seas, while to the south- 
 east stretch away the lofty plains of Guatimala 
 and Honduras, having an elevation of more 
 than 6,000 feet, and Chihuahua is similarly 
 lofty. 
 
 Passing the Isthmus, South America has 
 some of the most elevated and remarkable 
 table-lands in the world. That of upper Peru 
 is, next to the plains of Thibet, the loftiest on 
 earth, being nearly 13,000 feet above the sea, 
 and is surrounded by the loftiest summits of 
 the Andes. Quito is 9,000 feet upward, while 
 the streets of Potosi are 12,822 feet above the 
 Pacific, and Lake Titicaca, a little distance 
 north, is nearly as high. 
 
XXVIII. 
 
 ifjeptessions* 
 
 HILE Contemplating the regions of 
 the globe thus elevated from 2,000 to 
 16,000 feet above the sea level, it is 
 curious to note certain regions which, though 
 of comparatively limited extent, are below, in- 
 stead of above, this great level. The aspect 
 of these localities is as if they had, by some 
 stupendous pressure, been sunk down below 
 the average surface of surrounding lands. The 
 Dead Sea of Palestine, together with the Sea 
 of Galilee, sixty miles north of it, and the River 
 Jordan and its valley lying between the two 
 seas, comprise a region of this character. The 
 Sea of Galilee is about 500 feet lower than 
 the Mediterranean Sea, while the Dead Sea 
 is nearly 1,000 feet lower still. This is the 
 
 H3 
 
144 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 deepest depression below the great sea level 
 that exists on earth. On the east side it has 
 rugged mountains between 2,000 and 3,000 
 feet in height, while on the opposite or west 
 side the hills have a height of about 1,500 
 feet, their tops being just about on a level with 
 the Mediterranean Sea lying 100 miles west 
 of them. The whole scenery is one of utter 
 gloom and desolation. 
 
 Another, but a very different depression be- 
 low the great sea level, is a part of the country 
 of Holland. Thousands of acres of this cu- 
 rious country lie below the ocean, and are shut 
 in from it by immense dikes or dams, erected 
 and sustained at great public expense. Of 
 course there is no natural drainage for such a 
 country, and hence, in order to rid the land of 
 superfluous water coming in by the rain or 
 otherwise, multitudes of windmills are in con- 
 stant operation, pumping the water over the 
 dikes into the sea. These dikes have been, 
 many times, broken through by the ocean, 
 causing terrible floods over the country, and 
 great losses of life and property. Nearly two 
 hundred of these great inundations have oc- 
 curred in Holland since the beginning of the 
 
DEPRESSIONS. I45 
 
 Christian Era, and there have been instances 
 in which more than 100,000 persons have been 
 ingulfed. The latest, and one of the most ter- 
 rible, transpired so late as 1825. And yet it is 
 a country of marvelous fertility, picturesque 
 scenery, and boundless wealth. The vast 
 number of marshes, dikes, and canals, covered 
 with ships which seem to move in the midst 
 of windmills and avenues of trees of the rich- 
 est verdure, impart to the greater portion of 
 Holland an aspect of an extremely unique and 
 original character, heightened by the presence 
 of numerous charming country residences, 
 towns and villages, of painted houses, washed 
 externally from top to bottom every week, and 
 of unparalleled neatness. 
 
 There are several other depressions, both of 
 land and water, in different regions of the 
 globe. The surface of the Caspian Sea, for ex- 
 ample, and a great extent of country around it, 
 is lower than the level of the ocean. Also 
 Lake Assal, in the north-east of Africa, is 
 600 feet below the sea level. 
 
 10 
 
XXIX. 
 
 ^aU^tjs^ 
 
 E have written, in the preceding 
 sketch, of certain remarkable depres- 
 sio'ns of the earth's surface, where 
 large spaces of both land and water are sunk 
 below the level of the ocean, and, in some in- 
 stances, hundreds of feet below. Between 
 these and the plains of the earth are extensive 
 intermediate regions, lower than the plains 
 yet lying above the sea surface. These are 
 called Valleys ; and they form another very in- 
 teresting feature of the globe. They are of 
 all dimensions, from the little verdant reaches, 
 lying inclosed amid lofty mountains, to exten- 
 sive territories covering thousands of square 
 miles. These latter are more generally trav- 
 ersed by the rivers with which the earth 
 146 
 
VALLEYS. 147 
 
 abounds, the streams meandering through 
 them, sometimes midway, then wandering 
 away far toward one or the other side of the 
 valleys in which they are embosomed. Thus, 
 in England, we have the valleys of the Thames 
 and the Severn ; and on the continent is the 
 famous valley of the Rhine, sometimes open 
 and expanded, again shut in within narrow 
 limits by mountains approaching the river. 
 Another, of more imposing dimensions, is the 
 valley of the Danube, spreading itself far 
 away and forming the plains of Wallachia. 
 Famous, also, is the great valley of the Ganges 
 in Asia, and of the Amazon in South America, 
 and the Mississippi Valley of our own coun- 
 try. Yet where, as in some of these in- 
 stances, they extend hundreds of miles on 
 either side of the river, they seem to par- 
 take more of the character of plains than val- 
 leys. A valley, to display its true character 
 and beauty as such, needs to be so limited as 
 that its boundaries, either in whole or in part, 
 may be distinctly visible. In such a case, it 
 often presents to the eye some of the most 
 beautiful landscapes of the earth. Take, for 
 instance, some elevated and favorable position 
 
148 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 overlooking the valley of the Hudson or the 
 Connecticut, the Thames, the Rhine, or hun- 
 dreds of other rivers, and you will witness 
 what will very nearly fill your idea of a terres- 
 trial paradise. 
 
 One of the most famous of the valleys of 
 the earth is the vale of Cashmere, in the ex- 
 treme north of the great country of Hindostan. 
 It is of an irregular oval form, surrounded by 
 lofty mountains, whose summits are crowned 
 with eternal snows. Its level bottom is about 
 seventy miles long and forty wide, although 
 the entire valley extending to the very base of 
 the mountains comprises about double this 
 space. Thus wherever, along this vale, one 
 might be living or traveling, the entire great 
 mountain wall inclosing it would be conspicu- 
 ous. A river — one of the tributaries of the 
 Indus — traverses, with an unruffled current, 
 the midst of the valley, receiving, in its pas- 
 sage, a multitude of tributary streams, while, 
 here and there, beautiful lakes and numer- 
 ous natural fountains, sending their sparkling 
 waters into the air, give variety and pictur- 
 esqueness to the resplendent landscape. All 
 European fruits and fruit-trees flourish here in 
 
VALLEYS. 
 
 149 
 
 perfection: as the apple, the pear, the peach, 
 the plum, the apricot, the various nuts, and 
 grapes in untold abundance, and in every con- 
 ceivable variety. Also, the air is fragrant with 
 flowers of every hue, and of gorgeous beauty 
 growing wild amid those genial and fairy lands. 
 The country is dotted with villages, each one 
 embowered amid groves of chunars and pop- 
 lars of enormous growth, and planted centuries 
 ago by order of the Mogul Emperor. At the 
 same time, the climate is mild, salubrious, and 
 healthy, and the Cashmerians are pre-eminent 
 for their physical perfection — the men being- 
 tall, robust, and well formed, while the women 
 are famous for their beauty and the brilliancy 
 of their complexion. 
 
 Such is one of the most famous valleys of 
 the world. Yet we are obliged to be reminded 
 that even Cashmere is not heaven. Amid all 
 its magnificence of landscape, and its surround- 
 ing grandeur, they tell us that frequent earth- 
 quakes are there, and, what seems stranger 
 than this, famine and pestilence sometimes 
 make their baleful path into this paradise and 
 slay their thousands in a few days of time. 
 Moreover, though inhabited by comely men 
 
150 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 and beautiful women, they are represented as 
 very much "lower than the angels/' being 
 given to gayety and pleasure, and being "peer- 
 less in cunning and avarice, and notoriously 
 addicted to lying." 
 
 Thus, I am suspicious, we shall ever find 
 matters amid this fallen world of ours. There 
 is no perfection under the sun. The serpent 
 gained access to the first Paradise, and he is 
 wherever, on this earth, some lovely Eden 
 spreads itself abroad before the delighted vis- 
 ion. Let us up and away, for this is not our 
 rest. Over all this world " God has set one 
 thing over against another, to the end that 
 man shall find nothing after him.'' But 
 
 " There is a world we have not seen, 
 W^hich time can never dare destroy ; 
 W^here mortal footstep hath not been, 
 Nor ear hath caught its sounds of joy. 
 
 It is all holy and serene — 
 
 The land of glory and repose ; 
 And there, to dim the radiant scene, 
 
 The tear of sorrow never flows." 
 
 One word more, however, touching the val- 
 leys of the world. While, in many instances, 
 they form the most beautiful dwelling-places 
 for man, they are in general largely character- 
 
VALLEYS. 151 
 
 ized by fertility as well as beauty. The valleys 
 of the Nile, the Ganges, the Amazon, the Mis- 
 sissippi, and a thousand others are illustrations. 
 And yet one word more. Valleys may be 
 said to be the great natural highways of the 
 world. Often they are traversed by navigable 
 rivers ; and these of themselves furnish a path 
 for travel and commerce to an almost unlimited 
 extent. The Mississippi River, with its sys- 
 tem of navigable tributaries, opens up a length 
 of steam pathway of 16,674 rniles, and then 
 thousands of miles more beyond the head of 
 navigable waters these river valleys furnish 
 practicable courses for the railroads, and other 
 roads, of countries, where, with the fewest 
 obstructions and impediments, they may estab- 
 lish their firm foundations. So true it is that 
 immense utility, as well as varied and wide- 
 spread beauty, characterizes the great valley 
 system of the world. 
 
XXX. 
 
 l^e^setts. 
 
 |ESERTS are those regions of the 
 earth which, by reason of their bar- 
 renness, are unfitted for the abode of 
 civiHzed man. 
 
 There are districts of country where rain 
 seldom or never falls, and where, as a matter 
 of course, vegetation is either very scanty or 
 wholly wanting, and nakedness and stark des- 
 olation lord it over the gloomy scene. Here 
 and there, indeed, at distant intervals, and 
 where, by some means, a certain degree of 
 moisture, greater than elsewhere in the desert, 
 prevails, some scanty grass and stunted trees 
 hold a sickly and feeble life. These spots are 
 called Oases, are generally of but limited ex- 
 tent, and are scattered over the vast desert as 
 
 isles amid the ocean. 
 152 
 
DESERTS. 153 
 
 Deserts occur in various regions of the 
 world; but as the term Desert always seems, 
 *in our minds, synonymous with Sahara, and 
 as this is considered a grand type of all desert- 
 lands, I shall confine my remarks to a slight 
 survey of this one huge and awful realm. 
 
 The Great Sahara Desert monopolizes all 
 of Northern Africa, except a comparatively 
 narrow region along the Mediterranean, and 
 also the valley of the Nile. Its dimensions 
 comprehend fifteen degrees of latitude, and 
 thirty degrees of longitude. In other words, 
 it is nearly 3,000 miles in length, with an aver- 
 age breadth of 1,000 miles. Commencing at 
 the Atlantic Ocean, it spreads sheer across 
 the African Continent to Egypt, overstepping 
 which, the desert is repeated along the west- 
 ern shores of the Red Sea. Crossing this, it 
 monopolizes much of Arabia, and extends 
 away toward the north-east, throwing its blight 
 upon considerable portions of Persia, Thibet, 
 and Tartary. 
 
 The great African Sahara is, in the main, an 
 immense barren and desolate region. The 
 surface is extensively of sand, though not uni- 
 versally so. Nor is it a dead level ; but the 
 
154 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 sand is often, by the violent winds, piled up 
 into hills or enormous drifts, thus enhancing 
 the hideousness of the general aspect of the 
 landscape, and increasing the difficulty of trav- 
 ersing it. When these great sand-storms oc- 
 cur, the whole air is dense and darkened with 
 the driving dust, and the unfortunate traveler 
 is in imminent danger of suffocation, while the 
 whitened bones scattered over the desert, tell 
 something of the numbers that have thus mis- 
 erably perished. At times, instead of loose 
 sand, you encounter a hard, flinty surface of 
 the desert, with dark ranges of rock towering 
 up before you, and adding to the wildness of 
 the scene. 
 
 Along extended portions of this dreary 
 waste, it never rains, and water is nowhere to 
 be found. Here and there, at intervals of sev- 
 eral days' journey apart, and where, by digging, 
 it is possible to find water, wells are sunk for 
 the purpose of supplying travelers and cara- 
 vans urging their long and weary journey over 
 the desert. As these wells are often far apart, 
 it becomes necessary, in passing from one to 
 another, to carry forward upon the camels a 
 sufficiency of water to preserve life till the 
 
DESERTS. 155 
 
 next well is reached, and then if this be dried 
 up, as not unfrequently happens, death is al- 
 most certain to the hapless voyager. 
 
 At the same time the heat of the desert is 
 excessive, rising at noon in Summer-time to 
 107, 120, and even to 140 degrees. Added to 
 these horrors, wild beasts infest these desolate 
 regions. Worse than all, the wild and wander- 
 ing Arab prowls over the desert — the genuine 
 Ishmaelite — his hand against every man, and 
 every man's hand against him. As he wanders 
 hither and thither over this "waste, howling 
 wilderness,'' his genius is that of a robber and 
 murderer, and woe to the poor stranger that 
 falls into his hands. 
 
 Such is one of the dark and strange features 
 belonging to our earth. Here stretches afar 
 a prodigious area, equal to that of the whole 
 United States and Territories, all unfit for the 
 residence of civilized man. Why thus, I can 
 not inform you. I may say, however, that 
 civilization proceeds well without the aid of 
 this great desert realm, and there is yet very 
 "much land to be possessed" before human 
 population, enterprise, and welfare will require 
 the occupation of Sahara. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 Barthj^iuafees. 
 
 
 ^S^ 
 
 
 ^^6 
 
 
 «> vk^ 
 
 
 r^^r 
 
 
 mi 
 
 |ARTHQUAKES are among the most 
 interesting and awful phenomena be- 
 longing to the history of our globe. 
 An earthquake is an actual agitation and 
 skaking of the earth, more or less violent in 
 its movement, and more or less extensive in 
 its reach. This phenomenon is probably ow- 
 ing to the energy of elastic vapors confined 
 far down beneath the surface of the earth, 
 struggling for vent, and acting with force in- 
 conceivably great and terrible. Some coun- 
 tries are much more subject to earthquakes 
 than others ; and it is noticed that they have 
 the greatest frequency in countries subject to 
 volcanoes, while it is altogether probable that 
 the two disturbances have a similar origin. In 
 156 
 
EARTHQUAKES. 1 5/ 
 
 our own and many other countries, they seldom 
 occur, and when they do their action is com- 
 paratively slight, as well as of limited extent. 
 
 On the other hand, some countries are 
 greatly subject to them, and it is not unlikely 
 that no day passes without the recurrence of 
 an earthquake in some region of the earth. 
 They transpire with the greatest frequency in 
 such countries as some of those bordering on 
 the Mediterranean, also Central America, and 
 especially Chili and Peru of South America. 
 In these two latter countries they are painfully 
 common and destructive ; and with a view to 
 guard against them, the inhabitants are accus- 
 tomed to build their houses low, and with 
 thick and strong walls so as to insure, if pos- 
 sible, their stability against the earthquake 
 shocks. 
 
 The coming of these awful visitations is de- 
 scribed as not always after the same manner. 
 Sometimes their first approach is with com- 
 parative gentleness. There is a rumbling 
 sound like distant thunder, and its approach is 
 distinctly marked by the increasing loudness 
 of the noise until the shock reaches the spot 
 where you are. At other times, the shock is 
 
158 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 sudden and instantaneous, performs its work 
 in a few seconds, and is gone. Often the 
 shocks are repeated with short intervals, or the 
 intervals may be longer. Then, again, the 
 character of the motion may be different. 
 Sometirnes it seems to be a vertical motion, 
 the ground under the feet rising and sinking 
 in rapid succession. At other times, it seems 
 a sort of undulating motion analogous to waves 
 on the surface of water. At times, these mo- 
 tions are of great violence, so that the surface 
 of the ground is broken, and yawning chasms 
 are formed ; and these are sometimes so wide 
 and deep that buildings and people are sud- 
 denly ingulfed in them, and the chasm sud- 
 denly closes up again, burying alive the unfor- 
 tunate victims. Large trees and whole cities 
 have thus, in some instances, been swallowed 
 up. Sometimes torrents of water are ejected 
 from the newly made chasms, and smoke and 
 flames have been known to issue from them. 
 Most of these more violent and terrible earth- 
 quakes occur in the neighborhood of the sea, 
 and this seems to be as strangely affected as 
 the land. At first, the water retires unusally, 
 leaving the shores or harbors dry — a sad pre- 
 
EARTHQUAKES. 159 
 
 sage ! For, suddenly, the water returns in the 
 shape of an enormous wave surging up over 
 the city, and over a wide extent of country, 
 hurUng vessels far inland, whence they can not 
 again be launched upon their native element. 
 By this one operation thousands of lives have 
 been destroyed within a few seconds. 
 
 How calamitous and awful have been the de- 
 vastations of earthquakes ; I subjoin a few 
 specific facts for illustration. In 1692 the isl- 
 and of Jamaica was visited by an earthquake, 
 when the capital city of the island sunk di- 
 rectly down with the great part of the build- 
 ings. More than a thousand acres thus sunk 
 in a moment of time, and the sea rolled over 
 the entire area. A still more dreadful catastro- 
 phe befell the island of Java in 1772 ; a neigh- 
 boring volcanic mountain fifteen miles long 
 and six broad, with forty villages and their in- 
 habitants, suddenly sunk beneath the waters. 
 
 Of the great earthquake at Lisbon, Portu- 
 gal, in 1755, you have doubtless read. In that 
 terrible earthquake, within six minutes of time, 
 most of that beautiful city was shaken to pieces, 
 and 60,000 people perished. As the buildings 
 were falling thousands of persons sought safety 
 
l60 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 upon a new and extensive marble quay, when 
 it suddenly sunk like a ship foundering at sea, 
 and not one of the thousands of bodies ever 
 reappeared ; and the water where was the 
 quay stood six hundred feet deep. The ex- 
 tent of this earthquake was computed to be 
 greater than four times that of Europe. It 
 was felt in the Alps, in Germany, Sweden, 
 Great Britain, Northern Africa, West Indies, 
 and extensively in this country. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 Earthquaties of 1$6$/ 
 
 UT the year 1868 must be set down 
 as emphatically the great Earthquake 
 Year, when a series of earthquakes 
 occurred in this Western hemisphere to which 
 history furnishes no parallel. 
 
 This great exhibition opened at the Sandwich 
 Islands in connection with an extraordinary 
 eruption of the volcano Matcna Loa. Simul- 
 taneously with this volcanic eruption the earth- 
 quake commenced, and it was estimated that, 
 in the course of twelve days, there were 2,000 
 shocks, followed, at intervals, by fearful waves 
 flowing in from the ocean, and destroying vil- 
 lages and their inhabitants. The severest 
 shock was on the 2d of April, causing much 
 
 destruction of property and life. About eighty 
 II 161 
 
l62 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 persons perished, and a multitude of domestic 
 animals. 
 
 But the Sandwich Island earthquake seems 
 to have been a trifle compared to what hap- 
 pened, a few months afterward, in South Amer- 
 ica. Here the first shock was felt at Arica, 
 Peru. This town was utterly destroyed, and a 
 multitude of people were killed. Several ships 
 in the harbor were wrecked by the tremendous 
 wave which, at a great height, surged in and 
 overwhelmed the city, and bearing with it ves- 
 sels, and lodging them miles inland. At Are- 
 quipa nearly every house was leveled, and five 
 hundred people were drowned. Numerous 
 cities along the Peruvian coast were partially 
 or wholly destroyed. From Calao to Iquique, 
 the entire coast of Peru was left in a complete 
 state of desolation and ruin. 
 
 Three days after this terrible earthquake, 
 another, more terrible still, occurred in Ecua- 
 dor. The report of this earthquake, communi- 
 cated to Secretary Seward, by our Minister to 
 Peru, Mr. Hovey, will give us some idea of the 
 terrible scene. Tiiese are a few of the items : 
 
 Eight towns with the adjoining populations 
 and haciendas are said to have been destroyed. 
 
EARTHQUAKES OF 1868. 1 63 
 
 numbering from 40,000 to 50,000 inhabitants. 
 The cities of Otavato and Cotachi, consisting 
 of 20,000 inhabitants, were swallowed up with 
 their entire population. Ibarra was destroyed 
 with 10,000 people. Atunlaque was leveled 
 with the earth, burying all its inhabitants. 
 The destruction was not confined to the cities, 
 but numerous and rich farm establishments, 
 producing large numbers of cattle and sheep 
 were all destroyed. To add to the other hor- 
 rors, terrific thunder-storms literally deluged 
 the whole country. 
 
 "These shocks," writes Mr. Hovey, ''have 
 almost ruined the Republic of Ecuador." 
 
 At various other points in South America 
 these terrible earthquakes were felt, and the 
 entire loss of life there is estimated at 30,- 
 000 persons, and the loss of property at 
 $300,000,000, 
 
 About two months following the South 
 American earthquakes, California was also 
 visited, and at San Francisco several lives and 
 much property were lost, while other places in 
 California were affected. After another two 
 months, Mexico also was severely shaken. 
 
 Thus from Chili, far up toward Oregon, an 
 
164 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 extent of thousands of miles, the Western 
 coast of North and South America and the 
 neighboring islands, were most seriously af- 
 fected by earthquakes, and alf within the com- 
 pass of a few brief months. Whether these 
 are to become frequent, it is presumed that 
 no one can predict. But it certainly belongs 
 to us to exercise great and special gratitude to 
 the Father of mercies, that our own country 
 seems to be, in great part, exempt from these 
 terrible visitations. 
 
XXXIII. 
 
 Ifoljcanojes* 
 
 N a preceding sketch I observed that 
 the cause of earthquakes and vol- 
 canoes is probably much the same. 
 Elastic forces of tremendous energy are oper- 
 ating in the bowels of the earth, sometimes 
 producing earthquakes, and sometimes forcing 
 an opening through the crust of the earth 
 from which are belched forth heated gases, 
 sometimes in flames, "volumes of steam, erup- 
 tions of ashes mixed with scoriae, and large 
 stones which are often red-hot, and currents 
 of melted rock, called lava." 
 
 Such is a volcano, named thus from the Latin 
 Vidcantis, the god of fire. The matter issuing, 
 as above, through the earth's crust forms a 
 hill or mountain around the opening or crater, 
 
 i6k 
 
1 66 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 and this mountain, by the accumulation of mat- 
 ter forced up from the earth's depths, increases 
 to a height of hundreds, and, in many instances, 
 thousands of feet. Thus we call a volcano a 
 burning mountain ; that is, a mountain from 
 whose top or sides issues fire, or smoke, or 
 both ; and, in times of eruption, accompanied 
 with lava, ashes, cinders, stones, etc. 
 
 Of these volcanic mountains, Humboldt 
 counts 407, although there are probably very 
 many more than this number. Only a little 
 more than half of the number are active vol- 
 canoes, that is, continue to show signs of any 
 thing issuing from their craters. 
 
 There are, indeed, three classes of volcanoes : 
 first, those which were once active, but have 
 been a long time still; secondly, those which 
 are intermittent, that is, sometimes active and 
 at other times quiet ; and, thirdly, those which 
 are always active. Of this last class, there are 
 several that are celebrated, but their number is 
 comparatively small. Of these and such of 
 the intermittent volcanoes as have been in 
 action within the last hundred years, there are 
 reckoned 225. 
 
 Of the more celebrated volcanoes of the 
 
VOLCANOES. 167 
 
 globe we have Vesuvius, JEtna, Hecla, Strom- 
 boliy Saugay, Cotopaxi, Mauna Loa, and others. 
 Vesuvius, down to the present time, has had 
 sixty great eruptions, some of which were 
 grand in the extreme. Its first known erup- 
 tion was in A. D. 79, when it issued such an 
 amount of cinders and ashes that two cities in 
 the neighborhood were buried from seventy to 
 a hundred and twelve feet deep, with most of 
 their inhabitants. In its great eruption of 
 1632 the immense currents of lava overflowed 
 most of the villages at its base. In 1779 the 
 prodigious volumes of white smoke ascended 
 in piles four times the height of the mountain, 
 and stones and cinders were projected 2,000 
 feet above the top of the mountain. Columns 
 of fire also shot upward more than 10,000 feet. 
 In the eruption of 1794 a stream of lava is- 
 sued from the mountain containing more than 
 46,000,000 of cubic feet. The eruption of 
 1822 broke up the whole mountain-top, pro- 
 ducing a chasm three miles around it, and 
 2,000 feet deep. Recently great eruptions 
 have occurred for several successive years. 
 
 The great volcano, Mt. ^tna, is on the east- 
 ern side of the island of Sicily. It consists 
 
1 68 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 of a mountain between 9,000 and 10,000 feet 
 high, from which springs the great cone of the 
 volcano, rising 1,100 or 1,200 feet higher still. 
 A delightful country surrounds the mountain 
 at its base. Above this, and belting the 
 mountain, is a magnificent forest, five or six 
 miles in width, at the upper side of which 
 begins the region of barrenness and desolation. 
 
 Eruptions of Mt. ^tna were known to the 
 ancients as far back as 1,000 years before 
 Christ. About sixty, in all, have been re- 
 corded, and, in recent times, those of i66g, 
 I755> ^I'^l^ 1792, and 1852, were the most, 
 important. That of 1669, i^ connection with 
 the earthquake accompanying it, destroyed 
 sixteen villages, and several vast fissures were 
 opened in the sides of the mountain, emitting 
 smoke, fire, and tremendous bellowings. 
 
 Cotopaxi is remarkable for being the loftiest 
 volcano in the world. It is a mountain of 
 Ecuador, South America, and its summit is 
 near 19,000 feet above the ocean. Its figure is 
 symmetrical, the crater nearly a mile in diam- 
 eter, surrounded by a wall of rock below which, 
 for nearly 5,000 feet, the mountain is in wrapped 
 with permanent snow, so that its irregularities 
 
VOLCANOES. 169 . 
 
 of surface are mostly concealed. The erup- 
 tions are rare. In 1743 and 1744 were re- 
 markable displays, when rocks of the size of 
 small buildings were hurled from the crater to 
 a distance of ten miles. The eruption of 1 768 
 belched forth such an amount of ashes and 
 cinders as turned day into night for miles 
 round about, and at places twenty-five miles 
 from the mountain the people were compelled 
 to carry lanterns for the most of the day. In 
 the eruption of 1803 its ashes were carried a 
 hundred and thirty miles, and the explosions 
 of the volcano were like heavy discharges of 
 artillery. It then remained quiet for half a 
 century, when in 1853, 1855, and 1856 it again 
 became active. 
 
 But probably the most remarkable volcano 
 in the world is that of Kilauea, on Hawaii, of 
 the Sandwich Islands. The mountain itself is 
 called Mauna Loa, and is 16,000 feet in height. 
 It has two craters, one upon the summit of 
 the mountain, and the other, Kilauea, much 
 lower down its sides. The two craters are 
 about sixteen miles apart, and by frequent erup- 
 tions, of late years, have poured out immense 
 amounts of lava, sending prodigious jets to a 
 
I/O THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 great distance into the air, and with explosions 
 heard forty miles away. In 1865 a huge lava 
 jet rushed at white heat into the air, some- 
 times a thousand feet, and continued thus for 
 twenty days and nights without cessation, 
 while the glare from the glowing lava, as it 
 streamed aloft, was discernible by night at a 
 distance of two hundred miles. The last great 
 eruption, March, 1868, was alluded to in the 
 preceding sketch. 
 
 But we must close these notices, though the 
 theme is so deeply interesting. You that 
 would gain a clearer idea of earthquakes and 
 volcanoes, and of the terribly destructive ef- 
 fects of their action at different periods of 
 time, should not fail to peruse Ponton's " Earth- 
 quakes and Volcanoes," a recently published 
 volume, full of interest and instruction. 
 
 It will be very useful to my young friends to 
 study well this great subject — one of the most 
 wonderful of all the features of this wonderful 
 globe which we, for a little space, are privileged 
 to inhabit, and where, if we will open our eyes, 
 unnumbered sublimities are constantly pre- 
 sented to our observation. 
 
XXXIV. 
 
 igawrns* 
 
 LTHOUGH the earth is probably 
 solid in the main, yet the subject of 
 earthquakes and volcanoes, of which I 
 have briefly treated, may remind us that it is 
 not entirely so ; and while there are deep re- 
 cesses where probably may be found the seats 
 of those awful disturbances alluded to in my 
 last three sketches, there are curious openings 
 or caverns nearer the earth's surface, which 
 may be said to constitute another interesting 
 feature of the globe. 
 
 The great Humboldt divided the earth's cav- 
 erns into three classes : of these the first are 
 fissures in the earth, having only one opening ; 
 the second having openings at both ends ; 
 
 the third and most numerous and interesting 
 
 171 
 
1/2 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 class comprises those which have a succession 
 of apartments opening into one another. 
 
 This class of caverns has been found to 
 exist in various countries of the earth, and 
 some of them of very considerable extent and 
 of exceeding interest. They frequently pre- 
 sent a magnificent appearance, and are often 
 ornamented with vast numbers of pillars some- 
 times variegated in color, and in other in- 
 stances, of transparent whiteness with glitter- 
 ing stalactites in countless numbers hanging 
 like huge icicles from the roof They are, in 
 fact, formed in the same manner with icicles, 
 and of the same substance, water; the dif- 
 ference being that while the icicle is water 
 frozen, the stalactite is water petrified, or turned 
 partly into stone ; the water trickling through 
 the "cavern roof being strongly impregnated 
 with limestone. As only a part of the water 
 is thus changed in passing down over the sta- 
 lactite, the remainder dropping from its point 
 forms another icicle, called a stalagmite, be- 
 neath it upon the floor. This is inverted, the 
 points of the one from the roof and that from 
 the floor being toward each other. These two 
 points, in process of time, meet each other and 
 
CAVERNS. 173 
 
 become one, thus forming those sohd columns 
 or pillars just alluded to, reaching from floor to 
 ceiling of the subterranean apartment. The 
 stalactites, however, do not always hang down 
 in the form of an icicle, but, at times, take the 
 shape of a great white sheet suspended from 
 the top of the cavern. Sometimes this sheet 
 is curved over a precipice, and thus has the as- 
 pect of a fall or cascade, as if, in the very act 
 of falling over the precipice, it was suddenly 
 congealed before reaching the depths below. 
 Then, again, to the columnar form just noticed 
 and sometimes superadded branches extending 
 out in diflerent directions, giving the appear- 
 ance of glistening and magnificent groves of 
 trees looming up amid the Plutonic landscape. 
 In some instances, these caverns seem to be 
 partially inhabited. Certain reptiles, appar- 
 ently of the serpent kind, have sometimes been 
 seen in them, and Humboldt found a cave of 
 Venezuela to be a habitation of prodigious 
 numbers of birds of a " nocturnal species," and 
 their clamor within the cavern was so tremen- 
 dous as to render frightful its gloomy re- 
 cesses, and was so appalling to the Indian 
 guides that they refused to proceed ; and the 
 
174 TI^iE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 traveler was obliged to retrace his steps. Also, 
 many European caverns present the phenome- 
 non of bones belonging to extinct species of 
 animals, and some of them well preserved. 
 Human bones have been found in some cav- 
 erns, but this is easily accounted for by the fact 
 that caverns have, in various ages of the world, 
 been used as cemeteries. Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob, with their wives, were thus buried. 
 
 Several remarkable caverns exist in our own 
 country ; as the celebrated Mammoth Cave in 
 Kentucky, WeiVs Cave in Virginia, Salt Peter 
 Cave in Missouri, and one or two others. The 
 last named has been recently discovered, and 
 is reported as promising to rival all the others 
 in extent and beauty. The Mammoth Cave 
 has been extensively explored, and travelers 
 have journeyed through its various passages, 
 windings, and apartments, to the distance of 
 ten miles from the entrance, have boated on 
 its dark river, feasted upon its eyeless fish, and 
 witnessed many of its gloomy wonders. 
 
CAVERNS 
 
XXXV. 
 
 OJCfes* 
 
 EOLOGISTS apply the term Rock to 
 all varieties of substances composing 
 the earth's crust, whether they be hard 
 or soft. In popular language, however, we use 
 the term to express only those portions which 
 have become indurated or hardened ; and thus 
 we, in common style, distinguish between 
 rocks which are hard, and soils which are soft. 
 Geologists divide rocks into four great 
 classes in reference to their orgin ; namely, 
 the Aqueous, VolcaniCy Plutonic, and Meta- 
 morphic. 
 
 The aqueous rocks are such as are produced 
 by the action of water. Here belong the lime- 
 stone and sandstone rocks, also many of the 
 slates, and gypsum. Of course, this class of 
 
 175 
 
1/6 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 rocks is of prodigious extent upon the globe, 
 and of great use to mankind. 
 
 The volcanic rocks are such as were pro- 
 duced by the action of fire, or subterranean 
 heat. This is a far less extensive class of rocks 
 than the aqueous. It comprises, of course, the 
 lavas, and also the porphyries, greenstone, and 
 the basalts, as well as numerous crystalline 
 and columnal rocks. 
 
 The plutoiiic rocks comprise the famous 
 granites, which are called plutonic from the 
 great depth in the earth at which they are re- 
 puted to have been formed. The granites are 
 also called primitive rocks, as having their 
 geological place the lowest of all the rock, and, 
 in fact, at depths too immense to be ascer- 
 tained. Wherever we might please to pene- 
 trate down through all other strata of rocks, 
 we should come, at last, to granite, as the 
 foundation of them all ; while still descending, 
 we should encounter nothing but the same 
 rock modified only by the influence of heat. 
 
 Granite is a composite rock, being made up 
 of several minerals, and has various hues, as 
 red, white, black, or gray, according as one or 
 another of these minerals predominate in the 
 
ROCKS. 177 
 
 formation of the rock. For the same reason 
 have been assigned to it several names or 
 epithets, designating different quahties. 
 
 The granite rock is extensively used as a 
 building material in the construction of bridges 
 and various engineering works, also public 
 buildings and dwellings, while for such pur- 
 poses its excellence is unrivaled. 
 
 And as its use is thus extensive, so its 
 abundance upon the globe is inexhaustible. 
 Large extents of the earth's surface are covered 
 with it. Countless and vast quarries are un- 
 der our feet, and many a mountain is mainly 
 composed of it, while it doubtless forms the 
 axis or "backbone" of far-reaching mountain 
 ranges. 
 
 And who is He that has ordained the most 
 useful rock to be, at the same time, the most 
 abundant ? and from what principle did He so 
 order ? 
 
 The metamorphic rocks are a class compris- 
 ing rocks of a highly crystalline texture. Mar- 
 ble, quartz, serpentine, gneiss, certain slates, 
 and other rocks belong here. 
 
 Rocks, as we see them on the surface of the 
 ground, in pastures and fields and of every 
 
178 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 shape and size, some fast and some loose, lime- 
 stone, sandstone, granite, conglomerate, etc., 
 what are all these? They are fragments of 
 rock — debris separated from large masses of 
 rock ; and by means of water, ice, and, perhaps, 
 other agencies, were, in some age long past, 
 swept over different regions and countries. 
 Upon some localities — as, for instance, much 
 of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, 
 and Virginia — these fragments were drifted in 
 large quantities, while farther west, and along 
 the great Mississippi Valley, comparatively few 
 were left as the great flood swept over it. 
 
 All this occurred not in our day, nor since 
 the present arrangement of terrestrial affairs 
 was instituted ; and the aspiring youth, who 
 would look up the " times and seasons," must 
 pass far beyond what is termed the historic 
 period, and peer amid the mysterious geolog- 
 ical ages. 
 
THE HOCK AND THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 
 
XXXVI. 
 
 Minjatals— Iron* 
 
 INERAL is a name which is applied 
 to any inorganic substance having a 
 chemical composition. But for the 
 various classes and orders into which mineralo- 
 gists have arranged the mineral world, I must 
 refer you to their several scientific treaties. 
 It belongs to my province and purpose in 
 these familiar sketches to glance at merely a 
 few of the more prominent specimens. 
 
 Included among minerals are gases and salts 
 of chemistry. Here belong, also, water, car- 
 bon, and sulphur. Here, too, are the metallic 
 ores, as those of iron, zinc, arsenic, mercury, 
 lead, tin, copper, and others. So, likewise, the 
 metals themselves are reckoned as minerals, as 
 
 well as those just named, as, also, the noble 
 
 179 
 
l80 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 minerals — gold, silver, and platinum. The 
 mineral world comprises, further, all the pre- 
 cious gems, so much prized by both the civil- 
 ized and uncivilized world. These are dia- 
 monds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, turquoises, 
 opals, also the topaz, garnet, amethyst, onyx, 
 and others. 
 
 Rich, then, is the earth in its mineral treas- 
 ures, both such as are useful and such as are 
 ornamental — while here is presented another 
 capital feature, strongly illustrative of the 
 munificent goodness of the great Architect. 
 Let us note an example or two drawn from 
 this untold abundance and variety of mineral 
 wealth. 
 
 As one of these, we, of course, select Iron, 
 at the same time the most useful and the most 
 abundant of the minerals. 
 
 The application and uses of iron are innu- 
 merable, and range from works of the finest 
 and most delicate character, to such as are the 
 most ponderous and massive. Its capacity ex- 
 tends from a thread like to the finest gossamer 
 to the huge anchor, fitted to hold to its moor- 
 ings a ship of 10,000 tons. Hence, its adapta- 
 tions are almost endless. "The most massive 
 
MINERALS— IRON. 1 8 1 
 
 metallic works," says one, " are made of it, and, 
 also, the most delicate instruments, as the 
 hair-springs of watches, in which the metal 
 attains a far higher value, weight for weight, 
 than that of gold itself" The same writer 
 adds that " no other material is so enhanced in 
 price by the valuable qualities imparted to it 
 by labor. A bar of iron worth ^5, is worth 
 ^10.50 when made into horseshoes, ^55 in the 
 form of needles, ^3,285 in penknife-blades, 
 ^29,480 in shirt-buttons, and ^250,000 in 
 balance-springs of watches." 
 
 Look around you, within doors and without, 
 and mark the universal prevalence of this won- 
 derful substance. Note the cutlery of every 
 shape, and sort, and purpose — the furniture 
 from kitchen to parlor, the house itself Sur- 
 vey your own persons and select the garment, 
 large or small, which has not received the 
 touch of iron. Pass now into the street and 
 look upon the great city ; what is there that 
 has escaped its contact.^ The stones of the 
 sidewalk, and of every massive edifice — every 
 window, and door, and sign, and lamp-post, and 
 ornament, and merchandise — iron is either 
 there or has been there. Glance at the ten 
 
1 82 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 thousand vehicles, from the humblest cart to 
 the lordliest chariot, survey every harness, and 
 every horse's hoof; what of all these separate 
 from iron? Mount the cars, and fly over the 
 country. But, as you ride, what is at your 
 elbow, overhead, before, behind, beneath? and 
 what is the appropriate epithet of that mighty 
 "horse" at whose heels you are rushing as if 
 '' on the wings of the wind ?" Pause at the 
 farm-house, and glance at plow, and harrow, 
 and hoe, and rake, and pitchfork, and crow- 
 bar, and shovel, and scythe, and mower, and 
 reaper, and thrasher, and winnower, and all 
 the rest, and then ask the prosperous farmer 
 what he would do but for iron? Ask the same 
 of every mechanic, every manufacturer, every 
 tradesman, every teacher, every author, every 
 soldier, every ruler, and if there be any other 
 occupation or profession, useful or otherwise. 
 Propose to yourself a foreign voyage, and go 
 aboard ship. But you never would venture 
 away to sea unless satisfied that your ship had 
 within itself the unyielding strength which 
 iron alone can insure. 
 
 But enough. It is a trite observation to say 
 that of all the minerals embraced in the bowels 
 
MINERALS— IRON. 1 83 
 
 of the earth, iron is incomparably the most 
 useful. None is applied to half as many uses, 
 none is used in half so great an abundance. 
 
 And right here note carefully another of the 
 divine correspondencies. While, on the one 
 hand, the use of iron is so abundant, the sup- 
 ply, on the other hand, is literally inexhausti- 
 ble. The earth teems with iron, and its 
 abundance is also widely diffused over many 
 lands. As a partial exhibit of this abundance, 
 I subjoin the report from several countries of 
 the yield of iron for the year 1861, presented 
 at the International Exhibition of 1862. The 
 product in 
 
 Great Britain was . . , . 3,712,390 tons. 
 
 France, 900,000 " 
 
 Prussia, . . . . . . 307,400 " 
 
 Russia, 250,000 " 
 
 Sweden, 215,000 " 
 
 Spain, . . . . . . 50,000 " 
 
 Italy, 38,000 " 
 
 United States, .... 750,000 " 
 
 That is, in these countries alone, six and a 
 quarter million tons of iron were taken from 
 the earth in a single year, and, of course, we 
 may reasonably infer that something like this 
 vast amount was, in an equal time, put to use. 
 
XXXVII. 
 
 l§!oaU 
 
 MONG the mineral treasures of the 
 earth, that which ranks next in im- 
 portance to iron, is probably coaL 
 Coal is one of the geological formations 
 comprised in the earth's crust, and it exists in 
 the shape of layers of greater or less thickness, 
 and which are termed coal-measures by the 
 geologist. It is of vegetable origin, and may 
 be regarded as fossil wood, which, from being 
 long and deeply buried in the earth, has under- 
 gone certain chemical changes, and was thus 
 transformed into coal. 
 
 As found in our own country, there are three 
 
 qualities or kinds of coal, distinguished by the. 
 
 epithets Anthracite, Bituminous, and Cannel. 
 
 Of these, anthracite is the oldest, hardest, and 
 
 184 
 
COAL. 
 
 185 
 
 densest, kindles with more difficulty, but burns /J/M^ 
 the longest, and without flame, and affords the 
 greatest amount of heat. 
 
 BiUmtinous coal is so called from its being 
 charged with bitumen, which causes it to burn 
 more readily than anthracite, and in burning 
 it emits a bright flame, as well as smoke, and 
 a tarry odor. From this, coal oil is extracted, 
 and illuminating gas is manufactured. 
 
 Cannel coal is highly bituminous, but of a 
 closer texture than the common bituminous 
 coal, and more easily kindled, but of much less 
 extent. 
 
 The anthracite coal is produced mainly in 
 Pennsylvania, east of the Alleghanies, while 
 the bituminous coal, commencing west of thdr ^iM 
 mountain range, spreads extensively along 
 many of the States of the Mississippi Valley. 
 These immense coal-fields extend through 
 Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, Kentucky, Ten- 
 nessee, into Alabama; another great coal-field 
 occupies the most of Illinois and Western In- 
 diana ; still another occupies parts of Iowa and 
 Missouri ; another field the central portion of 
 Michigan, while there is also a small coal re- 
 gion in Rhode Island ; yet another great coal 
 
1 86 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 area is comprised within Nova Scotia and New 
 Brunswick. 
 
 Crossing to Europe we find coal-fields un- 
 derlying about one-tenth of Great Britain, or 
 nearly 12,000 square miles. In many of the 
 other European countries coal is found, though 
 much less extensively. China, Persia, Hindo- 
 stan, and several other Asiatic countries pro- 
 duce it in abundance ; also, Australasia, and 
 many of the islands of the great Eastern 
 Archipelago. 
 
 You may see in the following table the coal 
 areas of this country and Europe : 
 
 Great Britain, 
 
 . 11,859 
 
 squar 
 
 e miles. 
 
 Spain, ... 
 
 3.408 
 
 
 
 France, . . . 
 
 . • 1,719 
 
 
 
 Belgium, 
 
 518 
 
 
 
 British Provinces, 
 
 . 18,000 
 
 
 
 Pennsylvania, . 
 
 . . 15,437 
 
 
 
 Twelve other States, . 
 
 . 133.132 
 
 
 
 Thus, in these countries alone, there are 
 nearly 200,000 square miles of coal area, three- 
 fourths of which belong to our own territory. 
 
 It is computed that about 150,000,000 of 
 tons of coal are annually dug out of the earth. 
 About two-thirds of this amount is mined in 
 Great Britain, where coal is more extensively 
 used and more highly valued than in any other 
 
COAL. 187 
 
 part of the world. The amount annually ex- 
 ported from England to foreign countries has 
 exceeded, up to 1850, the entire annual prod- 
 uct of American mining ; and it is calcula- 
 ted that the coal-fields of England and Wales 
 could furnish its usual supply, of about eighty 
 or ninety million tons annually, for a thousand 
 years yet to come. But greater things than 
 this could be told of American coal-fields ; to 
 exhaust which it is quite safe to say that more 
 than a million of years would be required. 
 
 Such are the riches of coal as well as of iron, 
 two great sister interests, destined to go hand 
 in hand so long as the world shall survive, and 
 to stand among the mighty pillars of an ever- 
 advancing civilization, and of an unprecedented 
 material, intellectual, moral, and national pros- 
 perity. 
 
XXXVIII, 
 
 $j:iils. 
 
 soils 
 
 T is natural, after discanting upon 
 rocks and minerals, to speak of Soils, 
 inasmuch as from rocks the several 
 are, to a considerable extent, derived. 
 
 Soils are the daughters of rocks, and come 
 from the disintegration of the latter, the dis- 
 integrated materials being mixed with decayed 
 vegetable matter. The process of disintegra- 
 tion is carried on partly by chemical action 
 upon the rocks, by different agencies in the at- 
 mosphere, and partly by the wearing action of 
 water either in a fluid or a frozen states Some- 
 times the soil of a given locality is formed 
 from disintegrated materials which have been 
 brought by flowing water or glacier action from 
 
 a great distance, as in the case of what are 
 
 i88 
 
SOILS. 189 
 
 called alluvial soils, or river "bottom lands/* 
 and, also, what are known as drift soils. But 
 most soils are found adjoining or overlying the 
 rocks from which they have been produced. 
 
 Soils are of very various depths, from a sin- 
 gle inch or two to several feet. I speak here 
 of the special soil that affords nourishment to 
 plants. Beneath this occurs an immediate 
 and decisive change, and we come to a stratum 
 of earth, or rock, or both, which is unmixed 
 with decayed vegetable matter, and is, of 
 course, unfitted for the support of plants. 
 This is termed subsoil, and is generally of a 
 lighter color than the fruitful soil lying above 
 it. But this barren subsoil may also be made 
 fertile by being turned up and exposed for a 
 time to the fertilizing influences of the atmos- 
 phere ; and thus it is that many soils, originally 
 thin and partially unproductive, are rendered 
 deeper and permanently better. 
 
 Soils comprise about eighteen elements, 
 while yet only four of these go to constitute 
 their principal bulk, the others existing in only 
 minute quantities. The four principal elements 
 are silica, aluminay lime, and humus. Thus, 
 from silica we have the silicious or sandy soils, 
 
1 90 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 from alumina, the clayey soils, from lime, the 
 calcareous soils, and from humus, the humous 
 soils, these last being made up, in great part, 
 of decayed organic matter, vegetable or ani- 
 mal, or both. 
 
 Neither of these several soils, by itself, is 
 best suited to agricultural purposes. The 
 farmer, for instance, delights not in a soil that 
 is " too sandy " or " too clayey." The former, 
 though easy to cultivate, yet often lacks fertil- 
 ity, and is too little retentive of moisture — the 
 rain sinking easily and quickly through it. 
 On the other hand, the soil that is too clayey 
 is heavy and laborious to work, too retentive 
 of water, and thus, under the sun's influence, 
 is prone to become baked into clods instead of 
 dissolving into that mellowness of texture so 
 pleasant to the hand of cultivation. 
 
 Thus it follows that, so far as sand and clay 
 are concerned, that soil is nearest to perfection 
 which holds both in proper mixture. Then 
 the facile sand mollifies the stiflhess of the 
 clay, while the retentive clay remedies the 
 leakiness of the sand. This mixture of the 
 two soils constitutes what is termed loam^ and 
 the result is a clay loam or a sandy loamy 
 
SOILS. 191 
 
 according as the clay or sand predominates. 
 The skillful farmer, in estabUshing himself, 
 will, if possible, secure both of these soils, and 
 then, as you shall visit him and roam over his 
 harvest fields, you will observe his wheat wav- 
 ing in beauty over the broad clay loams, while 
 the barley, rye, and various root crops over- 
 spread the sand loams of the ample domain. 
 
 Calcareous soils are sometimes clayey, though 
 more generally sandy, while the hjimoits soil is 
 different from either, being of a "spongy and 
 elastic texture," and of a color dark almost to 
 blackness, being composed mainly of decayed 
 vegetable matter. You may, at any time, 
 notice it, as you roam in the woods, where, be- 
 neath the fallen leaves, it lies in its perfection, 
 and is one of the richest of all soils. 
 
 Various are the modes by which soils are 
 improved and thus rendered more productive, 
 and Science has come in to lend her powerful 
 aid to an improvement so important. The 
 grand desideratum is to ascertain the special 
 lack of any soil in elements requisite for 
 production, and the requisite supplying of 
 those elements. Hence, the proper mixture of 
 soils as above alluded to. Hence, also, the 
 
192 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 application of the appropriate manures and in 
 appropriate quantities. Hence, too, drainage 
 where water is excessive, and irrigation where 
 it is deficient. And so it has, in many an 
 instance, come to pass that a wilderness has 
 literally been turned, into a fruitful field, and 
 the desert has been made to rejoice and blos- 
 som as the rose. 
 
 Nor should my young friends lightly pass 
 over this great matter of the earth's soils. 
 Hence came our varied sustenance, and all 
 those useful and delicious fruits by which we 
 are daily regaled and refreshed. How wonder- 
 ful as well as benevolent that by the mysteri- 
 ous combinations of a few slight elements and 
 agencies, all this prodigious world of utility, 
 luxury, and beauty is elaborated, advanced, and 
 perfected! Here most marvelously the great 
 God becomes a partner and fellow-worker with 
 man. We are to prepare these soils, plant and 
 cultivate them, and as we do so, he intervenes 
 to spread them all over with the corresponding 
 harvest. " He opens His hand and supplies 
 the wants of every living thing." 
 
XXXIX. 
 
 grrasses* 
 
 ^^||RASS is a general name given to a 
 ^^1 great variety of plants, and in its larg- 
 ^^ia est sense comprehends the several 
 grains, as maize, wheat, rye, barley, oats, rice, 
 etc. These are more generally called the ce- 
 real grasses, from Ceres^ the Greek and Roman 
 Goddess of grain and harvests. 
 
 What are commonly called grasses in dis- 
 tinction from the above, are such plants as 
 naturally spring up in the field, pasture, and 
 common, and clothe the ground as with a ver- 
 dant and graceful garment, and forming a sod 
 of more or less firmness. While the cereal 
 grasses seem designed more especially for 
 human sustenance, the common grasses are 
 equally adapted and useful as food for many of 
 
 13 193 
 
194 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the domestic and wild animals. A few grasses, 
 however, seem to be of little or no use for food, 
 while some are of a poisonous character. Or- 
 dinarily, as grasses grow in pasture-lands, sev- 
 eral species are found flourishing together; 
 and this is to be placed among the benevolent 
 arrangements of the Divine Providence, that 
 thus provides an agreeable variety for beast, 
 as it has also done for man. The horse and 
 the ox, as they graze abroad upon hill, vale, or 
 prairie, are not, as might be supposed, con- 
 demned to a perpetual sameness of food and 
 taste ; a pleasant variety is spread out before 
 them as well as for us, and to them, also, it is 
 given to select such viands as may be most 
 agreeable to their palate, or instinctively to 
 feed upon those varieties which are best 
 adapted to their present condition of health. 
 And flocks and herds spreading themselves 
 abroad over the green pasture-lands, all ''re- 
 ceiving their meat from God," present to the 
 eye one of the pleasant scenes of the world. 
 It is one of the innumerable pictures sketched 
 for us in living colors by the great Artist, who 
 "covereth the heaven with clouds, who pre- 
 pareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to 
 
GRASSES. 195 
 
 grow upon the mountains, who giveth to the 
 beast his food, and to the young ravens which 
 cry." 
 
 And equally beautiful is the picture, so often 
 seen, of the more cultivated grasses as they 
 bloom and wave along the rich and fertile 
 meadow-lands. Such are the several clover 
 varieties, the red-top, the prairie, and blue 
 grasses, and especially the timothy, that prince 
 of food-plants for domestic animals, and whose 
 tall stems and ample heads, as they bend and 
 sway before the breeze, remind you of gentle 
 billows gliding over Summer seas. These are 
 the more prominent grasses which the farmer 
 transforms into hay, and lays it up in his store- 
 houses and barns for the Winter food of his 
 flocks when they can no longer graze abroad. 
 Upon this, all along the Winter months, they 
 feed and flourish, sheltered, meanwhile, in their 
 sunny yards from the fierce north-western 
 blasts, or gather within their stalls secure from 
 the wild snow-storm sweeping afar over their 
 forsaken pasture-lands. 
 
 " Now, Shepherd, to your helpless charge be kmd ; 
 Baffle the raging year, and fill their pens 
 With food at will ; lodge them below the storm, 
 
196 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 And watch them strict ; for from the bellowmg east, 
 In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing 
 Sweeps up the burden of whole wint'ry plains 
 In one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, 
 Hid in the hollow of two neighboring hills, 
 The billowy tempest whelms ; till upward urged. 
 The valley to a shining mountain swells, 
 Tipped with a wreath high curling in the sky." 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 Aside from all ideas of food for man and 
 beast, what would our world be unadorned 
 with this universal, spontaneous, and beautiful 
 carpeting spread abroad by the great, kind 
 hand of Nature's God.^^ Think of one great, 
 bare, bald world, meeting the eye from every 
 direction ; no green spot, no little oasis amid 
 the interminable desert, no blade of grass, no 
 leaf or stem or fragrant flower, a wide-spread, 
 ghastly, unsightly Sahara from pole to pole ! 
 Such an earth might do for lizards, for hideous 
 and dust-eating serpents, and other reptile 
 monsters, and for ravenous beasts of prey, but 
 man would soon pine, and sicken, and per- 
 ish there, and so the great Father has made 
 for us a better and more suitable provision. 
 
 " He makes the grass the hills adorn, 
 He clothes the smiling fields with corn. 
 The beasts with food His hands supply, 
 And the young ravens when they cry." 
 
XL. 
 
 Tr^^s* 
 
 ROM g7'ass, the beautiful carpeting 
 of the earth, the transition is natural 
 to the trees with which this same 
 earth is also adorned. Indeed, if the grass 
 may be contemplated as the carpet of this 
 splendid apartment of nature, trees may not 
 inaptly be designated as a prominent part of 
 tho. furmtii7^e placed upon its magnificent floor. 
 And who shall adequately picture the superb 
 beauty of these pieces of furniture.^ A tree! 
 Look at it and consider it well. There it 
 stands in its gay and stately pride, and invites 
 your attention. Suppose you never before 
 looked upon such an object ; what would be 
 your sensations — a foundation deeply rooted 
 
 and firmly intrenched so that the strength of 
 
 197 
 
198 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 a thousand hands could hardly disturb it? 
 Thence ascends that tall, straight column, 
 slightly and regularly tapering as the eye fol- 
 lows it upward. There is nothing hollow or 
 spurious, deceptive or weak, in that shaft. A 
 hundred tons might rest upon it safely. Now 
 contemplate those branches springing in each 
 direction from the column. How firmly and 
 intimately are they united with it! How 
 gracefully they curve upward and outward and 
 then downward ! How curious and beautiful 
 their own branchings and sub-branchings ! 
 How wonderful the foliage overspreading them 
 all ! So with all the branches, as, gradually di- 
 minishing in size, they approach the summit of 
 the leafy structure. And now, standing at a lit- 
 tle distance, glance at the tout ensemble of this 
 vegetable erection ; contemplate its wealth of 
 foliage, the rich variety in the lines, and curves, 
 and arches of its frame-work, the quiet bending 
 of the thousand branches and little world of 
 leaves as the Summer zephyr breathes softly 
 through them, the unspeakable gracefulness 
 and dignity of the entire aspect and bearing. 
 This is one of God's trees whereof he has 
 ordered countless millions, and spread them 
 
THE TREE. 
 
TREES. 199 
 
 lavishly along the earth, and of every conceiv- 
 able and inconceivable variety ; large and 
 small, tall and humble, deciduous and ever- 
 green, fruit-bearing and ornamental, hardy and 
 tender, and if there be any other terms ex- 
 pressive of their countless variations. Some- 
 times a specimen stands out by itself, solitary 
 and alone like a monument reared in the midst 
 of a plain ; sometimes two or three stand up 
 together, as when so many neighbors meet and 
 converse with each other. Sometimes they 
 are grouped in lovely groves of more or less 
 extent ; and then, again, they spread out in 
 immense forests, whose dimensions must be 
 measured by leagues, and amid whose somber 
 shades roam the wild beast and savage or bar- 
 barian men. 
 
 Trees, like the grass which they over- 
 shadow, are the spontaneous and normal out- 
 growth of* the soil. Their seeds are every- 
 where, save in barren deserts, and every-where, 
 unless prevented, they spring up and occupy 
 the landscape. They form a capital feature of 
 the habitable world, and have done so from 
 the beginning; and they and the green grass 
 comprise the present earth's earliest life. For, 
 
200 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 before man or beast began to be, God said, 
 "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb 
 yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit 
 after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the 
 earth, and it was so/' And the first pair saw, 
 as one of their earliest visions of Paradise, 
 "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and 
 good for food." 
 
 And down all the ages trees have had prom- 
 inent notice, and been especially loved and 
 celebrated, and been intimately interwoven 
 with great events, while with their towering 
 trunks and graceful branches, have been 
 wreathed ten thousand times ten thousand of 
 man's deepest, tenderest associations. Under 
 a palm-tree dwelt the ancient Deborah ; and 
 up among its foliage ascended the glad notes 
 of her famous song of victory ; while the " trees 
 planted by rivers of water," " the tall oaks of 
 Bashan," "the cedars of Lebanon," "fruitful fig- 
 trees," "trees of frankincense," and the "tree 
 of life," are sources of resplendent imagery in 
 the Hebrew poetry. So also in classic song, 
 and in the modern poetry, as well as in all his- 
 tory, trees have asserted their rightful promi- 
 nence. Art has attested and imitated their 
 
TREES. 201 
 
 loveliness, and civilization has lauded their 
 beauty as well as their utility, while taste and 
 culture have ever pointed to them as an indis- 
 pensable and capital ornament of the perfect 
 landscape. No pleasant home nor garden of 
 delight is deemed possible without their pres- 
 ence ; and their waving forms, and varied mu- 
 sic, and refreshing shades are of themselves 
 well-nigh sufficient to transform the unsightly 
 waste into a paradise. Children love and re- 
 vere their stately forms. Youth and beauty 
 linger delightedly within their grateful shad- 
 ows, and old age is never weary of sitting be- 
 neath those same branches that used to wave 
 above them in younger and brighter days. 
 
XLI. 
 
 ^se$ of Tre^s* 
 
 F the use and indispensable need of 
 trees as an ornament, we have writ- 
 ten sufficiently; but they have other 
 great uses, some of which are entirely obvious 
 to every one. From many varieties, as already 
 hinted, we have fruit in abundance,, and "good 
 for food," as well as delicious to the taste. 
 Nor can there be a clearer proof of the Divine 
 goodness and benevolence than what is fur- 
 nished in the wondrous variety of fruit-trees, 
 and the variety, excellence, and usefulness of 
 the fruits which they produce for the benefit 
 and happiness of mankind. 
 
 Another vital use of trees is the ///^/ which 
 they furnish. Having served their purposes as 
 trees, whether for ornament, fruit, or other uses, 
 
 202 
 
USES OF TREES. 203 
 
 they may be converted into fuel, and thus, be- 
 sides all the other useful purposes to which 
 fuel is applied, serve to produce in our houses, 
 in Winter-time, the genial warmth of Summer, 
 and create a paradise where otherwise there 
 would be frost and utter desolation. Hence it 
 is not too much to say of trees that their 
 excellence is prominent at all seasons. In 
 Spring-time they delight us by the putting 
 forth of their varied foliage and blossomings ; 
 in Summer they refresh us with their grateful 
 shade ; in Autumn they present us with an 
 endless variety of fruits ; and in Winter they 
 warm our habitations and fill them with gayety 
 and gladness. 
 
 So, also, it is hardly necessary to name the 
 immense use of trees for furnishing htmber as 
 well as fuel. From trees come the timbers, 
 joists, boards, shingles, etc., which enter into 
 the structure of buildings ; and from trees, as 
 a principal material, are constructed vast cities, 
 the myriads of ships that sail over seas, lakes, 
 and rivers, the bridges that span mighty 
 streams, the carriages of every sort that roll 
 along the streets and roads of the world, the 
 fences that, through hundreds of thousands of 
 
204 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 linear miles, make the boundaries of public 
 and private inclosures, the foundations over 
 which roll all the locomotives and cars on 
 earth, the furniture adorning the houses and 
 palaces of all nations, and a multitude of 
 minor uses innumerable. 
 
 Yet further, trees are of great use — greater 
 than what is generally known and appre- 
 ciated—for sheltering cultivated lands, and 
 especially the lands devoted to the cultivation 
 of fruits. They present a strong barrier 
 against the rushing in of violent and sweeping 
 winds, often so disastrous to fruits and fruit- 
 trees ; and thus they do much to temper the 
 atmosphere and climate of localities over- 
 spread with orchards and gardens, and con- 
 tribute essentially to their fruitfulness as well 
 as safety. 
 
 And trees and forests have much to do with 
 the adequate amount of water for the proper 
 moisture of the soil, and the production of 
 crops adapted to the sustenance of man and 
 beast. Forest trees, and the ground which 
 they shade, are one of the sources of evap- 
 oration from which rain-clouds are formed. 
 Water falling from the clouds into the world 
 
USES OF TREES. 205 
 
 of foliage much of which is shaded from the 
 sun, and falUng also upon the shaded ground 
 beneath, abundant moisture from rains is re- 
 tained here long after it is dried away from 
 neighboring localities that are cleared of trees 
 and exposed to the sun's rays. Thus the forest 
 often presents a scene of moisture when all is 
 dry and parched outside. Hence, from the 
 imm.ense expanse of moist leaves and branches 
 and land surface, the process of evaporation 
 goes forward as from an extended surface of 
 water, contributing to those falls of rain so 
 necessary to vegetation, and to the bringing 
 forward the fruits of the earth. All this has, 
 in repeated instances, been amply illustrated 
 by the disastrous and almost fatal influence 
 upon cultivated regions of country arising from 
 laying bare large extents of forest lands, and 
 thus exposing them, as well as the rest of the 
 territory, to the rapidly drying influence of the 
 sun's rays. 
 
 To the above uses of trees might be added 
 their direct salutary influence upon the at- 
 mosphere by aiding to temper any injurious 
 excess of carbonic acid, and probably by other 
 means more subtile and obscure. 
 
XLII. 
 
 Tides. 
 
 I IDES are the alternate rising and fall- 
 ing of the ocean waters, as well as of 
 rivers and bays communicating with 
 them, and which are nearly on the sea level. 
 The rising of the waters is called the Flood 
 tide, and the falling is called the Ebb tide. 
 The highest elevation of the water is called 
 High tide, the lowest depression. Low tide ; 
 and the difference between high and low water 
 varies in different circumstances and places. 
 In New York harbor, for example, the mean 
 difference is about four feet, while in Boston 
 harbor this difference is nearly ten feet; at 
 Liverpool, it is 15 J feet ; at London, 22 feet ; at 
 Bristol, England, 33 feet ; in the Bay of Fundy, 
 
 sometimes 100 feet. 
 
 206 
 
TIDES. 207 
 
 The tides are caused by the attraction of 
 the sun and moon, especially the latter, upon 
 the great ocean of waters. Though the moon 
 is so much smaller than the sun, yet its greater 
 proximity to the earth gives it a much greater 
 attractive force upon the water than what is 
 ^exerted by the sun. Hence, the great Tidal 
 WavBy so called, accompanies the moon in its 
 circuit round the earth, every twenty-four hours 
 and fifty minutes. The great elevation of the 
 waters, however, is not precisely under the 
 moon, but, owing to their feig^gti inertia, the 
 tidal wave or swell lags somewhat behind the 
 moon's progress, and thus may be said more 
 properly to follow than to accompany her on 
 her course. The difference of time between 
 that of the moon on a given meridian and that 
 of the summit of the tidal wave coming under 
 the same meridian, is from two to three hours. 
 Within the space of twenty-four hours and 
 fifty minutes there are two high and two low 
 tides, instead of one of each. If it is high 
 tide, for instance, at Sandy Hook this morning 
 at 6 o'clock, it will be high tide there again at 
 twenty-five minutes past six this evening, and 
 again to-morrow morning at fifty minutes past 
 
208 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 six. You will ask how this can be when the 
 tides are principally caused by the moon's at- 
 traction 6f the waters, and when the moon 
 passes over them only once instead of twice in 
 the twenty-four hours and fifty minutes ? This 
 is because there is always a high tide at the 
 same time on opposite sides of the globe. 
 Hence, soon after the moon is over Boston, it 
 will be high tide there, and a little more than 
 twelve hours afterward, when the moon is un- 
 der Boston, it will be high tide there again. 
 Two causes seem to operate to produce this 
 phenomenon : first, that when the moon is over 
 Boston, it not only attracts the waters to a cer- 
 tain degree, but it attracts the whole solid 
 earth, though to a less degree. This tends to 
 withdraw the land measurably from the water 
 on the opposite side of the globe, thus render- 
 ing the water deeper, or causing a high tide 
 there. It is supposed, also, that this opposite 
 high tide is aided by the greater centrifugal 
 force operating there by the revolution of the 
 earth upon its axis. 
 
 The tides are not always equally high. On 
 the contrary, twice a month there are two 
 tides unusually high, and two unusually low; 
 
TIDES. 209 
 
 and they occur on this wise. At new moon, 
 you have noticed that the sun and moon are in 
 the same direction from the earth, and, conse- 
 quently, their attractive force upon the earth 
 is harmonious ; that is, they draw in the same 
 direction, and, of course, with their combined 
 force. This combined force always attracts 
 a heavy tidal wave, and, on these occasions, 
 the tide is two feet higher at New York, 
 and at Boston more than three feet higher 
 than the usual tides. A similar phenome- 
 non occurs a fortnight afterward when the 
 moon is full, and is in opposition to the sun. 
 On the other hand, when the moon is at her 
 first and third quarters, the sun and moon 
 drawing at right angles with each other, and 
 the force of each, consequently, hindering in- 
 stead of helping the other, the tides are then 
 lowest, and are called Neap tides. 
 
 As we have noticed above, bays and rivers, 
 in numerous cases, are affected by ocean tides, 
 being alternately filled and emptied every 
 twelve and a half hours. Rivers that are af- 
 fected by the tides are seen to change their 
 current once in six hours, flowing up as the 
 tide is rising, and down as it is falling. Thus 
 
 14 
 
210 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the Connecticut River is influenced by the 
 tide as far as Hartford, and the Hudson as far 
 as Albany ; while the great tributaries of the 
 Mississippi never meet the tide, and the main 
 river itself, with its world of waters, seems 
 scarcely to feel its influence. As you might 
 suppose, high and low tides are always later in 
 bays and rivers than the ocean tides, the dif- 
 ference of time being, according to circum- 
 stances, from one to several hours. 
 
XLIII. 
 
 xvets. 
 
 E have before written touching the 
 great ocean of waters that is com- 
 puted to cover nearly three-quarters 
 of the globe. Also, we have noticed that evap- 
 oration, constantly going on from this vast 
 water surface, forms clouds in the atmosphere, 
 which, being drifted by the winds over the 
 land, fall in the shape of rain. A portion of 
 the water thus falling upon the ground sinks 
 to considerable depths until it reaches a stra- 
 tum of the earth, or some rocky bed, which 
 it can not penetrate, and thus are formed 
 those underground pools and reservoirs which 
 are the sources of innumerable springs and 
 fountains. Another portion of the water that 
 falls to the ground from the clouds flows off in 
 
 211 
 
212 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the shape of brooks and rivulets, great num- 
 bers of which, running into a single channel, 
 form a river, while this, continually receiving 
 tributary streams from right and left as it goes 
 on its downward course, often becomes a deep 
 and mighty stream, sufficient to float large ves- 
 sels, and finally flows into the ocean. This 
 great water operation is going on without a 
 moment's cessation over the globe, Hke as, in 
 animals, the blood is perpetually issuing from 
 the heart and returning to it again. 
 
 The great rivers of the earth, in most every 
 case, have their origin among the lofty mount- 
 ain ranges. Thus the Amazon, Orinoko, and 
 La Plata, of South America, commence among 
 the Andes ; the Missouri, in the Rocky 
 Mountains ; the Indus and Ganges among the 
 Himalayas, and the Danube among the Alps. 
 Some famous rivers, however, begin immedi- 
 ately from lakes of which they form the out- 
 let. Thus the Mississippi starts from Lake 
 Itasca, the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario, 
 the Rhone from. Lake Geneva, and the Jordan 
 from the Lake or Sea of Tiberias. 
 
 Rivers have ever been esteemed among the 
 interesting and beautiful features of the earth. 
 
RIVERS. 213 
 
 In fact, no landscape, however attractive other- 
 wise, seems to be perfect, in which water 
 scenery, either river or lake, is wanting. A 
 valley stretching between lofty highlands is 
 often beautiful ; but it is doubly so if, per- 
 chance, a gentle river is seen meandering 
 through its pleasant groves and verdant mead- 
 ows. So, also, rivers are useful as they are 
 beautiful. If navigable, they afford channels 
 of commerce from one country to another, or 
 between different and distant parts of the 
 same country. Consider the vast commerce 
 floating upon the Mississippi and its numerous 
 and ample tributaries. On the other hand, 
 when navigation is obstructed by falls or 
 rapids, there is often presented eligible oppor- 
 tunities for water-power operating numerous 
 manufactories of every desirable and useful 
 product. Yet further, rivers conduce largely 
 to fertilize those regions of country through 
 which they flow, bearing along with their 
 waters, and mingled with them, prodigious 
 amounts of rich soil, which, in the frequent 
 overflow of their banks, they deposit upon the 
 lands on either side, rendering them among 
 the most fertile and productive in the world. 
 
214 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 In some instances, these overflows are annual, 
 as in the case of the Nile, the Ganges, parts 
 of the Mississippi and its tributaries, and in- 
 numerable other streams. The serpentine and 
 winding course characterizing most rivers 
 greatly assists in extending this advantage, as 
 they thus traverse a much wider extent of 
 country and multiply their fertilizing influ- 
 ences accordingly. 
 
 So interesting and ornamental are they that 
 we need not wonder that rivers, as well as 
 mountains, are often alluded to in the Holy 
 Scriptures. The first Paradise was not with- 
 out its rivers, and the second Paradise is pict- 
 ured to us as adorned with the river of the 
 water of life; while the Hebrew poetry sings 
 of a river the strearns whereof make glad the 
 city of God. 
 
XLIV. 
 
 ^ataractSt 
 
 IVERS often move with a calm, full, 
 and uninterrupted current. But this 
 is far from being universal. Some- 
 times, in their passage toward the ocean, the 
 waters come to an inclined plane, down which 
 they rush with great velocity. These are called 
 Rapids, and form a dangerous pass for boats, 
 though often descended thus where the water 
 is sufficiently deep. 
 
 Then again, rivers, in many instances, pour 
 over precipices extending entirely across the 
 streams. These are called Cataracts, and some 
 of these, by reason of their magnitude, are 
 counted among the wonders of the world. 
 One of the most remarkable of cataracts is 
 our own Niagara, and, consequently, a few 
 
 215 
 
2l6 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 words about this may suffice mainly for the 
 whole. 
 
 Niagara Falls, as you know, occur in the 
 great river of the same name, joining the two 
 lakes, Erie and Ontario. This river is between 
 thirty and forty miles in length, and about 
 twenty-three miles down the stream from Lake 
 Erie is the great cataract. The river is full, 
 and flows calmly onward, and as you glide 
 peacefully down the stream it might be one of 
 the last and most unlikely thoughts in your 
 mind that you were approaching the brink bf 
 the most awful cataract on earth. But pres- 
 ently the boat is urging ashore, and none too 
 soon ; for, as you glance down the river, you 
 see, at the distance of apparently only a brief 
 mile below, the mists towering up from the 
 cataract, and the rapids are about to commence. 
 Woe to him who, for a single yard, glides over 
 their crest and begins the hideous descent! 
 He is now drifting swiftly along, and it is ex- 
 tremely doubtful whether he will ever reach 
 either shore. The rapids commence, it may be, 
 about a mile above the cataract ; and here the 
 great river widens and becomes an expansive, 
 disturbed, and swift-descending sea of waters. 
 
CATARACTS. 21/ 
 
 A quarter of a mile, more or less, above the cat- 
 aract, this rushing sea is pierced by an island, 
 which divides it unequally, pushing the smaller 
 division toward the right, and the larger toward 
 the left. This island extends fully down to the 
 cataract, and its lower end forms a part of the 
 huge precipice, which, by an irregular line, ex- 
 tends sheer across this mighty river, and over 
 the whole of which, except the end of the said 
 island, the great flood was plunging, roaring ^(^^"^ 
 down forever. 
 
 From the right or American shore, and some 
 rods above the fall, a bridge passes to the isl- 
 and, planted directly over the rapids, by what 
 engineering process, as, in these sketches, I 
 am dwelling with Nature alone, it becomes me 
 not now to inquire. Tread softly on that 
 bridge, as, on your visit to the cataract, you 
 shall cross it and look down, meanwhile, upon 
 the wild, swift, dashing floods rushing beneath 
 your feet. No harm if, as I did, you cross 
 nimbly ; for the difference of a moment, on 
 some river and mountain passes, has been as 
 important as life and death. And in returning, 
 no harm if, as I did, you determine to tread 
 those planks nevermore. And when upon the 
 
2l8 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 island, tread carefully there also. Go not too 
 near those fearful shores, for there is no pleas- 
 ant beach, no calm and quiet eddy, no retreat- 
 ing tide. The banks are full forever, and the 
 waters are rushing by as if madly bent on 
 destruction itself Keep back from touching 
 them with hand or foot. Once topple over and 
 all is lost. Beware, also, of one or another 
 little stream meandering swiftly from above 
 through the island. I still hold in painful 
 memory that dear little girl whom a senseless 
 youth once held sportively over such a rivulet 
 until she slipped from his hold and fell. In his 
 mortal agony he plunged in to rescue her, but 
 the current was swift and the passage brief, 
 and both were lost. 
 
 Of the great cataract itself, it has impressed 
 me that little can be said in the way of effect- 
 ive and satisfactory description. There it is ; 
 a great river tumbling over an enormous prec- 
 ipice, which, including the island precipice, 
 may be a mile across. The island divides the 
 cataract ; the American division being more 
 than a thousand feet wide, and the other or 
 Canada division more than two thousand. The 
 former descends one hundred and sixty-four 
 
CATARACTS. 219 
 
 feet, the latter ten or fifteen feet less. The 
 American division, though not half so wide, 
 nor, at its crest, half so deep, is yet a more 
 finished cataract, as it respects the eye observ- 
 ing it. It rolls over on a line nearly straight ; 
 its depth of water is not such but that it can 
 break in descending into a sheet white, vast, 
 and glorious. Also, the entire descent is visi- 
 ble and appreciated. The crest aloft and the 
 base below are both naked to the eye, and the 
 whole is before you as from a mountain sum- 
 mit an approaching storm-cloud is visible from 
 zenith to horizon. 
 
 Different is the other and greater fall. The 
 line of its crest is an irregular curve — its apex 
 up stream, and nearer to the island than to the 
 Canadian shore. Within this awful curve is 
 the great flood, and as it rolls over and down it 
 looks deep, very deep ! how deep no human 
 being has ever measured or ever will. Here 
 there is no breaking or ruffling of the ponder- 
 ous mass, but it goes over calm and smooth, as 
 if an enormous precipice of solid glass were 
 stretched aloft before you, and the water has 
 the hue of no other water, for no brilliant 
 meadow-land, in its fresh and verdant garb of 
 
220 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 May, was ever greener. A stupendous flood, 
 arched, green, massive, quiet, is there — quiet 
 we say, for, strange to tell, there is this seem- 
 ing and aspect as you gaze entranced. That 
 enormous flood is rolling down forever, but, if 
 I see aright, there is no hurry,, no rushing, no 
 raging and tearing as up among the mad and 
 sweeping rapids. Another genius and scenery 
 are here. No mere river is pitching itself furi- 
 ously down. An immense gulf, rather, pro- 
 found and measureless, is forever rolling in and 
 settling with dignity into the abyss. Nor is it 
 seen, as with the other fall, whither goes this 
 great, green flood, into what caverns it pours, 
 on what rocks it dashes down. A dense and 
 eternal mist comes up to hide those dark 
 depths from every human eye, and no hapless 
 ones that, by sore disaster, have gone down 
 there were ever seen again. 
 
 After the falls the Niagara River changes 
 entirely. The path thence to the lake is at 
 the bottom of a deep ravine or canon, one 
 hundred and fifty or two hundred feet perpen- 
 dicular, and thus it finds its lone way into the 
 bosom of the Ontario. 
 
 A single view of the Falls of Niagara is 
 
CATARACTS. 221 
 
 desirable, but, with myself, one view is enough. 
 Many tell of exceeding beauty there, and it 
 may be so, but we mistake if that entire 
 scenery be not more grand and awful than it 
 is beautiful. Fear and dread, as it seems to 
 me, are the inevitable as well as the more ap- 
 propriate emotions. Grand are those mighty 
 waters, but they are wild and terrible withal, 
 and danger lurks there, - and death is near. 
 Give me to linger, rather, in the neighborhood 
 of more peaceful, quiet waters, waters that 
 may be touched and loved, whose voice is ''still 
 and small," rather than tremendous and awful, 
 and along whose gentle bosom and quiet shores 
 the graceful barge may bear me gently and 
 safely. " He maketh me to lie down in green 
 pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters." 
 
XLV. 
 
 l> a lue s ♦ 
 
 ]N a preceding sketch I alluded to 
 Lakes as one of the sources of rivers, 
 and a general view of them must not 
 be omitted. 
 
 Lakes are, as you are aware, bodies of water 
 surrounded by land, and are of all sizes, from 
 the pond of a stone's-throw across it to a sea- 
 like expanse spreading itself scores and even 
 hundreds of miles in extent, and over which, as 
 over oceans and seas, the wings of commerce 
 are flying in every direction. 
 
 The Caspian Sea, lying between Europe and 
 Asia, is, by far, the largest lake in the world; 
 being nearly eight hundred miles long, and 
 having an average width of two hundred miles. 
 So spacious is this lake, or sea, that were all 
 
 222 \ 
 
LAKES. 223 
 
 the other lakes of the globe poured into one 
 they would form a lake only about one-fourth 
 larger than the Caspian. Unlike most other 
 lakes, it has no outlet, thus seeming to be a 
 little ocean of itself 
 
 The next largest of the lakes of the globe is 
 our own Lake Superior, being of far less di- 
 mensions than the Caspian Sea, yet about as 
 large as the State of Maine. It is the chief 
 of the system of great lakes dividing the 
 United States from British America, Lakes 
 Michigan and Huron being about two-thirds 
 as large as Lake Superior, and Erie and On- 
 tario about one-fourth of its dimensions. 
 
 Either of these great bodies of water, as you 
 stand upon its shores, has much the appear- 
 ance of the ocean, stretching away before you 
 like a limitless sea of waters, beyond which 
 you look in vain for land. A great inland 
 commerce traverses these waters, bearing the 
 products of a widely extended country, and one 
 of the most fertile in the world. 
 
 Ai'al, of Tartary, east of the Caspian, is the 
 third lake in size, being nearly equal to Lake 
 Superior. This, as well as the Caspian, has no 
 outlet, but otherwise is not remarkable. 
 
224 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Of the notable lakes of the world, one of 
 the most curious is Lake TiticacUy of South 
 America. It is one hundred and sixty miles 
 long by fifty wide, and is situated far aloft 
 among the Bolivian Andes, its surface being 
 nearly thirteen thousand feet above that of the 
 ocean. No other such a large body of water, 
 at so great an elevation, exists upon earth ; and 
 along its eastern shore, and at that great eleva- 
 tion, and well-nigh inaccessible, dwell a miUion 
 of people. Here seems to have been the seat 
 of the highest and most ancient civiHzation of 
 South America, and the dwelling-place of a 
 people who have left gigantic monuments of, 
 their power and skill. 
 
 While the above is the highest considerable 
 lake on the globe, the lake called the '^ Dead 
 Sea'' is, as I have before noticed, the lowest 
 of all, for its surface, instead of being above 
 the ocean level, is 1,312 feet below it, and 14,- 
 158 feet lower than the surface of Lake Titi- 
 caca. This is the deepest depression, proba- 
 bly, on the surface of the earth, and the extent 
 of the lake or sea is, in length, forty-two miles, 
 and in the greatest width, ten miles. Barren 
 hills, from 1,500 to 2,500 feet high, overlook it 
 
LAKES. 225 
 
 on both sides ; intense heat, in the dry season, 
 prevails ; hot winds sweep over the lake, blis- 
 tering the hands and face ; swarms of mosqui- 
 toes torment the traveler to madness ; while, 
 altogether, it is doubtless one of the most des- 
 olate and God-forsaken of all terrestrial locali- 
 ties. The waters of the lake are the densest 
 and at the same time the saltest in the world ; 
 nor is it known that any animal inhabits them. 
 
 Into this dreary lake comes down the famous 
 river yordan from Lake Gennesarety measuring, 
 in its meanderings, about two hundred miles 
 between the two lakes, although the direct dis- 
 tance is but about sixty miles. The Gennesaret 
 itself is between 400 and 500 feet below the 
 sea level, and, of course, the Jordan, with its 
 valley, is all a deep depression, hundreds of 
 feet lower than the bed of any other river. 
 
 We have remarked of the Dead Sea that its 
 waters are salt ; and this is characteristic of all 
 those lakes having no outlet. Such are the 
 Caspian and Aral Seas, although the waters of 
 the latter are but slightly salt. This phenom- 
 enon of saltness is supposed to be owing to 
 the impregnation of the water by certain min- 
 eral substances with which the water comes in 
 
 15 
 
226 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 contact, and as there is no withdrawal of the 
 water except by evaporation, which leaves the 
 salt mainly behind, such lakes become perma- 
 nently saline. 
 
 The smaller lakes of the world are innumer- 
 able, and go to form a prominent and pleasant 
 feature of thousands of lovely landscapes. Our 
 own country abounds with such, of which the 
 Oneida, Seneca, Canandaigua, Cayuga, George, 
 Champlain, and a hundred others are examples. 
 
XLVI. 
 
 Sprmgfs^ (^•> 
 
 SPRING is a current of water coming 
 from the ground and issuing out at 
 its surface. It is a common phenom- 
 enon, especially in uneven and hilly regions of 
 country. The water thus issuing from the 
 earth comes from some receptacle or reservoir 
 of water situated under ground higher than 
 the spring, and between which and the spring 
 is a channel of communication more or less 
 perfect. If the communication between the 
 reservoir and the spring were unobstructed, as 
 though the water were flowing down through 
 a full pipe, then, if it issue from a suitable 
 aperture, the spring would take the shape of a 
 jet or fountain, and the water would spout into 
 
 the air to a height approaching that of the 
 
 227 
 
228 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 subterranean reservoir. But whence these hid- 
 den reservoirs ? They are cavities which have 
 been probably formed by the agency of water. 
 In the case of rain-fall, as we have before no- 
 ticed, a part of the falling water flows down 
 descending surfaces of the ground, forming 
 rills and brooks flowing off into larger brooks, 
 and these into rivulets, and these into a river. 
 Another portion of the raining water assumes, 
 however, a different course. Instead of run- 
 ning off on the surface and forming surface 
 streams, it settles into the ground to a greater 
 or less depth, according to the character of the 
 soil through which it percolates. If there is 
 much sand beneath, the water will settle to a 
 lower depth ; if there is a strong mixture of 
 clay it will sink a less distance. If the water 
 encounters a surface of stone or hard clay its 
 vertical sinking will, of course, be arrested, 
 and if the hard surface be shelving it will find 
 its way over its lower side. On the other 
 hand, if the rocky or clayey surface is hollow 
 and somewhat extensive, a large amount of 
 water, in settling down from the surface of the 
 ground above, will be detained until, at some 
 point lower than the others, it will overflow 
 
SPRINGS. 
 
 229 
 
 and seek a downward passage away from the 
 reservoir ; and if a way opens out to the sur- 
 face a spring will be formed. Sometimes the 
 passage from the reservoir to the spring is 
 very short, as is doubtless the case with springs 
 so frequently seen at the base of hills or gentle 
 ascents. In other instances, the reservoir 
 whence the spring water comes is miles away. 
 Springs are diversified in their character. 
 Some are feeble, from which but a slight stream 
 issues ; others burst forth with a volume of 
 water sufficient to operate a water-wheel for 
 mechanical purposes. Some are intermittent — 
 alternately flowing and ceasing to flow — others 
 flow on without interruption. Some waters, in 
 passing from the reservoir to the spring, jour- 
 ney mainly through depths of sand or through 
 sand-stone rocks, and thus come forth to the 
 surface soft and pure; others take their course 
 through very different strata, extensive lime- 
 stone regions for example, and such spring 
 water, holding more or less of lime in solution, 
 will be calcareous, or "hard." While most 
 springs are cold, some, especially in volcanic 
 regions, are hot springs ; and some are hot and 
 at the same time intermittent, like the Geysers 
 
230 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 of Iceland. Some, again, are mineral springs, 
 their waters being slightly impregnated with 
 mineral substances through which they have 
 passed. 
 
 Springs and fountains have ever been a wel- 
 come and attractive feature, and are highly 
 conducive to beauty as well as utility. One 
 of the capital excellencies of the Land of Prom- 
 ise was that it would be "a land of brooks of 
 water, of fountains and depths that spring out 
 of valleys and hills." 
 
 It may be added that subterranean reservoirs 
 and streams issuing from them are almost 
 every-where, though multitudes of such streams 
 fail to come to the surface and form springs and 
 fountains there. In most cases we have to go 
 beneath the surface to encounter these streams, 
 and when, in sinking our shafts, we come upon 
 them, the water flows in at the bottom, a per- 
 manent spring, though deep in the ground in- 
 stead of being at the surface like other springs. 
 This we call a well^ and we esteem it next 
 in value to springs issuing from the surface; 
 while in all ages wells, as truly as springs and 
 fountains, have been celebrated and have their 
 place in the history of the race. 
 
SPRINGS. 23 1 
 
 Thus it is one of the many noticeable facts 
 of our earth, that its crust, down amid all ac- 
 cessible depths, is charged with water, and 
 generally such water as, in its nature and qual- 
 ities, is adapted to the appetite and wants of 
 man and beast. Hence, for this vital necessity 
 of ours, we are not dependent upon every tran- 
 sient and varying cloud above us. It is not 
 to the clouds that we resort for cooling and 
 refreshing waters. Magazines, immense and 
 inexhaustible, are always beneath our feet, 
 sometimes springing up to meet our thirsty 
 lips, or else only requiring that we say, as did 
 the Master at the ancient well, "Give me to 
 drink." 
 
XL VII. 
 
 ^prin^s* ^^) 
 
 |UR preceding letter closed with a vis- 
 ion of the Savior at the well of Sy- 
 char. This circumstance, associated 
 with his conversation there with the woman 
 of Samaria, reminds me to notice the splendid 
 source of sacred imagery furnished by Springs, 
 Wells, Streams, and Fountains of water. Will 
 you indulge me with a slight glance at a spec- 
 imen or two before passing on to another 
 theme? And let us contemplate one of the 
 modes whereby, in the Holy Scriptures, man's 
 great want and its supply are imaged forth. 
 
 Are we, by nature, morally impure — from 
 the sole of the foot to the head, unclean — al- 
 together become filthy ? '' Then will I sprinkle 
 clean water upon you, and you shall be clean ; 
 232 . 
 
SPRINGS. 233 
 
 from all your filthiness and from all your idols 
 will I cleanse you." 
 
 Are we longing for a purer, higher, and ho- 
 lier life ? " Let him that is athirst come. And 
 whosoever will, let him take the water of life 
 freely." '' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come 
 ye to the waters." " If any man thirst, let him 
 come to me and drink." '' I will give unto him 
 that thirsteth of the fountain of the water of 
 life freely." '' They have forsaken me, the 
 fountain of living waters." 
 
 Do the purest, best, and most reviving of 
 earthly fountains fail to give permanent life.? 
 And drinking these, shall we still often long to 
 repeat the draught, and die at last .? " Whoso- 
 ever drinketh of this water shall thirst again ; 
 but whosoever drinketh of the water that I 
 shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water 
 that I shall give him shall be in him a well of 
 water springing up into everlasting life." 
 
 Need we consolation and hopeful assurance 
 in passing through this vale of tears } '' With 
 joy shall ye draw water from the wells of 
 salvation." '' There is a river the streams 
 whereof shall make glad the city of God." 
 
 Shall a good man flourish and prosper in the 
 
234 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 earth ? " He shall be like a tree planted by 
 the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his 
 fruit in his season." ''As a tree planted by the 
 waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the 
 river, and shall not be seen when heat Com- 
 eth." "Thou shalt be like a watered garden, 
 and like a spring of water whose waters fail 
 not." What of them that hearken to God's 
 commandments.? Their peace shall be ''as a 
 river, and their righteousness like the waves 
 of the sea." 
 
 Shall a man do great good, and become a 
 source of large and numberless blessings to his 
 race ? " He that believeth on me; out of his 
 belly shall flow rivers of living water." 
 
 Does the good man anticipate a second 
 paradise, beautiful as Eden, and much more 
 abundantly so ? " And he showed me a pure 
 river of water of life, clear as prystal, proceed- 
 ing out of the throne of God and the Lamb. 
 In the midst of the street of it, and on the 
 side of the river, was there the tree of life, 
 which bare twelve manner of fruits, and 
 yielded her fruit every month ; and the leaves 
 of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 
 And there shall be no more curse." 
 
 I 
 
XLVIII. 
 
 Watjer ♦ 
 
 UT what is Water? Having written 
 of it so repeatedly as it appears in the 
 seas, rivers, lakes, springs, and fount- 
 ains, and familiar as we are with its beauty and 
 its multiplied adaptations to the wants of the 
 animal and vegetable world, a word or two 
 touching its nature and properties seems de- 
 sirable. 
 
 Water is composed of two gases — Oxygen 
 and Hydrogen — chemically combined in pro- 
 portions, by measure, of two of hydrogen and 
 one of oxygen. 
 
 Of water there is a multitude of varieties 
 from that which is pure to what is greatly the 
 reverse. In respect, however, to water abso- 
 lutely pure, it may be doubtful whether such a 
 
 235 
 
2^6 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 thing exist in nature. Rain-water, which is 
 the purest, is yet not entirely so, evaporation- 
 from the ocean always carrying with it a cer- 
 tain amount of salt. Nor does distillation in- 
 sure absolute purity, though many times re- 
 peated. All this seems no special damage, nor, 
 for the most purposes, would water be improved 
 by being rendered absolutely pure. For drink- 
 ing purposes, it would thus become insipid and 
 tasteless ; and thus it is that the purest rain- 
 water is not so agreeable to drink as the water 
 from wells or springs. The latter, by percola- 
 ting through different mineral substances, in 
 its way through the ground, acquires a slight 
 degree of taste which makes it more pleasant 
 to the palate than water directly from the 
 clouds. The impurity of water arises mainly 
 from its solvent power, which is very extensive, 
 most substances coming in contact with it be- 
 ing more or less subject to its influence. This 
 is the sQ,cret of all mineral waters, some of 
 which are so salutary in their effects upon cer- 
 tain diseases, while others are deleterious. 
 
 ''A good drinkable water," says an author, 
 "may be recognized by the following charac- 
 ters: it is perfectly colorless and transparent 
 
WATER. 237 
 
 without smell or appreciable taste, but agree- 
 able, and not insipid or flat, does not lose 
 its clearness by boiling, and leaves a very 
 slight residuum upon evaporation." The same 
 writer adds that ''rain-water, not of the first 
 fall, and the water of thawed snow and ice, 
 are, of course, purest of all that ofler for com- 
 mon use, and no others are really so well 
 adapted as these for culinary, cleansing, and 
 mechanical purposes. But the lack of gases 
 in these waters, unless they are artificially 
 aerated, as by agitating them with air or 
 other gases, render them less agreeable for 
 drinking." 
 
 Of the abundance of water I have already 
 written. Its proportion of surface on the 
 globe, compared to the land surface, is as 276 
 to 100. On that part of the globe north of 
 the equator, the proportion is as 150 to 100. 
 In the southern hemisphere it is as 628 to 100. 
 
 Great as is this apparent disproportion of 
 water on the earth it, nevertheless, seems har- 
 monious with its countless uses and necessi- 
 ties. Instead of asking, where are these uses 
 and necessities ? we may more properly ask, 
 where are they not.? In what operation of 
 
238 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 nature or art can it be dispensed with ? What 
 would the air be without its presence ? What 
 would become of the soil and the* whole veg- 
 etable world, without its solvent and nourish- 
 ing qualities ? Equally, what would become of 
 the whole animal creation ? What become of 
 all art, all manufactures, all commerce, all wa- 
 ter and steam-power, all transportation ? The 
 water-power of the streams of Europe alone 
 has been computed to be equivalent to the 
 power of more than three hundred and fifty 
 millions of horses incessantly working by day 
 and night. Water seems to us a simple thing, 
 yet it is as great as it is simple, as desirable as 
 the comeliness and beauty of this magnificent 
 globe, as useful as the vital air, or our daily 
 bread, as necessary as life itself. 
 
XLIX. 
 
 Clouds* 
 
 lAVING written so much of water in 
 its various forms of seas, rivers, lakes, 
 springs, and fountains, let us glance, 
 for a moment, at the immediate source from 
 which we receive it. That source is the Cloiids. 
 But what are the clouds ? I have already al- 
 luded to the subject of evaporation ; which 
 means the ascending of vapor, that is, minute 
 particles of water, from the surfaces of water, 
 and land. This operation is going forward at 
 all times, and the invisible vapor is contin- 
 ually ascending, though at some times much 
 more rapidly than at others. The vapor as- 
 cends into the air, which has a vast though 
 limited capacity of retaining it, this capac- 
 ity, in a given region, varying according to its 
 
 239 
 
240 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 temperature. The warmer the air into which 
 the vapor ascends, the more the particles of va- 
 por expand, and expanding continue to ascend. 
 On the other hand, cold air condenses the par- 
 ticles, and thus they become visible in the 
 shape of a cloud. It will be a thin cloud if 
 the air is but slightly cool and not too much 
 charged with vapor, and by a slight change to 
 a warmer terpperature, the cloud disperses 
 again and becomes invisible. Or, if the air is 
 highly saturated with vapor, and is sufficiently 
 cool, a heavy condensation takes place, the 
 particles of vapor collect in drops, and being 
 then too heavy to remain aloft, they fall in the 
 shape of rain. Thus the same cloud may shed 
 its water in rain or be dissipated into the upper 
 air, according to the temperature of the region 
 of the air where the cloud is resting. If cool 
 and growing cooler, there will be rain ; if the 
 air becomes warmer, either by the sun's rays, 
 or by the cloud being driven by wind into a 
 warmer atmosphere, it will be scattered and 
 probably disappear ; or should the wind waft 
 the same cloud against some lofty mountain, 
 the cooler air will cause rain. Thus it is that 
 the clouds are ever changing their form, now 
 
CLOUDS. 241 
 
 enlarging and darkening, and, perhaps, giving 
 out rain ; then, again, brightening, diminish- 
 ing, and entirely disappearing — an emblem of 
 our present uncertain existence. " For what is 
 your life ? It is even a vapor that appeareth 
 for a little time and then vanisheth away." 
 
 Philosophers have assigned names to the 
 clouds according to the different aspects which 
 they present to us. The CtimiduSy for ex- 
 ample, is the Summer-day cloud, having the 
 appearance of distant rounded hills covered 
 with snow, often increasing with the warmth 
 of the day, obscuring the sun, and sometimes 
 condensing into rain. 
 
 The Stratus is rather a night and Winter 
 cloud, appearing in the horizontal layers or 
 strata sometimes suddenly produced, hangs 
 lower than other clouds, and, in Winter-time, 
 not unfrequently shuts out the sky for several 
 successive days. 
 
 The Cirrus has a feathery aspect, extends 
 "in long, slender filaments, and, again, in par- 
 allel stripes, from one extremity of the heavens 
 to the other." It is a very elevated cloud, ap- 
 pearing from lofty summits as high in air as 
 
 when seen from the plain. 
 
 16 
 
242 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 These three main forms of clouds often, of 
 course, blend, more or less, into each other, 
 > producing intermediate forms ; and when con- 
 fusedly intermixed the mingled mass is called 
 Nimbus, which is more especially the rain 
 cloud. 
 
 The clouds present to us another deeply in- 
 teresting subject of contemplation, and they 
 have, in all ages, attracted the attention and 
 study of man. And no wonder ; they are 
 aloft, and conspicuous, and often beautiful and 
 greatly welcome, and, at times, too magnifi- 
 cent and grand for description. From them 
 come the riches of the rain and snow, and by 
 their different aspects we learn to predict, with 
 greater or less certainty, the coming on of 
 storms, or the advent of fair weather, or the 
 approach of colder or milder hours. Also, 
 they are the arena of that great artillery whose 
 thunderings are heard afar as their awful ech- 
 oes rattle athwart those fields of air, or break 
 with deadening, frightful crash just before or 
 behind us. 
 
nxn\ 
 
 jROM the clouds comes Ram, which is 
 a condensation of the vapor in the 
 atmosphere into drops, whose weight 
 causes them to fall to the ground. As has 
 been already said, when, by any cause, the air 
 becomes suddenly chilled its capacity for hold- 
 ing moisture is diminished, and the excess 
 becomes condensed, and the rain-drops are 
 formed. 
 
 As rains are governed very much by the 
 state of the atmosphere, it follows that the 
 amount of rain-falls in different parts of the 
 world vary exceedingly. The torrid zone is 
 especially subject to rain. Here the Trade- 
 Winds from the north-east and the south-east 
 meet under the equator, and bring in from the 
 
 243 
 
244 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 oceans over which they pass immense quanti- 
 ties of vapor, and as the atmosphere is in- 
 tensely heated by the sun it becomes saturated 
 to its utmost capacity by vapor; hence, the 
 abundant vapor is borne upward to higher 
 regions of the air, where becoming cooler and 
 condensed, it falls back in abundant rains. 
 Also, in these regions, and owing to frequent 
 changes of temperature, violent tornadoes and 
 thunder tempests are almost daily occurrences. 
 This " belt of rain," or rainy season, follows the 
 sun as it traverses from the north to the south 
 tropic and back again, so that, in the torrid 
 zone, it occurs twice a year, and the amount 
 of water that falls in the course of a year is 
 almost beyond belief Humboldt estimated the 
 average depth of rain falling annually in differ- 
 ent latitudes as follows : 
 
 At the equator, . 98 in. I Latitude 45 deg., 29 in. 
 Latitude 19 deg., 80 in. | Latitude 60 deg., 17 in. 
 
 While this average proportion for different 
 latitudes may be nearly correct, yet certain lo- 
 calities of the torrid zone vary exceedingly 
 from such an estimate. At Paramaribo, for 
 example, in Dutch Guiana, the annual rain-fall 
 amounts to 229 inches ; at Maranhao, Brazil, 
 
RAIN. 
 
 245 
 
 to 276 inches ; at Guadaloupe, to 286 inches ; 
 at Mahableshwur, to 302 inches — 25 feet ! 
 
 Rains in the temperate zone are more 
 irregular, and a much smaller quantity of water 
 falls. The average yearly amount for several 
 localities has been ascertained to be nearly as 
 follows : 
 
 British Isles, 
 France, 
 Germany, 
 Hungary, . 
 Eastern Russia, 
 Cambridge, Mass., 
 
 32 in. 
 24 in. 
 20 in. 
 17 in. 
 14 in. 
 38 in. 
 
 Western Reserve, O., 36 in. 
 Ft. Crawford, Wis., 30 in. 
 Philadelphia, . 45 in. 
 Marietta, O., . 41 in. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., . 32 in. 
 
 In the temperate regions the mean annual 
 amount of rain in the Eastern Hemisphere is 
 34 inches, in the Western Hemisphere 39 
 inches. 
 
 Enormous rains sometimes occur in certain 
 locaHties. In February, 1820, at Cayenne, of 
 French Guiana — which appears to be the 
 rainiest country on earth — there fell in twenty- 
 four days twelve and one-half feet of rain! a 
 quantity one would think sufficient to flood 
 the country, and sweep to destruction every 
 habitation. 
 
 On the other hand, strange to tell, there are 
 extensive regions of the earth where no rain 
 
246 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 falls. Most of such countries, of course, except 
 where irrigation is possible, are deserts — waste 
 places of the earth where no green thing is 
 seen. Such is the great Sahara of Africa ; 
 such, also, are much of the Asiatic countries 
 of Arabia, Persia, Thibet, and Mongolia. On 
 our own continent, the narrow territory be- 
 tween the Andes and the Pacific is, much of it, 
 a desert. Also, Western Mexico, extending 
 northward into Arizona and Nevada, may be 
 classed among the desert regions of the globe. 
 These are rainless, cheerless countries, most 
 of them unfit for the residence of human be- 
 ings, and comprising not less than seven or 
 eight millions of square miles of the earth's 
 surface. This is a serious amount withdrawn 
 from the fifty millions of the earth's solid sur- 
 face. Why so great a waste } Why not afford 
 the rain here as elsewhere, and turn these im- 
 mense deserts into fruitful and habitable coun- 
 tries } I can not answer ; God knoweth. He 
 thus orders and arranges, and all his ways are 
 the best possible. Let us rest the matter 
 there, for there is abundance of goodly land 
 yet to be possessed, and of which it may be 
 said, *' Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it ; 
 
RAIN. 247 
 
 thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, 
 which is full of water; thou preparest them 
 corn, when thou hast so provided for it; thou 
 waterest the ridges thereof abundantly, thou 
 settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it 
 soft with showers, thou blessest the springing 
 thereof.'* 
 
LI. 
 
 U je w 
 
 FTER all, however, the desert lands 
 are not all of them utterly desolate, 
 for, though rain is withheld, the Dew 
 comes in as a partial substitute for some of the 
 rainless localities of the earth. But first let us 
 revert to the origin of dew. As evaporation is 
 constantly proceeding, so the atmosphere is 
 always more or less charged with moisture; 
 thus, let it come in contact with an object 
 cooler than itself, as upon a pitcher of cold 
 water placed upon the table, and the moisture, 
 or vapor, in the atmosphere will be condensed 
 and appear as a fine dew upon the surface of 
 the vessel. By a similar process all dew is 
 formed. It is the vapor of the air extracted 
 by the greater chilliness of the surfaces upon 
 248 
 
DEW. 249 
 
 which the moisture is deposited. Evaporation 
 constantly proceeding at the surface of the 
 ground, this surface is cooled by the process, 
 and the warmer air coming in contact with the 
 cooler surface deposits its moisture upon it ; 
 and the point of temperature at which the 
 moisture begins to be deposited is called the 
 dew point. 
 
 If the air be saturated with vapor, that is, 
 contain as much moisture as its capacity will 
 allow, then, as it comes in contact with the 
 cool earth, there will be what is termed a heavy 
 dew ; in other words, a large amount of water 
 will be deposited. 
 
 Dew begins to form, often, before the sun 
 has set, and a visible degree of moisture will 
 be observed by walking through the grass. It 
 forms more rapidly, however, toward morning, 
 as the earth then becomes cooler Jhan before. 
 
 From the above remarks touching the forma- 
 tion of dew, it is plain that the dew does not 
 fall, as many suppose, but is produced directly 
 where it is seen ; and this delusion of \h^ fall- 
 ing of the dew was aided with some of us 
 when children, by observing that, after cloudy 
 nights, there would be little or no dew upon 
 
250 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the grass. Thus we not unnaturally inferred 
 that the clouds prevented the dew from falling 
 by their intervention between the sky and the 
 earth. The clouds did indeed prevent the 
 dew, but not in any such way as we supposed. 
 They prevented it by preventing the earth be- 
 neath them from cooling; and this was ac- 
 complished by the rays of heat from the ground 
 impinging upon the clouds and being by them 
 reflected back again to the ground. Thus the 
 earth, being prevented from losing its heat, 
 retained about the same temperature as the air 
 in contact with it, and hence no moisture from 
 the air was deposited. Not only clouds, but 
 any other overhanging object, as a tree or a 
 piece of cloth stretched out a few feet above 
 the ground, will have the same effect, and so 
 gardeners, to prevent young plants from being 
 touched by frost, sometimes thus prevent them 
 from being bedewed, in order that there may 
 be no dew upon them to freeze. 
 
 The amount of dew deposited in some coun- 
 tries is surprising. One author estimates the 
 annual amount precipitated in England to be 
 five inches of water, which is nearly one-sixth 
 the amount that falls in rain. Indeed, on 
 
DEW. 251 
 
 some mornings, so great is the quantity of 
 dew precipitated in the preceding night that 
 there is the appearance of having been rain 
 instead of mere dew. Thus it is, as I hinted 
 in the beginning of this sketch, that even 
 some rainless countries are saved from being 
 absolute deserts like the great Sahara of Af- 
 rica. This is true of portions of the western 
 coast of both North and South America, also 
 of Camana in Venezuela, and in upper Egypt, 
 as well as other dry regions of the East. Nor 
 is such benefit of dew confined to partial des- 
 erts. In times of drought, not unfrequently 
 occurring in countries favored with rains, the 
 dew is of great service, and though not an 
 adequate substitute for rain, yet the dews often 
 mitigate the severities of droughts, and save 
 the blighted fruits and vegetables from utter 
 failure and destruction. 
 
 In conclusion, dews, as well as other forms 
 of water, are honored with pleasant allusions 
 in the Holy Scripture, and have their place in 
 the sacred imagery. '' God give thee of the 
 dew of heaven !" said the ancient patriarch as 
 he blessed his son. 
 
LII. 
 
 IjC^* 
 
 CE, as you know, is water made solid 
 by freezing. When water is reduced 
 in temperature down to 32^ of Fahr- 
 enheit's thermometer it begins to freeze, and 
 hence this is called the freezing-point ; like as 
 the point where vapor in the atmosphere be- 
 comes dew is called the dew-point. 
 
 Water, by freezing, expands to a certain ex- 
 tent, so that a cubic foot of water changed to 
 ice would measure more than a cubic foot. 
 This has been thought an exception to the 
 general law of contraction by cold. But it has 
 been ascertained that fusible bodies generally, 
 in a solid state, have a less specific gravity 
 than in a melted state. A piece of solid metal, 
 for example, will float in the same metal melted. 
 
 2tJ2 
 
ICE. 253 
 
 This, at first sight, seems an unimportant fact, 
 and having little to do, one way or another, 
 with the welfare of the world. But suppose 
 that water should follow the general law of 
 contraction by cold. It does, indeed, follow 
 this law down to about 39°, when, as the cold 
 still increases toward the freezing-point at 32^, 
 the water expands instead of contracting. If it 
 should continue to contract down to the freez- 
 ing-point, and ice, as it is formed, should have 
 less bulk than the water of which it is made, 
 the consequences would be disastrous in the 
 extreme. It would then happen that every 
 piece of ice as soon as formed, instead of re- 
 .maining at the surface of the water, would 
 immediately sink to the bottom of the lake or 
 river, and this process of formation and imme- 
 diate sinking of ice would continue to go on so 
 long as the weather should be sufficiently cold 
 for freezing. It would follow that in the course 
 of a single cold Winter all such lakes and 
 streams would become solid ice, and would 
 remain substantially so always and in all re- 
 gions of the earth where the Winter's cold 
 would be sufficient for freezing over the sur- 
 faces of such bodies of water. This would, of 
 
254 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 course, seriously affect the climate of such 
 countries, and thus not only would all naviga- 
 tion of these waters be arrested and would for- 
 ever cease, but no small part of the world 
 would become partially or wholly uncultivated 
 and uninhabitable. So much is often depend- 
 ent in the world of nature upon a single, appar- 
 ently, unimportant arrangement ; while the one 
 before us is the more noticeable and curious, 
 as being an exception to a general law. 
 
 After ice is once formed, however, it no 
 longer contravenes the general law of contrac- 
 tion by cold, but as, in extreme cold weather, 
 the ice becomes colder than when first formed, 
 it contracts, like other bodies, under the influ- 
 ence of cold ; hence, in this shrinking, the ice 
 on lakes and rivers often cracks asunder with 
 loud reports. 
 
 Ice has its uses ; for the Creator has ordered 
 nothing in vain. Like snow, which itself is 
 ice, it is a bad conductor of heat ; and being 
 formed over rivers and lakes, prevents the heat 
 from below escaping through it, and thus cool- 
 ing the water to an excessive degree. In the 
 same way it protects land surfaces that the 
 Winter season overspreads with ice. Also, in 
 
ICE. 255 
 
 the Arctic regions, the natives, with the same 
 view, erect their huts of ice, in which they 
 pass away their long, cold, and dark Winters. 
 And then, too, ice can be preserved into the 
 warm season, and thus it becomes a special 
 luxury amid the Summer heats, as well as 
 greatly useful for the preservation of meats 
 and other articles ; hence it has, of late years 
 especially, become a commodity of extensive 
 commerce. For this purpose, as well as for 
 domestic use, it is during the Winter season 
 cut out from ponds and rivers in blocks as 
 large as can be conveniently hau]ed, and stored 
 in ice-houses, whence it is shipped to those 
 parts of the world whose climate is too warm 
 for producing it. 
 
 This is a recent but rapidly growing traffic, 
 as is evinced by the fact that during the last 
 half century the annual export of the article 
 of ice from this country has advanced from 
 130 tons to 150,000 or more. 
 
 lu^'t.i 
 
LIII. 
 
 ^rlacijers* 
 
 HE subject of Ice reminds us to speak 
 of GlacierSy which are, in fact, rivers 
 \ of ice instead of water. 
 Imagine any river which you have ever seen 
 to be instantaneously changed into ice, from 
 the surface to the bottom of the stream, and 
 you have a correct general idea of glaciers as 
 they exist in vast numbers among the high 
 mountains of the earth. 
 
 You are aware that mountains rearing them- 
 selves above a certain height, are covered with 
 perpetual snow. You will also recollect that 
 these lofty and immense snow-fields are not 
 mainly smooth surfaces, but are often cut 
 across by wide and deep gorges or ravines 
 scooped down the mountain side from very 
 256 
 
GLACIERS. 257 
 
 lofty elevations. Far up amid these dismal 
 realms are frequent tempests of snows and 
 hurricanes so dense, wild, and terrible, as we 
 who witness snow-storms on the lowlands of 
 the world have little conception of In proc- 
 ess of time, these repeated snows fill up the 
 huge mountain gorges to the depth of hun- 
 dreds and often thousands of feet. Partly by 
 the prodigious pressure upon these depths of 
 snow, as layer after layer is made, by succes- 
 sive storms, it grows into ice, and thus there 
 is formed an ice river, as already noticed. 
 These ice rivers, or glaciers, may be counted 
 by hundreds within only a few miles along the 
 Alps, extending down the mountain gorges 
 from ten to twenty miles in length, and from 
 one to more than two miles in width, and in 
 many places toward 1,000 feet deep. Com- 
 mencing, as, of course, they must, up above 
 the line of eternal snow, they extend down the 
 mountains to three or four thousand feet above 
 the level of the sea; at this height they ter- 
 minate. Far upward toward their beginning, 
 they are covered with the never-melting 
 snows ; but down here at their lower terminus, 
 if it is Summer-time, the snows have melted 
 
 17 
 
258 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 off, and there stands before you an enormous 
 and ungainly precipice of ice, itself partially 
 melted amid the warmer atmosphere into 
 which it has intruded itself; and thus, by the 
 melting process, it becomes somewhat de- 
 pressed at the top, and worn wedgewise at the 
 sides, the terminus, however, still remaining, 
 often lofty and inaccessible. 
 
 Should you, in ascending the mountains, 
 travel up one of these glaciers, you will find 
 the surface often so rough and confused as to 
 be difficult to traverse. Here a hollow will be 
 scooped out and filled with water, there the 
 ice, for several feet or rods, has parted, and a 
 chasm of unknown depth yawns before you. 
 Sometimes this chasm extends well-nigh across 
 the glacier. Sometimes the opening is straight, 
 at other times curved. Then, again, multi- 
 tudes of stones, some of them large bowlders, 
 are scattered or heaped up and down the 
 rough surface, having fallen from the hideous 
 precipices through which this strange ice-river 
 is passing. These stones and debris, stretched 
 along the glacier, are called Moraines, and 
 constitute one of the striking features of the 
 scenery. 
 
GLACIERS. 259 
 
 As the melting process goes on more and 
 more as the glacier tends down the mountain, 
 numerous channels of water perforate the 
 body of ice, some of them extending down to 
 its very bottom and forming rivulets which 
 issue out from the terminus of the glacier, and 
 become the commencement, often, of far-ex- 
 tending and famous rivers. We have just 
 hinted that these ice-rivers themselves are not 
 stationary, but actually have a motion down- 
 ward, though so slow as not to be perceptible 
 to the eye. The ice of which they are formed 
 is not what we term solid ice ; for ice in im- 
 mense bodies like the glaciers is not the brit- 
 tle, solid substance we see cut out of rivers or 
 lakes, but is rather, especially when saturated 
 with water, of a partially plastic character. 
 Thus this ice of the glacier, having upon it a 
 most enormous pressure frorn above, has a 
 gradual, but perpetual motion downward. It 
 is, in fact, "not only a river, but ?i flowing river. 
 The rate of motion, like that of rivers of water, 
 is governed by the rapidity of descent. If the 
 glacier is nearly level, it travels slowly ; if its 
 path is steep, its course is more rapid. Some 
 are known to travel about two hundred and 
 
260 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 fifty feet in a year ; others twice as far. They 
 travel faster in warm than in cold weather, 
 and it is noticed that, like common rivers, the 
 middle of the ice-stream has a more rapid mo- 
 tion than the sides and the bottom. 
 
LIV. 
 
 tci&hetgs. 
 
 N writing about glaciers, I remarked 
 that having originated up among the 
 eternal snows, they, in temperate lat- 
 itudes, flow down the mountains far below the 
 snow limit, to within 3,000 or 4,000 feet above 
 the level of the sea, and there, in the warmer 
 temperature which they have reached, termi- 
 nate by the gradual melting away of the 
 lower extremity of the ice-river. 
 
 Very different from this is the state of 
 things with glaciers that are formed among 
 the mountains of the Arctic regions of the 
 globe. Here the line of permanent snows and 
 frost is no longer far up the mountains, but is 
 clear down to the sea-level. Consequently the 
 Arctic glaciers, instead of terminating 3,000 
 
 261 
 
262 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 or 4,000 feet above the ocean-level, flow down 
 bodily to the very shores of the sea, and even 
 push themselves, in the shape of an enormous 
 ridge of ice, into the frozen seas and bays of 
 the extreme North. Here they go plowing 
 and crushing through the thick ice, covering 
 the waters, until the stupendous mass issuing 
 into deep water, and being no longer supported 
 by the solid ground beneath, breaks off from 
 the main glacier, and floats away independ- 
 ently and by itself. 
 
 Thus it is that Icebergs are born, which, as 
 you probably know, are immense bodies of 
 sohd ice, floating about in Northern seas, and 
 often drifting down so far south as to be seen 
 from vessels crossing the Atlantic. Not only 
 are they seen, but they not unfrequently float 
 directly into the pathway of ships, and, espe- 
 cially at certain seasons of the year, form one 
 of the dangers of navigation. A ship under 
 sail in a dark night, striking against one of 
 these awful ice-mountains, would almost infal- 
 libly be sunk within a very few moments, in 
 the depths of the ocean ; nor is there a doubt 
 that many an unfortunate voyager over the 
 sea has thus suddenly perished with all his 
 
ICEBERGS. 263 
 
 comrades, so that no tidings of their sad fate 
 ever came to the ears of their friends at home. 
 Every year, more or less vessels sail away to 
 sea, and are never heard of more; and we 
 need hardly doubt that some of these were 
 wrecked and lost under the cold and hideous 
 precipices of an iceberg. 
 
 The iceberg may be considered an ice- 
 mountain floating in the ocean. Their dimen- 
 sions, as well as their numbers, are often 
 astonishing. Dr. IKane, in one of his cruises, 
 saw, on one occasion, 280 in sight at once, 
 most of which were 250 feet high, and some 
 more than 300 feet. The dimensions of some 
 must be measured by miles instead of feet or 
 rods. Lieutenant Parry saw an iceberg two 
 and a half miles long, and nearly as wide, and 
 fifty feet high, and it was aground in water 
 300 feet deep. Dr. Kane saw one aground in 
 soundings of 500 feet. Captain Ross, another 
 Arctic navigator, saw several icebergs aground 
 in Baffin's Bay, where the water was 1,500 feet 
 deep. One was seen in the Southern Ocean 
 thirteen miles long with vertical walls one 
 hundred feet high. And you are to keep in 
 mind the fact that great and lofty as these 
 
264 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 ice-mountains are above the surface of the 
 water, you thus see only about one-eighth of 
 the whole mass, seven-eighths being immersed. 
 The force of these stupendous bodies floating 
 freely in an ocean current, would doubtless ex- 
 ceed by far any other force upon the surface 
 of the globe. As they float upon the sea, ice- 
 bergs do not always preserve the same position 
 in the water, but not unfrequently they roll 
 over either partially or wholly. "Nothing," 
 says Dr. Kane, "can be raf)re imposing than 
 the rotation of a berg. I have often watched 
 one, rocking its earth-stained sides in steadily 
 deepening ' curves, as if to gather energy for 
 some desperate gymnastic feat, and then turn- 
 ing itself slowly over in a monster somersault, 
 and vibrating as its head rose into the new 
 element like a leviathan shaking the water 
 from its crest." 
 
 As I have in this sketch repeatedly referred 
 to Dr. Kane, allow me to recommend to you 
 the careful perusal of his "Arctic Researches," 
 as being a book not only full of interest, but 
 as admirably fitted to impress lessons of what 
 a determined and brave man can accomplish 
 in spite of the most formidable difficulties. 
 
LV. 
 
 ^^at* 
 
 EAT is a nanle we give either to a 
 certain sensation or to that some- 
 thing which causes the sensation. 
 This is about all we can say of it in the way 
 of description. We are familiar with some of 
 its effects, but what is the mysterious agent 
 itself no man knows. Its great source, so far 
 as our earth is concerned, is the sim, ixoxsx 
 which emanates an amount of heat far sur- 
 passing all human conception. It is computed 
 that the sun sends to the earth and its atmos- 
 phere sufficient heat annually to melt a shell 
 of ice a hundred and forty feet thick. But our 
 earth lies off from the sun nearly a hundred 
 million of miles, and consequently occupies 
 
 but a very small part of that immense sphere 
 
 265 
 
266 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 which is filled with the sun's light and heat. 
 Were all the sun's heat that is sent out from 
 its surface in every direction to be directed 
 upon the earth, it would in a single year melt a 
 crust of ice four thousand miles thick, or a 
 crust thirty-seven feet thick every minute; in 
 other words, the sun would pour upon the 
 earth perpetually, a heat seven times as great 
 as the glowing fire of a blast furnace. 
 
 So far as we know, heat is universally dif- 
 fused, being contained in all matter in what- 
 ever state, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid. 
 Even ice is not free from it, for transport a 
 piece of ice from our latitude to the Arctic 
 regions, and it would be as much colder there 
 than here as the temperature of the air is 
 colder ; that is, the block of ice would have 
 parted with so many degrees of heat. Bear it 
 to some colder region still and, for the same 
 reason, yet more heat will be abstracted from it. 
 
 Thus heat differs extremely in intensity or 
 quantity, ranging from a point too low to a 
 point too high to be measured or at all appre- 
 ciated. By an artificial thermometer, or meas- 
 urer of heat, we are accustomed to express by 
 figures different degrees of it so far as is nee- 
 
HEAT. 267 
 
 essary for ordinary purposes. By the ther- 
 mometer principally used — that of Fahren- 
 heit — the point of temperature at which water 
 boils is designated by the number 212, and the 
 point at which it freezes by the number 32, 
 thus reckoning 180^ between these two points. 
 Then, by this thermometer, about 51"^ is the 
 average temperature of London, 8iJ° that of 
 the equator, 99^° that of human blood, 980° 
 that of red heat, and 1,140^ marks the heat of 
 common fire. By this thermometer the figure 
 60 denotes a temperate warmth, and 100 a 
 warmth which we sometimes experience in 
 Summer days, but which is quite too great for 
 comfort or health. 
 
 Thirty-two degrees being freezing-point, zero 
 designates, of course, very cold weather, while 
 at 15° and 20° below zero we have extreme 
 cold. At 39° below zero the mercury of the 
 thermometer freezes, and thus can indicate no 
 greater cold ; hence, for this purpose, instead 
 of mercury alcohol is used, which will indicate 
 a hundred degrees more of cold before freezing. 
 
 In respect to the effect of heat on bodies, the 
 general law is that it expands them, while they 
 contract again in cooling; and the force of 
 
268 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 this expansion and contraction is well-nigh 
 irresistible, and is not prevented from acting 
 by the magnitude of the heated object. Thus 
 it is stated that the Bunker Hill Monument, a 
 mass of stone thirty feet square at the base 
 and two hundred and twenty-one feet high, is 
 so acted upon, in a bright and warm Summer 
 day, that its top is swayed through an irregular 
 ellipse, returning to its perpendicular position 
 only when all its sides return to an equal 
 temperature. 
 
 Heat communicates itself in various ways, 
 as, first, by conduction^ which is the mode 
 mainly in solid bodies, wherein a particle of 
 matter receives heat from an adjoining particle 
 and gives it out to other adjoining particles ; 
 a second mode is by convection or being car- 
 ried — the mode with fluid bodies. A particle 
 becomes heated and immediately moves off, 
 carrying its heat with it, and communicates it 
 to other particles at a greater or less distance ; 
 a third mode is by radiation^ analogous to the 
 transmission through space of the rays of 
 light. 
 
 Heat bears a most important part in the 
 constitution and arrangements of our world, 
 
HEAT. 269 
 
 and in every thing and animal upon its sur- 
 face. All bodies with which we are familiar 
 are incessantly under the influence of this 
 agent, its presence being an indispensable con- 
 dition toward fitting the world for the habita- 
 tion of life and intelligence. 
 
 Cold is a negative ; being simply the ab- 
 sence of heat, as darkness is the absence of 
 light; and, of course, degrees of cold are as- 
 certained by the same instrument as those of 
 heat, that is, by the thermometer ; for when 
 the mercury of the thermometer stands at 40 
 it indicates that there are 40° of heat and the 
 absence of any more than 40°, that is, a cold 
 of 40°. Thirty-two degrees indicate such an 
 absence of heat, that is, such a degree of cold, 
 as that water will freeze. The causes of cold 
 are absence of the sun, thinness of the atmos- 
 phere, as in ascending mountains, evaporation, 
 and radiation through a clear atmosphere. 
 
LVI. 
 
 J;^i0ht* 
 
 IND God said, Let there be Lights 
 and light was." Previously, it ap- 
 pears that darkness was upon the 
 face of the abyss, and, in the establishment of 
 the present order of things upon this earth, 
 the Creator made the sun as the great source 
 of the light which we enjoy. 
 
 What this light is, as in the case of heat, we. 
 are ignorant, and different theories touching 
 its nature have been propounded by philoso- 
 phers. The Newtonian theory contemplates 
 it as a material substance whose particles are 
 almost infinitely minute. The theory, how- 
 ever, now more generally adopted, is what is 
 termed the tindulatory theory, maintaining that 
 light is propagated by means of pulses or 
 270 
 
LIGHT. 271 
 
 waves of disturbance originating, by some 
 means, at the surface of luminous bodies, and 
 spreading thence in every direction. 
 
 If there is more or less uncertainty as to 
 the nature of this wonderful thing which we 
 call lighty yet some of its properties are well 
 ascertained. We know, for example, that it 
 travels, and the rate of its progress through 
 space. We know also, that, in a homogeneous 
 medium, it travels, so to speak, in straight 
 lines or rays. We know that in passing from 
 a rarer to a denser medium or the reverse, the 
 straight rays of light are bent according to a 
 certain law. We further know that rays of 
 light are capable of being reflected as well as 
 bent, and, as in the case of a reflected ball, the 
 angle of incidence and of reflection are equal ; 
 and we know that as the rays of light are ca- 
 pable of being bent from a straight line so 
 they can be gathered and converged to a point 
 or focus, or, on the other hand, can be dis- 
 persed and scattered. Still further, we know 
 that light, in its progress, can penetrate and 
 pass through certain solid and liquid sub- 
 stances, as glass, water, etc., while other sub- 
 stances either reflect or absorb the rays of 
 
2/2 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 light impinging upon them. And we also 
 know that light is the source of colors, and is 
 the blending of all the several hues and tints 
 that exist. We know, too, that light exerts a 
 special influence upon vegetation and is essen- 
 tial to it. 
 
 As Hght does not diffuse itself instantly, but 
 progresses through space, its rate of progress, 
 as was noted above, has been ascertained. 
 Thus it is known that light travels from the 
 sun to the earth in eight and one-half minutes. 
 Its velocity must, consequently, be not far 
 from a hundred and ninety-two thousand miles 
 per second, or eleven and a half millions of 
 miles per minute, or more than six hundred 
 and ninety-one millions per hour ; hence, a 
 ball flying with the velocity of light around 
 our globe would encircle it seven times and a 
 fraction every second. Were such a ball illu- 
 minated, so immediately would the ball follow 
 itself, so to speak, that its path would present 
 a luminous, continuous, and permanent bow 
 across the heavens. 
 
 It is by light that we see ; and like as the 
 nature and quality of the atmosphere are pe- 
 culiarly adapted to breathing, so the nature 
 
LIGHT. 273 
 
 and quality of light entirely correspond to the 
 eyes, and is completely fitted for perfect vision. 
 Either a greater or less amount of light would 
 have been a disadvantage, and would, doubt- 
 less, have been prejudicial to the eye and to 
 general health. 
 
 And who shall ever portray the beauty, the 
 essential excellence of light ? Of what innu- 
 merable forms of happiness is it the immediate 
 source ! How does the whole habitable earth 
 rejoice under its" benign influence! In its 
 bright presence how cheerily and pleasantly 
 proceeds every business, every innocent amuse- 
 ment, every lawful pleasure, every prosperous 
 journey by land and sea, every pure and ele- 
 gant study, every fair and upward progress ! 
 Bathed in light, howy,is the face of friendship, U^-€£j 
 the smiles of love, the glad and beautiful coun- 
 tenance of childhood, the graceful form of 
 lovely woman, the sprightly bearing and aspect 
 of joyous youth, and the venerable and digni- 
 fied presence of old age ! 
 
 So supremely excellent is light that inspira- 
 tion uses the name as one of the epithets of 
 God himself " God is Light, and in him is no 
 
 darkness at all." Also, the great Redeemer is 
 
 18 
 
274 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the Light of the world, a hght to hghten the 
 Gentiles. A sun and shield is God ; the Sun 
 of righteousness ; and the great city of God 
 will have no need of the sun, neither of the 
 moon to shine in it, for the glory of God will 
 lighten it, and the Lamb will be the light 
 thereof. 
 
 Thus, also, light is used as the brilliant em- 
 blem of many an excellence in human affairs. 
 All the knowledges are light; and men of 
 great intellectual attainments, and who use 
 such attainments for the benefit of mankind, 
 are great lights. Men, too, of eminent virtue 
 are burning and shining lights — shining before 
 men, and thus manifesting to the world the 
 glory of God. 
 
LVII, 
 
 ^oJjat* 
 
 ROM light came Colors. Color being Q^£^' 
 a simple idea is incapable of defini- 
 tion, and, like other simple ideas, 
 needs none. The word red conveys as clear a 
 notion of the color designated as any defini- 
 tion could convey of something else. 
 
 The primary colors of nature are seven in 
 number, and by transmitting rays of sunlight 
 through a triangular glass prism, they may be 
 partially separated from each other and thrown 
 upon a screen. This beautiful object is called 
 the Solar Spectrttm^ and the separation of the 
 different colors is owing to the different de- 
 grees by which they are refracted or bent up- 
 ward in passing through the prism. The red 
 
 rays being bent the least, appear, of course, at 
 
 275 
 
2*J& THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the bottom of the spectrum or image upon the 
 screen, and the violet being bent the most, 
 appear at the top. Thus the order of the col- 
 ors forming the spectrum, commencing at the 
 bottom, is red, orange, yellow, green, blue 
 (light), blue (dark), and violet. The rainbow 
 is a solar spectrum in nature, formed by the 
 sun's rays passing through a shower instead 
 of a prism, and thrown upon the opposite 
 clouds for a screen, and if the rainbow is per- 
 fect, as it sometimes is, all the seven colors 
 may be clearly discerned. In the spectrum 
 the change between any two colors is not 
 abrupt, but the transition is gradual from one 
 hue to another, so that the different colored 
 rays and variations of them are, in fact, innu- 
 merable. Thus we have all shades of color, 
 some of them having distinct names, and many 
 others to which no specific name is applied. 
 
 Color, then, is not a quality or property of 
 objects in nature or art, but is a matter of 
 light simply, and hence, when light is with- 
 drawn from them, they have no longer any 
 color, but blackness enshrouds them all indis- 
 criminately. Nothing is red, or yellow, or 
 green, essentially, but these different aspects 
 
COLOR. 277 
 
 come entirely from light, and the color of an 
 object depends upon the rays of light which it 
 most fully reflects to the eye. A red rose and 
 white rose are the same and undistinguishable 
 in a dark room. Admit the light and one of 
 them is red because it reflects to the eye the 
 red rays of light and absorbs the others. The 
 white rose is white because it absorbs almost 
 none of the rays of any color, but reflects 
 them nearly or quite all to the eye, and thus 
 appears of the color, so to speak, of light it- 
 self So the sky is blue, as we say, not that 
 there is any sky, or, if there were, that it is 
 blue, but because the atmosphere, as we look 
 up into it, reflects to our eyes the blue rays of 
 light instead of others. Coal is black because, 
 as we look at it, it reflects to the eye but few 
 rays of light, but absorbs nearly all of them. - 
 
 Now, why it is that some roses reflect to 
 our eyes red rays and absorb the rest, that an 
 orange reflects to us yellowish rays and ab- 
 sorbs the rest, that grass reflects the green 
 rays and absorbs the others, and so of the 
 whole ? These are among the questions that 
 human sagacity fails to answer. All, I think, 
 that we can say is that they were divinely 
 
2/8 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 constituted so ; a certain unknown permanent 
 quality or qualities being enstamped upon all 
 material objects, by virtue of which they re- 
 flect to our eyes one class of rays instead of 
 others, while these others are absorbed and 
 unseen. 
 
 And here, also, is another of the wonderfully 
 benevolent arrangements. Beautiful, indeed, 
 and ever glorious is light, as we have faintly 
 portrayed, but what would even light be to us 
 were all material objects so constructed as to 
 reflect to our eyes all the light that falls upon 
 them, or to reflect none of this light, or to re- 
 flect only one of the seven primary hues ? 
 Then, in the first case, an undistinguishable 
 and sickening whiteness would overspread the 
 world, or, in the second case, a universal black- 
 ness would enshroud all nature, or, in the third 
 case, a world of unvaried and permanent green, 
 or red, or blue would be spread out before us ; 
 in other words, such a sad arrangement would 
 be equivalent to condemning man and beast to 
 universal blindness. Light thus arranged, and 
 we constituted as we are, '* having eyes we 
 should see not,'' an interminable and ghastly 
 blank would be ever before us ; nor would it 
 
COLOR. 279 
 
 matter whether it were white or black, green 
 or red, and these eyes of ours, so skillfully and 
 curiously wrought, might as well be changed 
 to stones. 
 
 How different from all this is the actual ar- 
 rangement ! What a world of transcendent 
 beauty bursts upon us from this divine con- 
 trivance of colors, and this corresponding 
 contrivance whereby different objects reflect to 
 our vision the different colors, and this marvel- 
 ous capacity of the eye, also divine, by which 
 we can distinguish not only the primary and 
 more obvious hues, but those numberless and 
 nameless slighted shades constantly passing 
 before us amid the multitudinous walks and 
 pursuits of human life ! Thus, what a world of 
 glory, did we but know it, is ever opened up 
 before us ! amid what a scene of enchantment 
 are we ever moving, and breathing, and con- 
 templating, and expatiating ! Colors ! Daugh- 
 ters of Hght ! Fountains of beauty and of 
 life-long and unspeakable delight ! Sources of 
 glorious art, and lovely almoners of nature's 
 resplendent, magnificent garniture ! One of 
 the excellent gifts of an infinitely excellent 
 God! 
 
LVIII. 
 
 ^ound* 
 
 HEN you speak of light and colors y 
 you speak of what is entirely external 
 to sensation. But in speaking of 
 Sound it is not precisely so, for though sound 
 seems to be outside of us as truly as light, yet, 
 in reality, it is otherwise. 
 
 Sound has been described as a sensation 
 produced in the mind by vibrations of the air 
 beating upon the drum of the ear. This affec- 
 tion of the tympanum or drum of the ear is 
 communicated to the auditory nerve, and the 
 sensation or sound ensues. 
 
 If such a theory is true, as I suppose it is, 
 
 then a sensitive ear and vibrations of the air 
 
 in contact with it are indispensable to sound. 
 
 Were there an ear ever so perfect and sensitive, 
 280 
 
SOUND. 281 
 
 without the vibrations of the air upon it there 
 would be no sound, and, on the other hand, 
 were there ever so many, and ever so violent 
 agitations of the air with no ear for them 
 to touch, there would equally be no sound. 
 The simultaneous crashing of a thousand 
 thunders would go out in perfect and absolute 
 silence. 
 
 Wonderfully various and numerous are the 
 sounds or voices of nature around us. It is 
 curious that scarcely a moment passes us un- 
 accompanied by some sound. The apartment 
 where I am now writing is one of the stillest, 
 and it is one of nature's quiet hours, yet the 
 voices of whispering breezes are breaking 
 through the lattice — notes of distant music 
 are floating on the air. I mark the indistinct 
 sounds of a car-bell as some train is just issu- 
 ing from the depot, and bird-notes are h'ere and 
 there amid the listening tree-tops, while some 
 indefinite and ceaseless murmur is abroad. I 
 awake in the dark and stilly night and listen. 
 Even now the silence is never perfect, nor is 
 the world ever entirely asleep and still. Were 
 any of us to note such a moment, it would be 
 to us one of the strangest of our experiences ; 
 
282 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 and, doubtless, we should hasten to disturb the 
 unearthly and awful stillness. 
 
 Sound is not instantaneous, but travels from 
 the sounding object to the ear at the rate of 
 a little more than i,ioo feet in a second. 
 Hence, when the sounding object is at a dis- 
 tance and yet in sight, the sound is a little 
 after the sight. Thus, if you glance at a dis- 
 tant woodman as he swings his ax, you will 
 observe that the ax falls a moment before you 
 hear its stroke. So distant thunder is heard 
 some time after you see the lightning. Thus 
 by counting the seconds between seeing the 
 lightning and hearing the thunder, and multi- 
 plying the number by i,ioo, you have the dis- 
 tance in feet of the thunder-cloud. Were 
 there to be a visible and audible thunder- 
 shower at the moon, at six o'clock in the 
 morning, we should hear the thunder at seven 
 o'clock in the evening of the same day — thir- 
 teen hours after the sound started from the 
 moon. Or should there transpire at the sun, 
 at New Year, some great convulsion, whose 
 report could travel to the earth, it would reach 
 us on the 5 th of the following August. 
 
 The variety of sounds which the ear is 
 
SOUND. 283 
 
 capable of hearing, while it is limited, is yet ex- 
 tremely great. Take a single sound ; you can 
 imagine that such a sound may have hundreds 
 of degrees of loudness, all of which the ear 
 is competent to hear. Then take each one of 
 these sounds of different loudness, and to each 
 -one of them you may assign a multitude of 
 different keys — descending with each one to 
 the profoundest bass, and ascending to the 
 intensest imaginable sharpness, and all within 
 the ear's capacity to hear and endure. 
 
 And then consider how few, comparatively, 
 of the countless sounds we hear are positively 
 disagreeable. Nature's voices, especially, are, 
 almost all of them, pleasant voices. It is true, 
 there is the thunder-crash, the whirlwind and 
 tornado, the earthquake rumblings, and some 
 others ; yet some of these, but for associated 
 ideas of danger and calamity, would not be 
 unwelcome. But listen to the more common 
 and ordinary breathings ; those sprightly and 
 varied notes of a thousand feathered tribes ; 
 those songs of the winds, now gentle and 
 sweet as shepherds' lutes, now grand and 
 glorious as the chorus of a thousand organs ; 
 the deep and solemn voice of the ocean as it 
 
284 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 rolls forth its ''everlasting bass in nature's 
 anthem ;" the soft rustling of ripening and gor- 
 geous harvests waving afar; the gentle mur- 
 muring of brooks and rivulets gliding along 
 their winding way ; the sweet lispings of lake or 
 river as their limpid wavelets kiss the sunny 
 shores ; the voices of love and goodness breath- 
 ing amid myriads of happy homes ; the shouts 
 of joyous childhood mingling with the blithe- 
 some morning breeze ; and last, but not least, 
 the worship of the "great and goodly fellow- 
 ship,'' going out in glorious song as the sound 
 of many waters — the opening notes of the 
 grand chorus of immortality. 
 
 It is true, the sounds that come to us are 
 not all harmonious and pure. More or less of 
 discord is abroad, and there are notes and 
 voices that grate harshly and sadly upon the 
 ear. There is evil with the good — cursings 
 mingle with the blessings. But beware, my 
 child, that thou blame not the God of nature, 
 from whom comes naught but eternal harmony. 
 
LIX. 
 
 ^tmosph^r^* M 
 
 S so many of the topics thus far dis- 
 cussed are intimately related to the 
 atmosphere, it seems to be time that 
 I invite your attention to so important a theme. 
 
 This word — Atmosphere — comes from two 
 Greek words — atmoSy meaning vapor, and 
 sphaira, meaning sphere. A sphere of vapor, 
 then, is the atmosphere, and it envelops the 
 earth as a garment. 
 
 The atmosphere, or air, is a fluid substance, 
 composed mainly by the mixture of two gases, 
 oxygen and nitrogen. There is also in the 
 composition a slight quantity of aqueous or 
 watery vapor, and a slighter quantity still of 
 carbonic acid gas. If you divide a quantity of 
 
 ordinary air into one hundred parts, there will 
 
 285 
 
286 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 be by weight, and nearly by measure, of nitro- 
 gen, a little more than 75 J parts ; oxygen, about 
 23 J parts; aqueous vapor, about one part, and 
 of carbonic acid, one-tenth of one part. 
 
 Such is almost exactly the air we inhale 
 from the first moment after our birth till we 
 cease to breathe at death. 
 
 And right here, my young friends, let us 
 pause, for a moment, and wonder and adore. 
 These four ingredients composing the atmos- 
 phere, and the proportion of each one, are ex- 
 actly right, and exactly adapted to the consti- 
 tution of man and of the lower animals. Any 
 variation, though slight, of the proportions, as 
 above specified, would prove injurious to us; 
 any considerable variation would render the 
 air unfit to breathe, and would prove fatal. 
 Diminish, for example, the nitrogen, and in- 
 crease the oxygen, and the wheels of life would 
 begin at once to revolve too rapidly, and vital- 
 ity would be expanded prematurely, and we 
 should be hurried onward toward death. On 
 the other hand, diminish the oxygen, and lan- 
 guor, weariness, and lifelessness would ensue, 
 and disease would- soon finish us. Remove 
 the aqueous vapor, and much of the grateful 
 
ATMOSPHERE. 28/ 
 
 freshness of the atmosphere would be gone, 
 attended, doubtless, by one and another evil 
 consequence. Increase the carbonic acid from 
 one-tenth of one per cent, to five or six per 
 cent, and you have rendered the air unfit to 
 breathe. Substitute for one-tenth of one per 
 cent, of carbonic acid, one whole per cent, of 
 carbonic oxide, which combines one atom of 
 oxygen instead of two with one atom of car- 
 bpn, and our breathing would at once poison 
 us to death. In a word, make any alteration 
 of the air whatever, whether of elements or 
 proportions of elements, and you have altered 
 it for the worse. Just as the atmosphere is, it 
 is the best possible ; and every time we inhale 
 it, at every breath we draw, we should breathe 
 out gratitude, love, and worship to Him who 
 has formed for us this among thousands of 
 other admirable adaptations. So absolutely 
 perfect is this fitness that in favorable circum- 
 stances we breathe, during .all the day, with en- 
 tire ease, as if inhaling the very spirit of peace 
 and happiness, as well as of health and life. 
 
 As a further illustration, let me state that a 
 person, breathing in the ordinary atmosphere, 
 inhales a very different air from that which, at 
 
288 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 the next moment, he breathes out from his 
 lungs. He breathes in the pure air, air having 
 its one-tenth of one per cent, of carbonic acid. 
 But he breathes out an atmosphere charged 
 with 4j per cent, of this acid. But off goes 
 the breath into the boundless atmosphere, and, 
 at the next inhaling, he draws in the pure air 
 again, and all is well. 
 
 Let this same person, however, go into a 
 crowded assembly of people. All are breath- 
 ing, of course; and from a thousand breaths 
 are borne out, every moment, an atmosphere, 
 loaded with at least 4J per cent, of carbonic 
 acid gas. Meanwhile, the space is limited and 
 confined, and ventilation is neglected, and the 
 air of the apartment is becoming more and 
 more impregnated with the poisonous gas, 
 while the oxygen is, every moment, diminish- 
 ing. Distress, of course, ensues, breathing is 
 labored and unrefreshing. It is not so bad as 
 to be under water, or even to be enveloped in 
 a dense and suffocating smoke, and yet there 
 is a partial suffocation. The air is changed. 
 It is not the blessed, native air. It is not the 
 air that God has made ; a poisonous element 
 has entered, in frightful quantities. 
 
ATMOSPHERE. 289 
 
 #»! I tHijail^ m->4k4g ^ij pyj[.^^ ^ into its com- 
 
 position. Another element — the element of 
 life itself — has alarmingly diminished. We 
 are out of our natural element ; pain is upon 
 us ; disease is hard by ; and death is just be- 
 yond. Let us up and away ! How good ! how 
 perfect ! how like the very breath of life, when 
 this man issues forth again into the atmos- 
 phere that the Divine Hand fashioned, com- 
 pounded, and fitted for him ! 
 
 You may have read the tragic story of the 
 " Black Hole " at Calcutta, in India. If not, 
 indulge this slight sketch : On the capture of 
 the city from the British in 1756, Surajah 
 Dowlah, the Indian nabob, ordered the British 
 garrison of one hundred and forty-six men to 
 be confined in the dungeon of the fortress — a 
 room about eighteen feet square. There were 
 but two windows, both upon one side of the 
 room, and strongly barred, and admitting but 
 little air from without. Into this one small 
 apartment, on a hot night in June, all the 
 hundred and forty-six men were crowded. So 
 thickly they stood that the door was with dif- 
 ficulty closed upon them. In a few moments 
 they were all in a perfect perspiration — then 
 
 19 
 
290 TFIE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 came on raging thirst, and such was their 
 agony that they strove to provoke the guards 
 outside to fire in upon them and kill them. 
 By nine o'clock in the evening several were 
 dead, and as the night advanced all self-control 
 was lost. Those in remote parts of the room 
 struggled to reach the windows, and a dreadful 
 tumult ensued, in which many were trampled 
 to death. They raved, fought, prayed, blas- 
 phemed, and many fell exhausted to the floor, 
 where suffocation came to their relief. Mean- 
 while the odor filling the dungeon was most 
 deadly, and every moment became more so, 
 and toward midnight the poor victims began 
 to drc^ off in rapid succession. At six in the 
 morning, when the door was ordered to be 
 opened, only twenty-three out of the hundred 
 and forty-six were alive, and these were either 
 stupefied or raving. 
 
 The Indian tyrant had withdrawn from these 
 poor prisoners the vital air, and they perished. 
 
LX. 
 
 Jitmaspherje* (^) 
 
 F the four elements composing the 
 atmosphere, oxygen is the positive 
 and capital one. Nitrogen seems 
 designed to serve as a sort of mollilier for 
 restraining the too active influence of the 
 fiery oxygen, like as water is mingled with 
 spirits to reduce and temper their strength 
 and energy. It is, of itself, utterly devoid of 
 life-giving energy, and were the oxygen with- 
 drawn from it, breathing would be as com- 
 pletely impossible as in a vacuum. 
 
 The presence of the aqueous element is 
 seen by placing a pitcher of cold water upon 
 the table in a warm room. The warm air 
 coming in contact with the vessel is cooled, 
 
 and thus its capacity for holding water is 
 
 291 
 
292 
 
 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 diminished, and the water settles as fine dew 
 upon the outside surface of the pitcher. It is, 
 in fact, dew, this being, as we have already 
 noticed, nothing more or less than the visible 
 moisture deposited by the air upon a surface 
 cooler than itself 
 
 As in the composition of the atmosphere 
 carbonic acid gas bears so small a part, being 
 by weight only one-thousandth of the whole, 
 and as air that is breathed comes back from 
 the lungs loaded with 4J per cent, of this same 
 gas, some of you may be led to ask, when so 
 much carbonic acid is continually going out 
 into the atmosphere from men and animals, 
 and from age to age, why it does not increase 
 and become, in time, a larger element of the 
 atmosphere, and even so large as to become 
 destructive. Such an inquiry is rational ; and 
 here is suggested to my young readers another 
 of the Divine arrangements as admirable as it 
 is wonderful, and which may well excite emo- 
 tions of lofty praise and worship. There 
 seems no reason why the disastrous influence 
 alluded to should not transpire and even pro- 
 gress indefinitely until the whole animal crea- 
 tion were destroyed, but for the simple and 
 
ATMOSPHERE. 263 
 
 Divine compensation that has been established 
 This compensation is thus : While the animal 
 world, in respiration, consumes oxygen and 
 dismisses carbon into the atmosphere, the veg- 
 etable world, in the presence of sunshine, lives 
 by precisely the reverse process ; for respira- 
 tion, though different from that of animals, 
 belongs to vegetables also, and these, as they 
 respire in the day-time, consume carbon and 
 dismiss oxygen to the air, and thus the life- 
 giving element is perpetually renewed, while 
 the life-destroying element is perpetually re- 
 pressed. The universal animal breathing tends 
 to annihilate all the oxygen of the atmosphere, 
 and fatally poison this atmosphere with car- 
 bon ; but the universal vegetable breath catches 
 up and hides away the carbon, and replaces 
 the lost oxygen. 
 
LXI. 
 
 ^tmcxspheve. (30 
 
 HE atmosphere enveloping this great 
 globe is immensely abundant. Over 
 all the earth there is no lack, and no- 
 where in open space is there a thought of any 
 scarcity of the ''vital element." By careful 
 calculation it is estimated that it extends up- 
 ward about forty-five miles above the earth. 
 The region of air near the earth has, of course, 
 the greatest density, being pressed upon by 
 the weight of all above, like as when several 
 fleeces of wool are spread one upon another 
 the lowest fleece becomes the most flattened 
 and solid, while the upper one remains in its 
 natural condition. Thus the atmosphere, also, 
 grows lighter and thinner as you ascend 
 through it, until, at the height of about four 
 294 
 
ATMOSPHERE. 295 
 
 miles, it becomes insufficient for breathing, and 
 respiration is difficult. Meanwhile, at such a 
 great height, the ordinary air within the per- 
 son not meeting sufficient pressure from with- 
 out, expands and causes the system to swell 
 painfully, and sometimes produces eruption of 
 blood-vessels and other injurious effects. And 
 were it possible to ascend eight or ten miles 
 above the earth it is quite certain that the 
 atmosphere there would be inadequate to sus- 
 tain life. 
 
 Here, then, is another of the excellent 
 adaptations, showing the hand of a wise and 
 benevolent Creator. As the air in its compo- 
 sition is exactly right, so, also, in its degree of 
 density upon the earth's plains it is precisely 
 adapted to respiration. We were not designed 
 to dwell on the summits of lofty mountains, 
 but the '' lower parts of the earth " are ordered 
 for the habitations of men, and there the at- 
 mosphere is neither too dense on the one hand 
 nor too light on the other, but its correspond- 
 ence with the constitution of our lungs and 
 entire system is perfect. 
 
 It is curious that this invisible medium that 
 is all about us and within us, and which seems 
 
296 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 SO extremely thin and light, should yet be a 
 veritable and material substance, and, taken as 
 a body, of inconceivable weight as it rests 
 down upon the solid earth. The weight of a 
 column of air resting upon a square inch of 
 the earth's surface, and extending up through 
 the whole depth of forty-five miles, is fifteen 
 pounds ; hence, the pressure being the same 
 in all directions, downward, upward, and later- 
 ally, the entire weight of atmosphere pressing 
 upon a man of ordinary size is about three 
 tons. Such a pressure would, of course, be 
 fatal to him were it not exactly counterbal- 
 anced by the air within, and by which every 
 part of the person is pervaded and filled. And 
 please not forget this one also of the innumer- 
 able Divine compensations. 
 
 Starting with this data of fifteen pounds of 
 air on each square inch, you have only to prac- 
 tice a little arithmetic to ascertain the entire 
 weight of the atmosphere as it rests upon the 
 globe. Reduce to square inches the two hun- 
 dred millions of square miles comprised in the 
 earth's surface, multiply by fifteen and divide 
 by two thousand, and you have the great re- 
 sult in tons ; or reduce one square mile to 
 
ATMOSPHERE. 297 
 
 square inches, multiply by two hundred mill- 
 ions, and that product by fifteen, and divide by 
 two thousand. Your result will be, in tons, 
 60,137,344x10^; that is, sixty millions, one 
 hundred and thirty-seven thousand, three hun- 
 dred and forty-four, multiplied by ten, raised to 
 the eighth power, or 6,013,734,400,000,000 tons, 
 a number which you may enumerate at your 
 leisure. So true is it that the earth's atmos- 
 phere, considered as a mere substance, is no 
 trifle, light and airy though it seem. Nor yet 
 so very "light and airy'' even the seeming. 
 Its still, soft calms, its slight breezes whisper- 
 ing by us, are indeed ever so light and gentle. 
 But when this great atmospheric world takes 
 on one of its swift and mighty movements, and 
 goes rushing, and roaring, and tearing over 
 land and sea, hurling aloft men aind trees, and 
 houses and fences, and carrying devastation 
 and ruin in its wild and terrible career, then 
 we begin to realize that this invisible some- 
 thing above and around us is a "something" 
 indeed, a reality, so to speak, with a ven- 
 geance ! 
 
 The elasticity of the atmosphere is one of 
 its deeply interesting qualities. To so remark- 
 
298 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 able degree is it thus characterized that a por- 
 tion of it has been known to expand to two 
 thousand times its ordinary bulk. By its elas- 
 tic energy it is ever ready to spring into every 
 vacancy or vacuum. A beautiful instance of 
 this is seen in the process of respiration. No 
 sooner is the air inflating the lungs expired or 
 breathed out and a vacuum created there than 
 the air without springs in to fill up the vacant 
 spaces. Thus, every moment we are enjoying 
 the indispensable benefit of this quality of the 
 atmosphere, and, perhaps, without a thought 
 about it from morning to evening. A common 
 air-pump — an instrument for exhausting the 
 air from a vessel — will show you the operation 
 of the elasticity of the air. Place under the 
 glass receiver to be exhausted a collapsed 
 bladder containing but little air, and then with- 
 draw the air from the receiver, and the small 
 quantity of air within the bladder will expand 
 as the outside air is removed from it ; then 
 admit the air again to the receiver and the 
 bladder collapses to its former condition by the 
 expansion of the air around it. From the 
 elasticity of the air comes its use for springs, 
 air-beds, air-guns, and other things. 
 
LXII. 
 
 igjimat^* 
 
 HE term Climate is commonly under- 
 stood as denoting the temperature of 
 a place, its degree of heat and cold ; 
 and the comparative climates of different local- 
 ities of the earth present a subject of much 
 interest to the curious student. 
 
 It is a general law touching climate, that the 
 torrid zone, as noticed in a former sketch, com- 
 prises the warmest region of the globe, and 
 the frigid zone the coldest, while from the for- 
 mer to the latter zone the temperature some- 
 what regularly diminishes. This may be said 
 to be generally true, and it would be invariably 
 and universally true were there not certain 
 counteracting influences, which operate to dis- 
 turb, in many localities, the regular gradation 
 
 299 
 
300 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 of heat and cold in passing from the equator 
 to the poles. At first thought it might seem 
 that on the same line of latitude the climate 
 would be the same all around the world ; as, 
 for example, Washington City and San Fran- 
 cisco being very nearly on the same line of 
 latitude, some one might infer that the climate 
 of the two cities is equally warm or cold. So 
 of Quebec and Paris ; so of the northern ex- 
 tremity of Newfoundland and the city of Lon- 
 don ; so of North Labrador and Stockholm. 
 But a greater mistake could hardly be made 
 than that the climates of these places respect- 
 ively are alike or nearly so. So far is this from 
 being the fact that the climate of Washington, 
 at 39°, is about the same as that of Puget 
 Sound, ten degrees further north ; and the cli- 
 mate of Paris, at 48^°, is like that of Philadel- 
 phia at 40° ; and the climate of London, at 5 1 J°, 
 instead of being like that of northern New- 
 foundland, though of the same latitude, nearly 
 corresponds with that of Richmond, Va., at 
 37j°; and the temperature of Stockholm, at 
 59°, instead of being similar to northern Lab- 
 rador in the same latitude, is not very different 
 from that of Bangor, Maine, at 44° 
 
CLIMATE. 301 
 
 If now you ask, as you certainly will, How 
 does this happen ? the general answer must be 
 that it is owing largely to the irregular distri- 
 bution of land and water upon the globe. If 
 the earth were all water and without any 
 northern or southern currents, or if it were all 
 land, a plain, uniform surface, without hills or 
 depressions, in either event the climate on any 
 given parallel of latitude would be the same 
 the world around. This sameness actually ex- 
 ists, to a great extent, on the parallels of the 
 far south — those parallels that encompass the 
 globe without crossing any considerable land, 
 as from the fortieth parallel downward. You 
 will ask, then, how the intervention of land 
 effects so great a difference of temperature in 
 regions of the same latitude ? Your atlases 
 instruct you that the great continents of both 
 hemispheres push up broadly toward and 
 around the North Pole. More than three- 
 fourths of North America, for example, lies 
 north of the fiftieth parallel, and spreading it- 
 self thence toward the pole, hugs it, including 
 Greenland, nearly half around. The entire 
 extent of this immense region, including its 
 frozen bays and inlets, together with the great 
 
302 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Arctic Ocean beyond, is, a great portion of the 
 year, one vast realm of cold and desolation, 
 mainly the domain of everlasting Winter. All 
 across this bleak space of thousands of miles 
 the north-west wind — one of our prevalent 
 winds — sweeps over the eastern half of the 
 United States. Hither is wafted the cold at- 
 mosphere of these northern regions, while, as 
 it is borne onward, it meets with little to mol- 
 lify the temperature with which it started on 
 its long journey hitherward. It comes from 
 realms of cold, it sweeps along other frosty 
 realms as it comes, it reaches us a frosty Arc- 
 tic atmosphere, spreading itself over our plains, 
 and hills, and coasts, and essentially and per- 
 manently affecting the climate of our country. 
 Thus it is with the eastern portion of the 
 North American continent, and likewise with 
 the corresponding portion of the Eastern or 
 Asiatic continent. Both of these portions of 
 the world are powerfully aifected, as to their 
 climate, by winds sweeping from cold regions 
 of the earth, and traversing, as they come, in- 
 tervening lands which are also cold. 
 
 Very different is it, on the other hand, with 
 the countries which have the great oceans for 
 
CLIMATE. 303 
 
 their western boundaries instead of a wide 
 reach of cold and icy country. Such are 
 Western Europe and our own Pacific coast. 
 The winds that reach these countries from the 
 west and north-west, instead of coming across 
 wide realms of frost, sweep over extensive and 
 open seas, which tend to moderate the temper- 
 ature of the atmosphere moving over them. 
 Moreover, warm ocean currents flowing north- 
 ward from equatorial seas, and crossing the 
 ocean, bear with them to those favored coun- 
 tries a milder atmosphere. Such is the famous 
 Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, while late dis- 
 coveries reveal a corresponding stream, one or 
 more, coursing northward and eastward through 
 the great Pacific, and reaching by its influence 
 the Pacific States and territories. Such are, 
 doubtless, the main causes operating to work 
 so great a diflerence between our climate and 
 that of corresponding latitudes on the opposite 
 side of the Atlantic, and also the opposite Pa- 
 cific shores. 
 
LXIII. 
 
 Winds* 
 
 AVING written of the atmosphere 
 and of cHmate, the subject of Winds 
 is very naturally suggested, for wind, 
 as you are aware, is nothing else than the 
 atmosphere in a state of motion. Sometimes 
 the atmosphere is still ; we call this a calm. 
 Sometimes there is a gentle movement of the 
 air. This, though a wind, is more generally 
 called a breeze. If this increases considerably, 
 we call it a wind; if it increases very much, 
 we speak of it as a strong wind, a high wind, 
 or a gale. If it becomes intense, it is a mighty 
 wind. The more gentle movements of the 
 air, or what we call breezes, are generally 
 agreeable, and often delightful. Nature then 
 seems animated and sprightly, the spirit of 
 304 
 
WINDS. 305 
 
 health seems moving along the air. If the 
 temperature be high, the breathing of the 
 atmosphere affords a cooling influence, while 
 the music of waving foliage is grateful to the 
 ear. And it is worthy of being remembered 
 that this breezy condition of the atmosphere 
 is the prevailing condition in most habitable 
 countries of the world. Nearly all localities 
 have their storm-winds — the more violent dis- 
 turbances of the air above them. But these 
 are rather the exceptions than the general 
 order, and the normal condition of the atmos- 
 phere of the earth is one of comparative quiet. 
 
 This, too, is one of the arrangements flow- 
 ing from the Divine benevolence and goodness ; 
 for the atmosphere, though invisible, and, for 
 the most part, quiet, is yet a fearful element, 
 and in its seasons of storm-fury is sometimes 
 frightful and destructive beyond most other 
 earthly agencies. 
 
 The air being an exceedingly thin and elas- 
 tic fluid, is agitated and disturbed with the 
 utmost ease, and thus the constant occurrence 
 of breezes and winds is natural and inevitable. 
 Two grand causes of atmospheric disturb- 
 ances, or winds, are heat and moisture. Let 
 
306 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 a portion of the atmosphere become heated 
 above the temperature of the surrounding por- 
 tions and disturbance ensues. The heated air 
 tends, at once, to expand and ascend, and con- 
 tinues to ascend till, by the cooler air aloft, it 
 is reduced to the same temperature. But if 
 this heated air tends to ascend, the surround- 
 ing cooler air will equally tend to flow in to 
 supply its place and restore the equilibrium. 
 This drifting in of surrounding air is wind. 
 You might naturally suppose that in the event 
 named, the surrounding air would rush in 
 equally from all directions ; and this would be 
 so if the condition of the atmosphere were 
 entirely alike at all points of the compass 
 around the heated region. But this might be 
 or might not be. For some reason, or reasons, 
 the drifting in of air from one direction might 
 be with a much greater momentum than from 
 any other, and this current would predominate 
 over all others, and might sweep in not only 
 to the heated region, but far beyond it in the 
 same direction. 
 
 Moisttire, as well as heat, is a cause of winds, 
 and it is partly on this wise: As from the 
 sea or lakes and rivers, and moist lands, 
 
WINDS. 307 
 
 evaporation proceeds, and as the vapor, being 
 lighter than air, rises, as smoke ascends, more 
 or less air is borne upward with the vapor, and 
 thus the airy equilibmum beneath is disturbed, 
 and winds are the consequence. Sometimes 
 the contrary process is a fact. Away in the 
 upper air immense quantities of vapor are 
 condensed by cold, and thus becoming heavier 
 than the air, gradually settle toward the earth 
 and press upon the underlying air, and again 
 the equilibrium is disturbed, and the pressed 
 air flows outward instead of inward — a wind 
 in the opposite direction. In connection with 
 this, it should be remembered that only a 
 small disturbance of the airy equilibrium, 
 whether by heat, or moisture, or both com- 
 bined, is often sufficient to occasion a consid- 
 erable wind. 
 
 The fact has already occurred to you that 
 winds are variable. Sometimes they come 
 from one point of the compass, and sometimes 
 another. This variableness of the winds is 
 specially characteristic of the temperate zones, 
 while in the torrid and frigid zones there is 
 more uniformity. In the torrid zone, for^ ex- 
 ample, and in the neighborhood of the equator 
 
308 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 is a region of heated and rarefied air extending 
 around the world. In this equatorial belt the 
 heated air is continually ascending into higher 
 regions of the atmosphere, whence a portion 
 of it floats northward, and another portion 
 southward. To supply the place of this air at 
 and near the equator, another portion of air 
 starting from twenty-five to thirty degrees 
 north and south latitude, drifts in toward the 
 equator. The air from north of the equator 
 approaches it in a south-west direction, and 
 that from south of the equator in a north- 
 west direction. These two winds are uniform, 
 and are called Trade- Winds, from the assist- 
 ance they afford to commerce — vessels sailing 
 westward taking advantage of these whenever 
 practicable. For such is the regularity of 
 these winds that ships within their influence 
 are enabled to sail thousands of miles, without 
 altering their course or changing a sail. 
 
 This phenomenon of the regularity of the 
 trade-winds would be the same entirely around 
 the world but for a cause which I will now 
 name to you. The torrid zone, in the Eastern 
 hem^isphere, includes large tracts of land as 
 well as water. Under the torrid sun this land 
 
U 
 
 OS 
 
 b 
 W 
 
WINDS. 309 
 
 becomes much more heated than the neigh- 
 boring waters. South Hindostan, for instance, 
 becomes a more heated region than the Ara- 
 bian Sea or Indian Ocean. The consequence 
 of this is that the regular current of the trade- 
 winds is disturbed and a new wind-current is 
 created opposite to the regular current. From 
 the Indian Ocean a wind, instead of continuing 
 uniformly toward south-west, sets in north- 
 eastward toward the heated territory of Hindo- 
 stan. Also, from the seas north of Australia, 
 a current, instead of continuing north-west, 
 the regular direction, drifts directly south-east 
 and south, toward the heated region of that 
 great island. These are the counter-winds 
 that are called Monsoons^ and are often fright- 
 fully violent and destructive. 
 
 The winds of the temperate zones, as we 
 have already remarked, are variable, having 
 no such regularity as those of the torrid zone. 
 The prevailing winds, however, are westerly, 
 the south-west and north-west winds being 
 the more common winds of the north temper- 
 ate zone. Easterly winds are frequent on and 
 near the Atlantic coast, and are often attended 
 with storms of rain in warm weather, and of 
 
3IO THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 snow in the Winter season. The south-west 
 wind, as you might expect, is a warm wind, 
 and, if it continues for two or three days, is 
 wont to be attended with rain. The north- 
 west is a cool wind, and in this country, at 
 least, is almost invariably attended with fair 
 weather. 
 
LXIV. 
 
 Whirlwinds. 
 
 HIRLWINDS are winds whose course, 
 instead of being direct, is circular or 
 spiral. They differ extremely in the 
 velocity and force of their motion. Some- 
 times they appear in the shape of a small and 
 gentle eddy gliding by, and lifting light sub- 
 stances, as straws or dust, from the earth as 
 they pass. For, in addition to their whirl- 
 ing motion, they have a progressive motion 
 along the earth, sometimes moderate, and, at 
 other times, of great swiftness. At times, 
 they rush along the earth and around their 
 axis with awful violence, carrying destruction 
 in their path, which, in breadth, covers a space 
 of from two or three hundred yards to as many 
 miles. When their path is narrow they are 
 
 311 
 
312 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 frequently called Tornadoes, from the Spanish 
 word tornar, to return. The tornado appears 
 suddenly under a clear sky, is of great vio- 
 lence, advances rapidly along the eafth, and is 
 of brief duration. 
 
 Another form of the whirlwind is that called 
 Cyclo7tey which seems to be noticed mostly as 
 traversing over seas. It does not, like the tor- 
 nado, come down as out of a clear sky, but is 
 said to set in during a protracted rain-storm, 
 with a path from one hundred to five hundred 
 or six hundred miles wide, and advancing along 
 the ocean with a comparatively slow motion. 
 
 The name Typhoon, from the Greek tuphouy 
 bears a meaning nearly similar to the term 
 cyclone, although a wider signification is often 
 given to the word, being used to express a vio- 
 lent or parching wind, though not a whirlwind. 
 
 Every form of a violent whirlwind is fright- 
 ful and terrible in the highest' degree. Few 
 situations imaginable are more awful than to 
 be in or near the center of the path of a tor- 
 nado as it goes whirling and sweeping across 
 the country. Its coming is sudden, and all at 
 once the world grows dark, and there is a 
 rushing, roaring sound, such as is never heard 
 
WHIRLWINDS. 313 
 
 elsewhere, and which is too terrible for de- 
 scription. A wind is raging such as might 
 seem sufificient to sweep the world away. Be- 
 fore it nothing escapes. Trees are prostrated, 
 houses are demolished, every fence is swept 
 from the landscape, the darkened air is filled 
 with various matters and things that are lit- 
 erally blown away, and the day of doom has 
 already come to more than one precious life. 
 It is but a brief moment and the great car of 
 desolation and ruin is soon gone by. Such as 
 have survived and find themselves uninjured, 
 experience within themselves a momentary 
 emotion of unutterable relief, and perhaps clap 
 their hands for exceeding joy. But a scene of 
 utter desolation is all about them. Every tree 
 and dwelling is laid low, nothing is left as it 
 was only ten minutes ago, and there are al- 
 ready heard the groans and cries of wounded 
 and dying people. One and another are al- 
 ready dead, and others are missing, having 
 been hurled into the air, and have fallen 
 broken and, perhaps, lifeless somewhere. It 
 is one of the frightful and heart-rending trage- 
 dies now and then occurring along life's check- 
 ered way. 
 
314 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Nor are all these terrible storm-winds so 
 very unfrequent even in our own favored coun- 
 try, especially in the great Mississippi Valley. 
 During the season of 1859 I counted as many 
 as a dozen of these awful disturbances, several 
 of which occurred in different parts of the 
 State of Illinois ; one passing eight or ten 
 miles south of my residence, sweeping every 
 thing before it, and destroying several lives. 
 Shortly after, another rushed by and partly 
 over me, giving me a moment's experience 
 such as I never knew before, and such as I 
 pray may never be repeated. If ever a dark 
 and terrible ruin seemed imminent, it was dur- 
 ing those few seconds. But it passed on, and 
 with it went one of those moments of life, hap- 
 pily but few with the multitude, surcharged 
 with unspeakable terror and alarm. 
 
 But the whirlwind, whether in the shape of 
 the tornado or the cyclone, is not the only 
 frightful and destructive wind. The Sirocco of 
 the Mediterranean realms, and the Simoon of 
 Syria, Arabia, and India, are also dreadful vis- 
 itations ; they are similar winds, blowing with 
 great violence and for a considerable time, all 
 charged with terrible heat, and exert a sufifoca- 
 
WHIRLWINDS. 315 
 
 ting influence on men and animals, and a blast- 
 ing effect upon the vegetable world over which 
 they sweep. The sirocco is a south-east wind 
 driving across the Mediterranean from African 
 deserts. The simoon also comes from south- 
 ern deserts, and, after blowing two or three 
 days, becomes very fatal to life. People shut 
 themselves up in their houses, and travelers 
 over deserts keep within their tents, or dig for 
 themselves pits in the sand, and thus hide 
 away from the blasting storm, while the 
 camels, for self-protection, instantly bury their 
 noses in the sand. 
 
LXV. 
 
 tises of Winjds* 
 
 E have seen that winds are sometimes 
 terrible and disastrous, yet these in- 
 stances are exceptions and not the 
 general rule. The general rule is that they 
 are useful. They are, indeed, indispensable. 
 Doubtless, if we knew much more than we do, 
 we should see that even these destructive 
 winds, to which allusion has been made, have 
 their beneficial as well as their injurious influ- 
 ences, and form a part of a great general plan 
 of wise and benevolent operations always being 
 wrought out under the hand of the great Fa- 
 ther of all. 
 
 But if we can not see all this, let us turn 
 our eyes toward what we can see and appreci- 
 ate; and already have we alluded to some of 
 
 316 
 
USES OF WINDS. 317 
 
 the benefits of winds. We have seen, for ex- 
 ample, how that the Trade-Winds are greatly 
 beneficial to commerce by enabling vessels in 
 their vicinity, and which are bound westward, 
 to avail themselves of their uniform and favor- 
 able breath, whereby they are borne on their 
 course over the sea through days and nights 
 without the shifting of a sail. Columbus 
 drifted unwittingly within the influence of 
 these favoring breezes as he sailed hitherward 
 on his first voyage of discovery ; and so regu- 
 lar was the westward impulse that the sailors, 
 instead of welcoming its aid, became alarmed 
 at the regularity of the winds which were so 
 constantly driving them away from their 
 homes and country, and feared that so unusual 
 a phenomenon was but some dreadful and 
 fatal breath bearing them on, by day and night, 
 toward some unknown catastrophe, and which 
 would effectually prevent them from ever re- 
 traversing those unknown and lonely seas. 
 
 Nor are the Trade-Winds the only winds 
 serviceable to navigation. The variable winds 
 are all of value to its great interests, and are 
 all pressed into its service. " Head- Winds," 
 it is true, must be encountered, and these often 
 
3l8 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 impede the voyages of vessels upon the seas ; 
 yet what are head-winds to a thousand mari- 
 ners are the favorable gales to a thousand 
 others, who thus are borne swiftly on their 
 way toward the ''desired haven." And even 
 head-winds, unless they are wild and mighty 
 winds, are more welcome to the sailor than 
 calms ; for, though they compel him from his 
 direct course, yet he knows the maneuverings 
 and tactics by which to make even hostile 
 winds contribute to his progress. 
 
 We have also alluded before to the refresh- 
 ing and invigorating influence of the winds as 
 they pass over us. What more irksome and 
 wearisome, especially in Summer days, than 
 the dead calm of the atmosphere.'^ and in the 
 midst of such a calm how animating, how in- 
 spiring, and welcome is the springing up of 
 delicious breezes, wafting to us fresh drafts 
 from out of the deep and inexhaustible cis- 
 terns above and beyond us ! How cooling 
 and reviving is that new-born breeze ! How 
 does it play around us, and lift us up as into 
 a stronger and more earnest life ! and how, 
 from a scene of inertness and drowsy dullness, 
 has it transformed all nature into music, 
 
USES OF WINDS. 319 
 
 sprightliness, and loveliness ! Who would 
 wish to live if life must be endured under the 
 dominion of an unending calm ? No gentle 
 fanning upon the brow of toil ; the stillness of 
 death in all the vast, deep firmament ; no leaf 
 stirred, if leaf could be ; no joyous billow 
 tumbling ashore ; no ripple on the glassy lake ; 
 no waving meadow lands or harvest fields ; no 
 whisper among the still and mourning trees — 
 one wide, still, dead world, from the crown of 
 the head upward and forever ! 
 
 And if winds are often cooling and refresh- 
 ing amid Summer heats, so they are as often 
 warming and enlivening amid Wintery and 
 frosty days. Welcome, after successive days 
 of cold and frost, is the drifting in of southern 
 breezes, wafting to our Wintery latitude \\i^ UjdAiJjl/l* 
 softer airs of more gentle climates ; and as 
 they begin to breathe over the snowy and des- 
 olate landscape, how soon does Winter unloose 
 his icy grip, and how promptly do the snows n, 
 
 dissolve, and the streams and brooks begin to | 
 
 flow again ! 
 
 Winds, too, are indispensable to the distri- 
 bution of rain over the countries of the world. 
 As evaporation proceeds from the surface of 
 
320 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 seas, lakes, and rivers, winds are necessary to 
 bear the new-formed clouds ashore, that they 
 may shed their burden of waters upon the un- 
 derlying land. But for winds to perform this 
 great service the vapor and the clouds would 
 remain suspended above the waters whence 
 they originated, and upon these waters they 
 would shed their useless rain, which would fall 
 directly and perpetually back. The present 
 magnificent circulating system of water would 
 have no existence. Over the water would be 
 incessant rains, and over the land incessant 
 sunshine and drought. Not a cloud would 
 ever float over us, not a rain-drop would ever 
 fall on field or mountain. Of course, the 
 world would be one vast and hideous desert, 
 without an inhabitant, or tree, or a single 
 green thing — as bare, and naked, and fruitless 
 as the bald granite of the mountain ledge. 
 
 Also, winds have their uses as mechanical 
 agencies, and that not only for the propulsion 
 of vessels over seas, but for lifting water from 
 wells, for draining purposes, for salt manufact- 
 ure, as well as for other useful ends. 
 
 Great is their use, too, for the dissemination 
 of various seeds, as thus from trees and other 
 
USES OF WINDS. 32 1 
 
 plants where they originate they are borne 
 through the air and scattered abroad in various 
 directions, and sometimes to considerable dis- 
 tances. And many kinds of seeds are pro- 
 vided with certain appendages, by which they 
 may with greater facility be thus wafted 
 through the air, and lodge and take root in 
 other localities. 
 
 Useful, also, are the winds as they sway 
 hither and thither the trunks and limbs of 
 trees, thus contributing to their firmness, 
 strength, and beauty, and aiding in the circu- 
 lation and activity of their juices and their 
 healthy growth, as well as the excellence of 
 their fruits and foliage. 
 
 Finally, the incessant movements of the at- 
 mosphere — movements sometimes violent and 
 even terrible — are ever conducive to its preser- 
 vation as a salubrious and healthy element. 
 Various noxious substances and localities are 
 scattered all along the earth, always affecting, 
 more or less, the atmosphere coming in contact 
 with them. Thus, were there an eternal calm 
 and no circulation of the air, much of the earth, 
 from this one source alone, would become un- 
 fit for habitation. But the winds are ever 
 
 21 
 
322 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 interfering to prevent this poisoning of the 
 atmosphere; sweeping away unhealthy por- 
 tions, driving them aloft and over seas, and 
 where their salubrity may be more or less re- 
 stored, and replacing them with a purer and 
 healthier medium. 
 
 Such are some of the uses of winds. Some- 
 times dreadful are they, and bear dire destruc- 
 tion on their swift and mighty wings ; but, in 
 the general, their breath is mild and healthy, 
 and their touch is inspiriting and gladdening, 
 and their movement graceful as when gentle 
 billows roll onward over Summer seas, and 
 their voice is Nature's grand and glorious harp, 
 whose strains, now soft as infant breathings, 
 now loud as many waters, are ever wafted to 
 the listening ear, and waking glorious music 
 to enchant the world. 
 
LXVI. 
 
 ltam-$tofms. 
 
 W-: 
 
 
 INTIMATELY associated with winds 
 and the atmosphere are the Storms 
 so frequently occurring in most re- 
 gions of the earth. We have before alluded 
 to those terrible wind-storms, which, under the 
 name of whirlwinds, tornadoes, etc., not un- 
 frequently take their wild and destructive path 
 over land and sea. We now write of those 
 ordinary storms — storms of rain, which are 
 common in the temperate zones. 
 
 Happily, it is not all "fair weather." Often, 
 indeed, there are several days of uninterrupted 
 sunshine. No cloud, even of the "bigness of a 
 man's hand,'' is seen upon the deep-blue sky. 
 Mellow breezes glide over the plains, and whis- 
 per amid the trees. The genial air is vocal 
 
 323 
 
324 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 with bird-notes. The cattle are abroad upon 
 a thousand hills. Men and women are intent 
 upon business or pleasure, and there is the 
 seeming of a world that, in its quietness and 
 permanence, never knew storm or change; yet 
 we awake on some morning, and looking 
 through the lattice " we perceive that it is no 
 longer ^*a morning without clouds." On the 
 contrary, they are gathering densely and 
 darkly. Sun and sky are utterly hidden. A 
 different wind from that of yesterday is drift- 
 ing in — a damp, raw, and chilly wind, as if it 
 came from some cold Atlantic depths. An 
 entirely different hue and aspect are enstamped 
 upon the world. Another scene spreads itself 
 away before us and around us ; another sound 
 and voice are in the air. 
 
 "Along the hills, along the moorish fens, 
 Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm !" 
 
 Meanwhile the cloudy canopy thickens and 
 darkens, and the air dampens and grows 
 murky and moist. And then, anon, a fine 
 mist is falling, which waxes shortly into a 
 steady and determined rain ; and gazing off 
 hither and thither to the farthest horizon there 
 
RAIN-STORMS. 325 
 
 seems to be rain every -where. The wide 
 world, yesterday so sunny and bright, blue 
 above and radiant and brilliant beneath, is now 
 turned into a world of rain, and warm airs are 
 changed into such as are chilly and cheerless. 
 I am looking now out upon such a storm. All 
 ''out-of-doors" is wet and somber. Overhead 
 is one vast, dark, and unbroken cloud, cover- 
 ing all the welkin. It seems to have taken 
 the place of the beautiful, blue sky, and has 
 the look of intending to remain up there, as if 
 it were hereafter to be the normal condition 
 of the firmament ; for who can push aside 
 the enormous mass that it should not hover 
 over us forever.'^ 
 
 And so it rains, rains ! All over those dis- 
 tant hills and woods there is naught but rain 
 and gloom, and, near by, the roofs are all drip- 
 ping, and the smoke issues slowly and slug- 
 gishly from the chimney-tops and hangs near 
 the roofs, as if it dreaded to ascend into the 
 dismal world of descending rain ; or else it is 
 hard going up against such a tide ; or else it 
 may be that the air is too .dull and sluggish to 
 bear it upward. Only one bird is abroad, and 
 there he is, poor little fellow, tugging, and 
 
326 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 turning, and fussing away up there in the rain, 
 and seems hardly to know what he would bet- 
 ter do or what course to pursue. 
 
 There is no wind. The rain falls vertically 
 down ; falls steadily and yet leisurely, as if 
 there were an abundance of opportunity, and 
 as if it had proposed to take its own time. 
 And men with dripping umbrellas are hurry- 
 ing along the wet sidewalk to their business 
 places ; and there goes, with light, elastic step, 
 one of the tenderer sex, whom industry and, 
 perchance, necessity drives daily through 
 storms as well as sunshine to some distant 
 task. 
 
 Such is the rain-storm. It may last through 
 the. day or through several days. It will 
 doubtless continue so long as the east or 
 north-east wind continues. When, by some 
 means, the wind veers round to the north- 
 west the great cloud ocean overhead will soon 
 be broken up, and the vapory fragments will 
 be borne away eastward, and the blue sky and 
 glorious sun will reappear, and the world will 
 smile once more. 
 
LXVII. 
 
 Thunder- $torm$* 
 
 HE thunder-storm is another variety 
 of storm from that described in my 
 preceding sketch. It comes on more 
 rapidly and suddenly — is usually more vio- 
 lent — is often immediately preceded as well 
 as accompanied by wind; it is, also, attended 
 with lightning and thunder, and is of brief 
 duration. It is more usually termed a Shower; 
 and is rare in the Winter season, but very 
 common in connection with the heats of 
 Summer. 
 
 Their approach is marked and regular, and 
 
 Ml-' yhe re occurring in the day-time are more 
 
 common in the after part of the day. Not 
 
 long after noon, bright, rounded clouds are 
 
 seen lying off in the west and north-west. 
 
 327 
 
328 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 These, in fact, often show themselves in the 
 morning hours, and, by the farmers, who, in 
 the haying season, watch them carefully, are 
 called "thunder-heads," as being often fore- 
 runners of a coming shower. At length, 
 stretched along beneath these *' thunder-heads '* 
 and bordering the whole western horizon, is 
 seen a dark, unbroken cloud, having a hue like 
 that of the deep-blue ocean. This is a sure 
 presage of a thunder-shower. It is, in fact, 
 such a shower already commenced, and falling 
 fast away twenty or thirty miles west of the 
 beholder. Simultaneously with the appear- 
 ance of that low, deep cloud is heard the 
 rumbling of the distant thunder. In a little 
 time the narrow cloud has widened and lifted 
 itself up a number of degrees higher above 
 the horizon. It stretches itself now from 
 north to south, covering with blackness all 
 the western sky. All along the upper border 
 is rujfifled with broken clouds, angry and dark, 
 while beneath these, down to the horizon, 
 hangs the essential blackness — the awful 
 storm-cloud itself, and ever and anon forked 
 lightnings of ineffable brightness are play- 
 ing over its surface, attended by thunderings, 
 
THUNDER-STORMS. 3 29 
 
 now grown prompt, distinct, and awful. Still 
 towers up more and more the immense cloud, 
 and presently the air, thus far, perhaps, quiet 
 and silent, becomes disturbed. A roaring, 
 rushing sound is suddenly heard abroad, and 
 a strong wind, as if poured directly down from 
 those dark and overhanging border clouds, 
 bursts upon the landscape, and the trees sway 
 fearfully hither and thither under the mighty 
 blast. The underlying world has assumed 
 now the hue of the great cloud-ocean lying 
 aloft. Turning the eye westward, the great 
 shower is seen falling thick and fast within a 
 mile or half a mile away, and you can dis- 
 tinctly hear the roaring sound as it is pouring 
 upon the earth. Instantly a few great drops 
 fall where you are. Now fly to the nearest 
 shelter, or in a minute more the drenching 
 tempest will be right upon you ! And here it 
 is ; and the rain is as if the gates that let 
 down the ancient flood were again opened, 
 and the world, for the time being, is a world of 
 waters, while the accompanying lightnings and 
 thunder-crashes are as if the day of doom 
 were breaking upon the trembling earth. 
 This, or something like this, is the thunder- 
 
330 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 storm ; one of the sublimest and most awful 
 exhibitions which this world presents — nor is 
 it without its dangers and its disasters. More 
 or less, every Summer season, are smitten and 
 killed by the lightning stroke as it falls, here 
 and there, from the surcharged atmosphere. 
 Buildings, also, are, of course, subject to the 
 destructive blow, and, in many an instance, 
 are wrecked and ruined by it, while tall forest 
 trees often attract to themselves the fatal 
 flash and are literally shivered into a thousand 
 pieces. 
 
 Like the earthquake and tornado, the thun- 
 der-tempest has an angry look, and its voice is 
 a voice of terror, and its touch is often de- 
 struction and death. Why some of God's 
 providential dispensations and arrangements 
 are thus dark and dreadful, we may not, at 
 present, fully understand. One thing should 
 be ever kept in mind as an established cer- 
 tainty, and that is, that this world is not 
 designed as a final home and resting-place ; 
 that while the bright side of our earthly ex- 
 istence is ample and beautiful, yet there is a 
 gloomy side withal. It is a sinful and erring 
 world, and sin is the parent of wretchedness 
 
THUNDER-STORMS. 3 3 1 
 
 and death ; and we are all of us involved, '' for 
 all have sinned." 
 
 Whoever of us, therefore, looks for perpetual 
 sunshine in this earthly life will very certainly 
 be disappointed. There will be many com- 
 forts and much happiness, but trembling and 
 sorrow are in store for us, and there is no 
 other true and safe way than to secure an 
 early interest in the great salvation of Christ. 
 
 " Remember now thy Creator in the days 
 of thy youth, while the evil days come not, 
 and the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, 
 I have no pleasure in them." 
 
 "If a man live many years, and rejoice in 
 them all, yet let him remember the days of 
 darkness, for they shall be many." 
 
LXVIII. 
 
 gnow-^torms* 
 
 JlF the rain-storm and the thunder- 
 storm I have already written. In 
 Winter-time, and in our northern 
 latitudes, the watery vapor becomes frozen in 
 the air, and descends in the form of snow ; and 
 covers the earth to a depth of several inches, 
 or sometimes two or three feet. 
 
 The snow-storm, like that of rain, may con- 
 tinue for a day, or for two or three days ; and, 
 like the rain-storm, it may be quiet, or accom- 
 panied with a strong wind, driving the snow 
 horizontally through the air, and heaping it up 
 in drifts. Also, like the rain-storm, it gives 
 out unmistakable tokens of its coming, which 
 tokens, together with the storm itself, and 
 some of its accompaniments, have been so 
 
 332 
 
SNOW-STORMS. 333 
 
 graphically and truthfully pictured to us by 
 Whittier. 
 
 "The sun, that brief December day, 
 Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
 And, darkly circled, gave, at noon, 
 A sadder light than waning moon. 
 Slow tracing down the thickened sky 
 Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
 A portent seeming less than threat, 
 It sank from sight before it set. 
 A chill no coat, however stout 
 Of homespun stuff, could quite shut out, 
 A hard, dull, bitterness of cold 
 That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 
 Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
 The coming of the snow-storm told. 
 The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
 Of ocean, on his Wintery shore. 
 And felt the strong pulse, throbbing there, 
 Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 
 
 Unwarmed by any sunset light, 
 
 The^reat day darkened into night, 
 
 A night made hoary with the swarm 
 
 And whirl-dance of the blinding storm. 
 
 As zig-zag wavering to and fro. 
 
 Crossed and re-crossed the winged snow ; 
 
 And ere the early bed-time came, 
 
 The white drift piled the window frame. 
 
 And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
 
 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 
 
 So all night long the storm roared on ; 
 The morning broke without a sun ; 
 In tiny spherule traced with lines 
 
334 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS, 
 
 Of nature's geometric signs, 
 In starry flake and pellicle, 
 All day the hoary meteor fell ; 
 And when the second morning shone 
 We looked upon a world unknown. 
 On nothing we could call our own. 
 Around the glistening wonder bent 
 The blue walls of the firmament ; 
 No cloud above, no earth below, 
 A universe of sky and snow !" 
 
 Snow-storms occur on our continent from 
 thirty degrees northward ; but south of forty 
 degrees the snow rarely hes throughout the 
 Wintery season. North of forty degrees it is 
 more permanent, and commonly covers the 
 ground through the Winter ; while, sometimes, 
 the snow, falling before the earth is much 
 frozen, covers it deeply over, and shelters it 
 from further frosts. Thus the roots of grass 
 and grain, and other roots, are protected and 
 benefited ; while, often, in more southern lati- 
 tudes these roots are often killed, or much in- 
 jured. So, also, the permanent Winter snows 
 are favorable to traveling, and to business com- 
 munications, forming, as they do, foundations 
 for smooth roads, over which sleighs glide, 
 and heavy loads are transported with speed 
 and facility. 
 
LXIX. 
 
 Jtnimal (Creation* 
 
 HE earth is inhabited. It was de- 
 signed to be the abode of Hfe and 
 enjoyment. What would be works 
 merely ^naterialy however beautiful or grand .'^ 
 What would be a vast world like ours with not 
 a solitary specimen of life upon its surface, or 
 in the air above, or in the depths beneath } 
 
 Such, indeed, is one of the Mosaic pictures. 
 At the end of the fourth day land and water 
 were separated, the green herbage had carpeted 
 the landscapes of the world, the forests were 
 abroad in their stately magnificence and beauty, 
 and fruit-trees — every one that was "pleasant 
 to the eye and good for food." Moreover, the 
 sun and moon were in their places, and the 
 great, glorious world was finished — finished as 
 
 335 
 
336 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 truly as Solomon's gorgeous Temple, or the 
 towering Pyramids, or the grand Coliseum 
 were ever finished. 
 
 The world was finished and waiting. But 
 what a variety and a failure if the fourth day's 
 work of creation had been the last day! A 
 great and superb theater fitted up for nothing ! 
 A brilliant paradise of far extent doomed to 
 eternal vacuity and nothingness ! A world of 
 lovely fruits, and every rich variety thereof, 
 with no eye to see them, no lips to taste them ! 
 A glorious instrument, holding within itself 
 music that might charm a listening universe, 
 yet whose keys must remain untouched, and 
 no enchanting note awake from it to break the 
 everlasting silence! 
 
 Not such was the Creator s order — not such 
 his wisdom. When the material work was 
 finished the Life was at once ushered in. 
 When the dwelling-place was ready, then were 
 the dwellers introduced. When all excellent 
 provisions were made, then came the varied 
 capacities for enjoying them perfectly. And 
 when the six days' work was completed, the 
 fowls were flying above the earth in the open 
 firmament of heaven, the fish of the sea were 
 

 THE ANIMAL CREATION. 
 
ANIMAL CREATION. 337 
 
 rejoicing in their native element, the cattle and 
 creeping things, and beasts of the field, were 
 abroad, and man, the crowning life of earth, 
 was walking in. majesty and beauty amid the 
 new-created scene. 
 
 So life came — came directly from its great 
 Author, came promptly, came in myriads of 
 shapes and forms, came with the capacity and 
 high command to communicate itself; and 
 thus this great earth was peopled. Nor of all 
 the phenomena glanced at in this series of 
 sketches is there any thing pertaining to our 
 globe at all comparable to the phenomena ap- 
 pertaining to its magnificent system of life. 
 Whether we contemplate its mysterious nature, 
 its multiplicity of forms and species, its count- 
 less diversity of shapes, its infinitude of in- 
 dividuals, or its comprehensive capacity for 
 enjoyment, all is marvelous in the extreme. 
 
 Linger for a moment with one or two of 
 these points. Contemplate, for example, the 
 amazing diversity of shape and dimensions 
 which life, on this earth, assumes. Contrast 
 the whale, a hundred feet long and weighing 
 a hundred tons, with the animalcule, 30,000 of 
 which may inhabit a single drop of water, and 
 
338 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 35,000,000,000,000,000,000 of which would be 
 requisite to weigh down the said whale. 
 
 You and I are acquainted with a number of 
 animal species ; but we must, needs become 
 familiar with as maLny as 300,000 species be- 
 fore we shall have examined them all, and as 
 many as 100,000 of these species or kinds we 
 must examine with a microscope in order to 
 see them. 
 
 Then glance at the enormous multiplication 
 of life, especially as connected with one or 
 two species of the animal world. The codfish 
 annually produces more than 9,000,000 of 
 eggs, and the sturgeon more than 7,000,000. 
 So, also, mackerel and herrings multiply by 
 millions. They often rush in shoals miles in 
 length ; so thickly they swarm along, that a 
 boat can make no headway through them. 
 More than half a million herrings have been 
 taken in a night by a single boat. Even of 
 cod, a much larger fish, it is computed that 
 the average quantity caught annually can not 
 be less than 250,000,000. 
 
 "He openeth His hands, and supplyeth the 
 wants of every living thing.'' 
 
WnUdictcxt^, 
 
 Y YOUNG FRIENDS— Our ram- 
 bles are finished. I can not but hope 
 that some of you — though the num- 
 ber may be hmited — have consented to walk, 
 and look, and meditate with me. If so, it is 
 certainly a most interesting path that we have 
 traveled, however inadequate and imperfect 
 may have been the views we have taken of 
 this great world and its appurtenances. We 
 have traversed land and sea, and roamed amid 
 mountains and along far-reaching plains, and 
 sat down beside great rivers, and lingered, 
 also, with their distant and secret sources. 
 We have hovered near the frozen poles, and 
 winged our way to torrid realms, and have lis- 
 tened to the awful voices of dire earthquakes 
 and volcanic thunders, and felt the dismal, 
 frightful rush of the whirlwind storm. 
 
 339 
 
340 THE EARTH AND ITS WONDERS. 
 
 Yet were these mainly but exceptional feat- 
 ures ; and we noted, in our roamings, that this 
 great round world is, after all, adorned with 
 multitudinous beauties, and is so made and ar- 
 ranged as to be the fit abode of millions on 
 millions of happy intelligences. A few of its 
 luminous and beneficent aspects and provi- 
 dential adaptations we saw and admired, a 
 mere specimen or two of a whole world of di- 
 vine perfections arrayed in colors of " living 
 light" to the open and purified vision. 
 
 Was it not pleasant to sojourn in many of 
 this earth's sunny lands and repose amid fra- 
 grant groves, and commune with each other 
 on sunny eminences and along quiet shores, 
 and mark, in our progress, every affluence of 
 pleasant fruits, and glorious harvest-fields, and 
 fair abodes, and herds abroad upon a thousand 
 hills, and ''light-winged" commerce gliding 
 over every sea ; a va§t arena of magnificence 
 and splendor indescribable, and a brilliant step- 
 ping-stonq, if its dwellers so ordain, to the 
 heavenly paradise beyond ! 
 
 Right here, my young friends, you and I 
 part company ; yet we need not be separated 
 from Nature's resplendent and royal associa- 
 
VALEDICTORY. 34.I 
 
 tions, nor wander, for a single hour, from those 
 peaceful and holy paths where God himself is 
 walking and energizing. There, if we please, 
 we shall feel the inspiration of his breath upon 
 us ; and, if we listen, we shall hear him in the 
 utterance of a thousand voices ; and as we 
 look, and look long and carefully, we shall dis- 
 cern, with a vision clearer than that of Elisha's 
 servant, that the Earth is full of the glory of 
 the Highest. 
 
 Adieu, dear children! And a great and 
 good life be yours ! 
 
 I remain, ever, 
 
 YOUR FRIEND AND SERVANT. 
 
AD 3 8 
 

 
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