Eastern Hemisphere

“ The eastern continent is colder in Asia than in Europe in the same latitudes. It has also less equatorial and more polar land. The southern is colder than the northern hemisphere at equal distances from the equator. There is also less land near the equator on the south side, and probably as much land around the south as the north pole. ”

“ It appears that if the globe be divided into an eastern and a western hemisphere by a plane coinciding with the meridians of 100° and 280°, the western hemisphere, or that comprising the Americas and the Pacific Ocean, has a much higher magnetic intensity distributed generally over its surface than the eastern hemisphere, containing Europe and Africa, and the adjacent part of the Atlantic Ocean. ”

“ From all of which we see that the Eastern hemisphere's crescent hollow--of which, I take it, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Sea depressions are the remains--has been gradually filled in, by the elevation of the sea's bottom, and the extension of deltas from the detrital matter brought from the high interior of the continents by the rivers, or by the combined action of the two. ”

“ For this reason, and doubtless also because the maritime regions offered greater attractions to primeval man than the inland areas, the earliest lines of migration appear to have followed the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Eastern Hemisphere into the northern latitudes, where the shore lines of the Eurasian continent stretch out toward America. ”

“ As we have already remarked, one hemisphere of the earth (whether we divide the sphere through the equator or through the meridian of Teneriffe) has a much greater expansion of elevated land than the opposite one: these two vast ocean-girt tracts of land, which we term the eastern and western, or the Old and New Continents, present, however, conjointly with the most striking contrasts of configuration and position of their axes, some similarities of form, especially with reference to the mutual relations of their opposite coasts. ”

“ If we merely place the South Pole in the conceivably best position (50° S. 45° E.) in the midst of these traces of ice, the remotest traces of land-ice in Brazil, India and Eastern Australia would possess a geographical latitude of not quite 10°, that is, a complete hemisphere of the earth was buried beneath the ice, and had therefore also the polar climate necessary for that purpose. ”

“ It may be added that, with the exception of the Alleghenies, no snow falls sporadically in any of the eastern systems which we have just examined. From these considerations it results, and above all, from the comparison of the New Continent with those parts of the old world which we know best, with Europe and Asia, that America, thrown into the aquatic hemisphere* of our planet, is still more remarkable for the continuity and extent of the depressions of its surface, than for the height and continuity of its longitudinal ridge. ”

“ The northern hemisphere, which stretches from the equinoctual to the Arctic Pole, contains all which has been hitherto discovered and peopled in Asia, Europe and the chief part of Africa. The remaining half, or southern hemisphere, which reaches from the equinoctial to the Antarctic Pole, comprises part of what we call America, and the whole of that Austral Land, the discovery and apostolic conquest of which is now treated of. ”

“ It is, doubtless, to this tendency of the Southern Hemisphere to throw off much of its atmosphere north of the equator that we may attribute in part the superior force and power of the southeast trades, and their well-known ability to battle with the northeast trades, and drive them from their own territory, at least all summer, and even in winter, as far back across the line as 3° or 4° north latitude. ”

“ Indeed, such is the inequality in the distribution of land over the surface of the globe that the world may be divided into hemispheres consisting, the one with almost all the land in it, except Australia and a slip of America lying south of a line drawn from the desert of Atacama to Uruguay; England is the centre of this, the dry hemisphere. The other, or aqueous hemisphere, contains all the great waters except the Atlantic Ocean; New Zealand is the nearest land to its centre. ”

“ The east and west division, represents—according to our views—a more fundamental diversity; since we find the northern continent itself so divided in the earliest Eocene, and even in Cretaceous times; while we have the strongest proof that South America was peopled from the Nearctic, and Australia and Africa from the Palæarctic region: hence, the Eastern and Western Hemispheres are the two great branches of the tree of life of our globe. ”

“ It looks now as if the north-and-south lines were to be strengthened the world over, as the occupied and exploited north temperate zone reaches north toward the frigid zone, now grown warmer by the very opening of the lands to the sun and the long burning of coal, and south toward the tropics, now made more habitable by the new knowledge of tropical medicine, and even across the tropics to the sister temperate zone of the southern hemisphere. ”

“ During the genial epochs that intervened between the three great glacial movements from the north, the continental area was open to incursion on either side, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere was everywhere equable, and the topographic conditions were such as to encourage migration along the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the Eurasian continent into the arctic peninsulas of the New World. As the arctic glaciers became more and more restricted to the northern regions, primeval men were probably able to hold their own in the continental area and migrate east and west across Eurasia. ”

“ As in the old continent European civilization has had its principal seats on a western coast, it could not but be early remarked that, under equal degrees of latitude, the opposite eastern coast of the United States was several degrees colder in mean annual temperature than Europe, which is, as it were, a projecting western peninsula to Asia, as Brittany is to the rest of France. ”

“ All else is a wide domain of ocean broken only where tapering and isolated tongues of land, South America, the Cape, Australia, lean down from the great land masses of the north. On the other hand, all the great land masses expand in the Northern Hemisphere, and shoulder one another round the North Pole. America is separated from Asia only by the shallowest and narrowest of straits; an elevation of a few fathoms would unite Greenland with Europe. Science points definitely to some part of the great northern land area as the centre of life for at least the larger terrestrial forms of [141] life. ”

“ The form and arrangement of the continents is shown to be such as to favour the transfer of warm oceanic currents to the north far in excess of those which move towards the south, and whenever these currents had free passage through the northern land-masses to the polar area, a mild climate must have prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere. It is only in very recent times that the great northern continents have become so completely consolidated as they now are, thus shutting out the warm water from their interiors, and rendering possible a wide-spread and intense glacial epoch. ”

“ If, in fact, such are the effects of the sea's motion from east to west, may we not very reasonably suppose that Asia and the eastern continent is the oldest country in the world, and that Europe and part of Africa, especially the western coasts of these continents, as Great Britain, France, Spain, Muratania, &c. ”

“ If we wish to trace, in equally few lines, a sketch of the natural features of North America, let us cast our eyes first on the mountain chain which, running from south-east to north-west, at first low and narrow, and increasing both in breadth and height from Panama to Veragua, Guatimala, and Mexico (where it was the seat of a civilisation which preceded the arrival of Europeans) , arrests the general equatorial current of the waters of the ocean, and opposes a barrier to the more rapid commercial intercourse of Europe and Western Africa with the eastern parts of Asia. ”

“ It was known that the continent of Asia was bounded on the east by a vast ocean, and that a similar body of water bounded Europe on the west, leaving the plausible inference, on the supposition that the earth was a sphere, that nothing but islands existed between these two great boundaries of land. Less than half of the real circumference of the globe is to be found between the western and eastern verges of the old continent, as they were then known ”

“ It is only at the Southern extremity of this hemisphere that sea and water are predominant; and here a continuous chain of islands from the southernmost point of Asia reaches to the fifth and last portion of the globe—Australia, making it a sort of Asiatic dependency. In the American hemisphere, the element of water is predominant, not only at the Southern extremity, but towards the middle; for, large as America may be, it can bear no comparison with the other continents in respect to extent of surface. ”

“ The whole region of the extra-tropical Old World that is included within the ranges marked, is the region which has most land to windward of it in the southern hemisphere. Now it is a curious coincidence, at least, that all the great extra-tropical deserts of the earth, with those regions in Europe and Asia which have the least amount of precipitation upon them, should lie within this range. ”

“ Not only the configuration of the straits and bays, but also the earth’s rotation from west to east, causes the currents here to set towards the west, and wash the western coasts, while they act very little on the eastern. ”

“ The northern hemisphere offers the largest advantages for the habitation of man, and significantly enough, contains a population five times that of the southern hemisphere. The latter, on the other hand, with its vast, unbroken water areas, has been the great oceanic highway for circum-mundane exploration and trade. ”

“ While the Atlantic thus formed a long north-and-south rift across the inhabited world at the period of the great discoveries, the Pacific, strewn with islands and land-rimmed at its northern extremity by the peninsulas of Alaska and eastern Siberia, spread a nebula of population from the dense centers of Asia across to the outskirts of America. ”

“ Croll be correct, a period of high eccentricity would certainly produce a climate in the Northern Hemisphere such as characterized many of the mild interglacial epochs as long as the earth passed its perihelion point in Winter.
We have so far only considered the Northern Hemisphere. As every one knows, while we have Winter, the Southern Hemisphere has Summer. So at the very time we would enjoy the mild short Winters, the Southern Hemisphere would be doomed to experience Winters of greatly increased length and severity. ”

“ And thus in those zones which are generally cold, there are some parts that are milder and very free from the severity of the cold. And if particular consideration be given to the influences produced on temperature by the constellations belonging to the southern hemisphere it will be found that there are lands in it, not only habitable, but much more so than in the other hemisphere ”

“ The coincidence, therefore, is remarkable, that the countries in the extra-tropical regions of this hemisphere, which lie to the northeast of large districts of land in the trade-wind regions of the other hemisphere, should be scantily supplied with rains; and likewise, that those so situated in the extra-tropical south, with regard to land in the trade-wind region of the north, should be scantily supplied with rains. ”

“ Eastward the great current set through Babylonia and Chaldæa, Persia and India, Indo-China, China, and Japan, to Australia and Polynesia. Westward it flooded Africa and Europe. It may have reached America by two ways. The Oriental line would extend from China and Japan to the Eastern Pacific coast: the Occidental was practicable viâ Atlantis, or possibly in the days when Behring’s Straits did not exist. It found a new Mediterranean in the great Caribbean Gulf, and new Indies in Mexico and Peru. Indeed, the march of intellect from Egypt is conterminous with the limits of the habitable globe. ”