The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-07-12

EProf. - Carpenter found a congenial
spirit in the later Brother Jasper,
the colored preacher, of Richmond,
whose celebrated sermon, de Sun Do
Move, made him famous Carpenter
and Brother Jasper met when the
former was on a lecturing tour, and
when he found that the darby had the
same views as he about the earth Car.
penter was delighted and the two were
ever afterward fast friends.
/ With Alfred Russell Wallace, the
English naturalist, Carpenter waged a
violent controversy. John Hampden, of
Swindon, England, offered to wager
$500 that the surface of the earth s
water was level and did not have any
of the alleged curvature of the earth
Wallace accepted the wager and a
test was made with three boats placed
at a distance of miles on the old Bed
ford canal and by taking measurements
and observations. The money was
awarded to Wallace, but f'Prof - Car
penter, who was one of the referees,
protested, claiming that it had not
been proved that the water had curv-
allure.
One of the interesting things about
Carpenter was that nearly all the nu-
merous pamphlets he wrote were set and
type printed and bound by himself In
his early life he had been a printer, and
established a printing office at II Chew
street, where most of his works were
published. Often he would compose ar
ticles and set them in type without first
writing them.
The best known of Carpenter s pub.
lications is his cone Hundred Proofs
That the Earth Is Not Globe,' pub
hshed in 1885. In it he first gave tc
the world his complete argument in sup
port of his theory about the earth Z
form. The work, while largely circu
lated, has become such a rarity as to bt
found only in few libraries.
Carpenter s conception of the eartI
was that the socalled South pole was
really wan of ice surrounding the
outer edge of the earth. This concep
ton certainly fits well with the idea Of
the vastness of the Southern wastes OF
ice which have turned back all explor
ers. The hardy seekers for glory and
the north pole have come much nearer
the object of their search and have
made the region around it seem small
ANU tiiIiiidl com pdItu 10 GHdb db tnt
south, which is true 'Eterra incognito. .
In the fiat earth map the north polar
region is seen to be a small region OF
eternal cold in the center of the circu-
lar world.
! The principal arguments advanced by
Professor Carpenter were that a
! ship = surveyors operations in the con
struction of railroads, tunnels or canals
are conducted without the slightest al.
iowance being made for curvature, al
| though it is taught that this so-called
! allowance is absolutely necessary.
The Suez canal, which joins the Red
Sea with the Mediterranean. is about
100 miles long. It forms a straight
and level surface of water from one end
to the other, and no allowance was
made for any supposed curvature in its
construction
"Seven hundred miles is said to be
the length of the great canal in China,
Certain it is that when this canal was
formed no allowance was made for
curvature.
THE aeronaut is able to start in his
balloon and remain for hours in the air
at an elevation of several miles and
come down again in the same county
or parish from which he assembled
Now, unless the earth drags his balloon
along with it in its nineteen miles a.
second motion, it must be left far be-
hind in space.
1.-The aeronaut can see for himself
that the earth is a planet. The appear
ance presented to him, even at the high
est elevation he has attained. is that of
a concave surface. this being exactly
what is to be expected of surface that
is truly level, as it is the nature of level
surfaces to appear TO rise to the level
of the eye of the observer.
''The lights exhibited in the light.
houses are seen by navigators at dis.
tances which, according to the scale of
the supposed curvature given by astron-
omers. they ought to be many hundreds
of feet, in some eases. down below the
line of sight. For instance, the light
at Cape Hatteras is seen at such a dis
tance (forty miles) that. according to
theory, it ought to be 900 feet higher
above the level of the sea than it is in
order to be visible
eff we stand on the seashore and
watch ship approach us, we find that