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Show NORTH AMERICA'S DESTRUCTION. (Written for The Intermountain Catholic by "Sardegna.") Greenland, the sixth continent, perhaps larger than Europe, is put in fetters of ice; Melville and Baffin Land are buried in ice. The whole immense wealth of ground and soil of those countries is lost ''to the present generation and to some more to come; it is resting deep and quiet in the hands of arctic cold. And so will also come the day, when the proud critics of today will be swept away, New York and Chicago, San Francisco and Washington. Thousands Thou-sands of years will pass over the buried cities, and then other men of science will stand on the heaps of ruins and will teach their scholars "A world of civilization is here buried." On vehicles, which today to-day the boldest imagination is unable to think, they will come far from the south, perhaps from Patagonia Pata-gonia or Tasmania, whilst on the place of the maps the United States of today occupy, there will ebb and flood a large ocean, encompassed by glacier mountains and overtopped by great islands. Strange, things those men will gather from the deep, productions of the race, that once called that buried ice-covered country its "home," ten thousands thou-sands of years ago. .It is not mere imagination, what. I am going here to depict; itjs truth, written since aeons in the fate of the earth. North America will be again, what it has been already, has been ten times perhaps: per-haps: an iceland, a conglomeration of glacier islands, with wide seas between. But before that comes to pass, North America will be again," what it also has been once or ten times-already, an earthly paradise, where our descendants will press fiery wines and harvest precious tropical fruits on the shores of Hudson Bay. Thus it was ages ago, when luxuriant forests of tropical beauty covered North Americas vast expanses, and lions and tigers were' roaming in Labrador's palm groves. Today their relics are buried deep in the ground, covered with mud, which has changed into rock. Then came a time, when the fertile plains of North America wero covered with the waves of a new orean. u-hen immense glaciers were formed and huge ice mountains moun-tains ""ere drifting around on our prairie. Tlv ' was, when Mexico and Central America were florid countries, enjoying temperate climate, whilst to the north there was a hard , winter raging almost the whole year. Today culture, civilization and good climate are going northward; arctic explorers tell us, that the ice in northern latitudes is steadily diminishing di-minishing and the land rising, whilst an ever-growing and almost insurmountable ice wall encloses and covers the south pole continent. When we take a look at the maps, we see, that the northern hemisphere hem-isphere has the preponderating part of continents, whilst the southern hemisphere is covered with a vast, enormous body of water. Long ago, thousands thou-sands of years ago, it was just the reverse; the northern hemisphere was flooded, and its climate like that of the southern hemisphere at the present day, when in a latitude corresponding to that of Seattle, there is today almost perpetual winter. That was the glacier period of the northern hemisphere, hem-isphere, when the summits of mountains appeared as islands scattered over the ocean. Then came the new time: the land rose, or, rather, the waters sank, the period, in which ,we are now living. The water of the northern hemisphere is still moving towards south, the coat of ice surrounding sur-rounding the north pole, and the arctic glaciers are melting; the law is rising, the climate is getting warmer. After a few thousand years Greenland and Labrador will again be free from ice, and will enjoy a mild climate. California, Utah and Kansas will be tropical regions, and Texas and the adjoining adjoin-ing states will be a burned-out desert. Of the continents con-tinents in the southern hemisphere, there will be left then very little. South America will disappear, and only the gigantic Andes Island will speak of its former existence. . And then comes the change. The ocean will gradually move towards north, the prairie states will be flooded, and leave of North America only a framework of islands; the new glacier period has come ! After ten thousand years ! But in the southern hemisphere," there, where today little islands break the monotony of the vast Pacific, new continents will arise, great countries will grow up, and what we know now as an island will be to our descendants in those days the summits of gigantic mountain ranges. And now the proof of what I am stating. We know that our planet travels around the sun, not in a circle, but in an ellipse, and that the axis of the earth is not perpendicular to its orbit, but forms with it an angle of 23V2 degrees. Now, because the earth moves around the sun in an ellipse, with the sun in one of the foci, it follows that the part of the earths orbit, which is in the perihelion, is shorter than the one in the aphelion; also, that the motion of the earth in this part, of its orbit is slower than in the perihelion. Over the shorter part of its orbit the earth travels at present in the time from September 23 to March 21 in a line; therefore, when we on the northern, hemisphere have our' cold seasons, fall and winter. To pass through the longer part of the orbit, the earth needs the time from March 21 to September 23, therefore eight days more, and as during this time, the southern hemisphere has its cold season, it is evident that there are in the south every year eight days more than in the north favorable to the formation for-mation of ice. This gives, in 5,000 years, the sum of 40,000 winter days, or about 110 winter years more than for the north. Morover, the attractive power of the sun in the perihelion is larger than in the aphelion; now the southern hemisphere is turned towards the sun just in the period of the greatest perihelion. The oceans therefore will there be attracted more thail in the north, . and conse- quently more water is streaming to the south, which causes the equilibrium of the two hemispheres to be displaced, and, the southern hemisphere becoming becom-ing heavier, still more water moves southward. This explains the present increase of oceans on the southern and their decrease on the northern hemisphere. hem-isphere. . We know, also, that the position of the large axis of the earth's orbit is changeable, and that within 21,000 years a complete turning of the axis takes place. The consequence is, that the earth on a certain cer-tain day, f. i. March 21, is not arriving exactly at that point of the orbit where she would be if there was no turning of the great axis ; she is a little behind. be-hind. On the 21st of March the earth is at present almost at the extreme point of the short axis, but on the same day, after 5,300 years, she will be at the extreme point of the large axis and in aphelion. After 10,500 years the earth will travel from March 21 to September 23 through the shorter part of her orbit, consequently the northern hemisphere will have spring and summer eight days shorter than now, the winter eight days longer, it will be every year eight days longer exposed to the greater attraction at-traction of the sun. The oceans on the northern hemisphere will increase, the climate will get colder. After 10,500 years more the present state will prevail again. The condition of the southern hemisphere today is therefore a true picture of the future of our country; it, too, will be submerged in the waves of new oceans, but the intellectual achievements will, by Gods providence, continue to live in countries that today are covered by the never-resting waves of the earth-girding waters. |