OCR Text |
Show NATURE'S IMMEASURABLE FORCES. It is said that, an almost continuous cloud of steam rises from aid Cotopaxi, sometimes to a height . of one mile (of course steam is invisible and can only be recognized when it begins to condense into vapor). va-por). And this has been going on for three years. But suppose that volume of steam were to be ob-- ob-- structed for a short time. Of course it would become superheated and would explode like dynamite and rend the mountain as Mount Pelee in Martinique was blown to pieces. That fact gives to mortals a little idea of the forces which nature holds in its grasp, except ex-cept that they are inconceivable in their awful power. The scientists explain to us the different periods through whfch this earth of ours has reached its present condition. It is plain that at different times the whole crust of the earth has been shivered. What was the force employed! It must have been eteam. In Siberia the bodies of mastodons have been dug out of the ice in a good state of preservation, " and with them have been found the remnants of tropical plants. The story that it tells is that the huge beast was whiling his time away in a tropical jungle when the cataclysm came. The escaped steam went high into the air where it froze and fell in, a storm of ice wherein animals and plants were transfixed. But with the explosion the earth must have tipped on its axis, thus changing chang-ing a tropical into -a frozen ione. 'As the earth swings on its axis the drainage of the rivers is in great part to the south and as a natural nat-ural result the weight of the debris must steadily accumulate ac-cumulate on the southern half of the world. "When enough weight is obtained in that direction what is .' to hinder, or rather what is to prevent another tip of the earth another explosion to rend all the earth's crust t Surely men are but shadows in the presence of the agents which nature summons to work out her llecrees. ' |