The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-02-27

i ages beside which Klondike rigors are
Ike balmy spring, holds undimin-
| ished sway, and its prodigious ice walls,
still advancing push back the hardest
adventurers. Not for thousands OF
years. probably will man be able TO
penetrate that thrilling region" where
the 'thick-ribbed ice" is believed TO be
stacked Up to the depth of more than a
mile.
But there win come a change When,
after the lapse of about 10000 years,
earth's axis has so veered around until
the northern hemisphere is turned away
from the sun during the longest part of
its circuit (see Fig. 81, so that our con-
; stantly embittering winters exceed our
waning summers, then the winter OF
the ages will be upon US with its ap-
preaching ice and awful fTosts, and all
animate life will be forced to flee south
ward.
But the deluge? That too, will come;
and we have now reached a point where
it is possible to make plain the reason.
NO one can look at d terrestrial globe
to-day without being strongly impressed
with the drowned aspect of the southern
hemisphere. The great land areas are
nearly all in the north. Southwark the
continents narrow down TO rocky ridges
the dwindling continuation of mighty
ranges bordered by wide and fertile
plains. Beyond is an immense expanse
or dreary ocean, broken only by groups
! of islands which appear to but but the
protruding SUBMITS of submerged high
lands and mountain peaks-and such
| they are. Beneath the swelling waves
lie continents that once lay warm in the
sun, and that again viii rise to greet
! mis- vitalfzfng rays. Still further south.
| even the islands almost disappear in the
| deepening waters that thunder against
ice cliffs girdling the inaccessible pole.
| Clearly, 1t is flooded hemisphere.
All this is mainly the result of that
same gradual swervng of the earth's
axis, which, has refrigerated the eli
mate and heaped such monstrous depths
of snow and ice around the south pole.
SO enormous is the weight of this ant
arctic ice cap-as previously stated, it is
more than a mile in thickness; and COW
ers an immense area-that it has slight
ly shifted the earths center of gravity;
just as the balancing point of a hard
boiled egg would be changed a little if
you should remove the cap of shell from
one end and attach 1t to the other Now,
in the case of the EARTH the inevitable
result of such shift, even to the extent
OF few hundred feet-which Is we'll
within the possibilties-would be to dis
balance all the great bodies of water on
its surface, causing the ocean to drain
from the north toward the overweighted
pole. And this. according to theory, is
just what has occurred
If the change had been sudden, it
would have resulted in such devastat-
ting rush of waters--sweeping south
ward in one huge, topping billow to
which an earthquake wave would be
mere ripple-that it would have wrecked
the world. But in fact, the waters crept
up as imperceptibly as the ice cap
which Influenced them grew and thick
ened under the falling SHOWS which the
summer heats no longer melted
The same causes when the dread
winter of ages" once more visits our
own now favored hemisphere. will del
uge the north with a returning tide.
What happened in our last great cycle
winter-the drift period-wiIl befail
again; though probably not in so ex-
IRENE form on account of the lack of
coincidence of certain other secular
phenomena which then greatly intensi-
fed the effect, but which it would I'M
duly prolong this article to discuss. Suf-
flee to say they have to do with the
varying elipticity of the earth's orbit,
and when all the factors work together
there comes a cyclic winter which
brings down the zee foes to the very
verge of the tropics.
Our pext great secular Writer will not
be quite SO terrible as that yet it will
bring changes so momentous that our
world, could we see it then, might easily
be mistaken for some other planet Be
fore 10000 years have elapsed broad
continents will have reared themselves
from the great oceans of the south; its
the plains that lie between, renovated
by their long submergence, will be as
fertile as our rich Western praries But
icebergs will drift down the bllowy ex-
panse of the Mississippi valley, and ships
from lands which are now beneath the
sea-if ships there are in that remote
period-Will float high above the sites
of our sunken cities.
The whole scene is so concisely por-
trayed-though with an exaggerated
impression of violence and rapidity-in
a passage from a forgotten poem, that [
will venture to quote few lines in clos
ing:
Still slowly veers the earth; an age of
frost
Heaps ley mountains on the northern
pole,
And from its whitened crown the gath |
Slide ever downward with benumbing
chill
Whelming the frozen past Both man |
and beast
Flee shivering southwark; while the |
topping seas,
Disbalanced flood to meet the descend |
ing ice
In reslstless deluge And the south
Mid draining waters rears colossal |
lands. ~
Uncouth and strange; and islands,
drowned of yore,
Tower to the frosty sky with lifted
lodges,
And this becomes the hemisphere Of
life:
The north is lost beneath the waves;
again
The drift of icebergs breaks upon its
mountains.
CHARLES KELSEY GAINES.
1t is not often that physician rec
ommends q patent medicine, when he