Miniatue

“ As our way lost itself in the force of the contending waters, and died down into nothingness, we slowed, stopped, and a huge mass of ocean roared against our prow. It lifted, lifted, lifted, soaring towards the very heavens. I saw it eclipse a red, angry planet that I had noticed high above the bowsprit-stays a moment before. It hovered a single tense instant, and then with a swirl and heave came flying round, reeling and staggering. There was a rush of the crew to gain some hold or to brace themselves against some shelter. ”

“ Were the globe covered with an unbroken mantle of water, such waves, each about twenty inches (or twenty-nine inches at springtide) high on the average at the equator, would follow one another round and round the earth at the rate of one complete circuit in every twenty-four hours. That must have been the case in the primeval ocean before any continents existed; and something of it still exists in the belt of unobstructed water surrounding the Antarctic continent of ice. It would then be flood tide or ebb tide at the same hour along the whole length of any one meridian. ”

“ But the attractions of solid bodies for one another do not bring about any very perceptible alterations in their shapes; though if the bodies are spinning they effect slow changes in their speed of rotation. It is different when the bodies are liquid, or if they have liquid surfaces. Then the attractions of a sun or a moon on a planet begin to draw up the waters of the planet and produce tides. The attraction of the earth would produce tides on the Moon if an ocean existed there; and, it is suspected, do produce something resembling tides on the present surface of the Sun. ”

“ Scientific investigation has not diminished its prestige, and today no traveler in the southern hemisphere is indifferent to its fascinating strangeness, while some find it the most impressive spectacle of the antarctic heavens.
All around, up to the very edge of the yawning gap, the sheen of the Milky Way is surpassingly glorious; but there, as if in obedience to an almighty edict, everything vanishes. A single faint star is visible within the opening, producing a curious effect upon the sensitive spectator, like the sight of a tiny islet in the midst of a black, motionless, waveless tarn. ”

“ Indeed, the great Antarctic Basin, south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, is the only division of the seas where the tide follows the moon with absolute regularity. This is because the great sweep of water here is uninterrupted by land.
The enormous wave, raised by the moon’s [75] attraction, courses around the world with nothing to break it. Here in our northern hemisphere immense masses of land interfere with the coursing of this tidal wave; and the shallow seas interfere, too. ”

“ Here, then, we have the means of calculating the tidal efficiency for any moon-distance. The 40,000-mile moon being at a distance of only one sixth of our present moon's distance, its tidal efficiency would be increased 6 X 6 X 6 fold. In other words, when our moon was only 40,000 miles away, it was 216 times as good a tide-producer as it is at present.
The height to which the tides rise and fall is so profoundly modified by the coasts and by the depth of the sea, that at present we find at different localities tides of only a few inches and tides of sixty or seventy feet. ”

“ But for those torrents which fall upon the other face of our globe, the Indian Ocean and the sea of Coral, what would be their fermentation in the craters of their antique volcanoes! That dark mass of blackest clouds, [45] once the terror of the navigator and the obstacle to navigation, that sudden and dense night extended over those broad waters form precisely the safeguard, the protecting facility which softens our passage and enables us, sailing southward still, to meet again the bright sun, the clear sky, and the balmy mildness of the regular winds. ”

“ The tides raised on Jupiter by the sun will be practically proportional to the sun's mass and to the radius of Jupiter. Owing to the enormous size of the sun, the efficiency of these tides and the moment of the friction-brake they produce will be far greater on the planet than will the converse operation of the planet be on the sun. Hence it follows that the efficiency of the tides in depriving Jupiter of moment of momentum will be greatly superior to the efficiency of the tides in depriving the sun of moment of momentum. ”

“ But by such a violent oceanic movement the earth's rotation should rapidly change until it kept pace with the revolution and then the destructive tides would come to a close, as our planet, having the same hemisphere ever turned to Jupiter, would ever elongate in the same direction, and our oceans would be elevated in the same localities. Now, all the secondary planets, so far as observation has been able to decide, have their movements so adjusted as to keep the same ever turned to the primary. ”

“ Now suppose the tidal protuberances to be replaced by two equal heavy particles at T and T', which are instantaneously rigidly connected with the earth. Then the attraction of the moon on T is greater than on T', and that of the anti-moon on T' is greater than on T. The resultant of these forces is clearly a pair of forces acting on the earth in the direction TM, T'M'. These forces cause a couple about the axis in the equator, which lies in the same meridian as the moon and anti-moon. ”

“ The stars paled in the sky; the darkness became a little lighter; the gray daylight began to come. Out of the surrounding gloom a wider and wider area of sea became visible, with here and there a boat discernible on it, and here and there some fragments of wreckage. By this time the boats had rowed away from the dreadful region, and but few floating bodies were visible. The waves rose and fell, smooth as oil, first gray in colour, and then, as the light increased, the pure dark blue of mid-ocean. ”

“ One night the inhabitants of Neptune were standing out in the open air watching the distant flashes in the sky, when suddenly there was a blinding glare of light somewhere in the orbit of Jupiter's moons. Columns of incandescent vapour shot out into space, enveloping Jupiter and his moons, and covering a large portion of the sky. So bright was the light that it cast cold, dark shadows all over the part of Neptune that was turned towards it. ”

“ Then we have Jupiter, distant 490 millions; then Saturn, 900 millions; then Uranus, 19 hundred millions; finally Neptune, lately discovered, and revolving at a distance, say of 28 hundred millions. Leaving Neptune out of the account—of which as yet we know little accurately and which is, possibly, one of a system of Asteroids—it will be seen that, within certain limits, there exists an order of interval among the planets. Speaking loosely, we may say that each outer planet is twice as far from the Sun as is the next inner one. ”

“ In the vast reaches of Neptune, only this continent—Adamic, was livable, thanks to immense volcanic valleys where constant volcanic activity of titanic proportions maintained a temperate atmosphere in contrast to the frigid, desolate continents to the north and west. And dotting the valley of Plastica like transparent beehives, the twelve jewels of the diadem—twelve cities where five million human beings dwelt in each, formed the empire of sixty million descendants of the original immigrants who chose to follow the Council in their flight from Venus. ”

“ The “seas” consist of volcanic rocks, and are not at all covered with loose sediments which if present ought to reflect light better than the volcanic vitreous rocks. But the lunar “seas” are much darker than the environments. This shows that seas proper, or bodies of water, have probably never existed on the Moon. Even before the surface had changed from its molten condition the water vapour had departed from the atmosphere, and the new quantities which the volcanoes emitted from the depths below disappeared so rapidly that lakes were never formed. ”

“ Some disturbing cause acts again, and the smaller mass begins to revolve less rapidly. Tides at once begin—gigantic tides of molten lava hundreds of miles high; tides not in free ocean, for there was none then, but in the pasty mass of the entire earth. Immediately the series of changes I have described begins, the speed of rotation gets slackened, the moon's mass gets pushed further and further away, and its time of revolution grows rapidly longer. ”

“ The great sun glowed the characteristic red of a giant as the ship slowed to less than a light-speed, and turned toward a gigantic planet that circled the red sun. The planet was very close to 50,000 miles in diameter, and it revolved at a distance of four and one half billions of miles from the surface of its sun, which made the distance to the center of the titanic primary four billion, eight hundred million miles, in round figures, for the sun's diameter was close to six hundred and fifty million miles! ”

“ They would be able even; by noting the velocity and variations of velocity of the great wave, to determine the depth of the Pacific Ocean, and the manner according to which the depth varies in the neighborhood of different island groups. It is not altogether impossible, indeed, that what we have here described may actually have occurred, though on neither of the occasions when the Pacific has of late been swept by a sea-wave was Venus very suitably placed for observing our planet. ”

“ But that evening there was a regular party on Minturn's veranda. Numbers of cottagers called to see the sailors, and all were invited to remain and hear about the strange voyage of the Neptune.
"There is not much to tell," began the captain. "Of course I knew we were going to have trouble getting that mahogany. Two vessels had been wrecked trying to get it, so when we got to the West Indies I decided to try canoes and not risk sails, where the wind always blew such a gale, it dragged any anchor that could be dropped. ”

“ The sound and the light so obviously came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, and equipment, was as brilliantly illuminated as at noonday. ”

“ The next great ocean is situated on the western side of the meridian line, divided nearly in the midst by the line of the equator, and is about 900 miles in north and south extent. It is marked C in the catalogue, and was fancifully called the Mare Tranquillitatis. It is rather two large seas than one ocean, for it in narrowed just under the equator by a strait not more than 100 miles wide. Only three annular islands of a large size, and quite detached from its shores, are to be found within it; though several sublime volcanoes exist on its northern boundary ”

“ With its ten moons and its marvellous ring-system—an enormous collection of fragments, which the influence of the planet or of its nearer satellites seems to have prevented from concentrating—Saturn has always been a beautiful object to observe; it is not less interesting in those features which we faintly detect in its disk.
The next planet, Uranus, 32,000 miles in diameter, seems to be another cloud-wrapt, greatly heated globe, if not, as some think, a sheer mass of vapours without a liquid core. Neptune is too dim and distant for profitable examination. ”

“ The ebb and flow of our tidal waters depend upon the moon to a great extent. The phenomenon is so common, that we need only refer to it, but the cause of the tides may be stated. Twice every day we have the tides twelve hours apart, and the flow and ebb are merely examples of the attraction of gravitation, which is exercised upon all bodies, either liquid or solid. The tides are highest at the equator and lowest at the poles, because the tropics are more exposed to the influence of the lunar attraction. ”

“ The importance of tidal evolution in our solar system has also to be viewed in connection with the celebrated nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system. Of course it would be understood that tidal evolution is in no sense a rival doctrine to that of the nebular theory. The nebular origin of the sun and the planets sculptured out the main features of our system; tidal evolution has merely come into play as a subsidiary agent, by which a detail here or a feature there has been chiselled into perfect form. ”

“ In part, as we have said elsewhere in this work, all oceanic islands, remote from those in the shoal bordering waters of the continents, have been of volcanic or coral formation, or more often a combination of the two. No sooner does an island mass appear above or near the surface of tropical waters than the minute coral animals—effective only by their myriads—begin their labors, building fringes of coral rock around the cindery heaps lifted from the ocean floor. ”

“ Frequently, in Arctic and Antarctic regions, terrific snow storms occur, and were it not for the far reaching tower lights, air pilots would not be able to find Transport landings, which ever are kept in readiness for their arrival. Yes, the mines are located in mountainous regions, for as the poles are approached the planet's surface [Pg 373] is very rugged and mountainous, and as on all stable planets the more nearly the poles are approached the vaster are the mineral deposits. ”