The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-08-21
NORTH AMERICAS DESTRUCTION.
written for The Intermountain Catholic by
"Sardegna"l

written for The Intermountain Catholic by
"Sardegna.")
Greepland the sixth continent, perhaps larger
than Europe is put in letters of ice; Melville anc
Baffn 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 tc
Gomez it is resting deep and quiet in the hands OF
arctic cold
And so will also the day, when the proud
critics of today will be swept away, New York and
Chicago San Francisco and Washington Thou
sands of years will pass 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 to-
day the boldest imagination is unable to think they
will come far from the south, perhaps from Pata
gonia or Tasmania, whilst the place of the maps
the United States of today occupy, there will ebb
and food 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 it's ''home" ten thou
sands of years ago.
1t is not mere imagination, what [ am going
here to depict tits truth, written since aeons in
the fate of the earth North America will be again.
what it has been already has been ten times per-
haps: an iceland, 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 ten times already, 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 expenses, and lions and tigers were
roaming in Labrador's palm groves. Today their
relics buried deep in the ground, covered with
mud, which has changed into rock Then came q
time, when the fertile plains of North America
were covered with the of ocean, when
immense glaciers were formed and huge ice noun
t2ins were drifting around on our pralrips. To-.
was when Mexico and Central America we're ford
countries enjoying temperate climate whilst to the
north there hard winter raging almost the
whole year Today culture civilization and good
climate are going northward arctic explorers tell
u.s. that the ice in northern ATTITUDES is steadily di
minishing and the land rising, whilst an ever-grow
ing and almost insurmountabe ice wall encloses
and covers the south pole continent When we take
a look at the MAPS see, that the northern hem
isphere has the preponderatng part of continents
whilst the southern hemisphere is covered with
vast, enormous body of water. Long ago. 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 the glacier period of the northern hem
isphere, when the SUBMITS 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 sur
rounding the north POLE and the arctic glaciers are
melting; the law is rising the climate is getting
warmer. After few thousand years Greenland
and Labrador will again be free from ce and will
enjoy a mild climate. California Utah and Kansas
will be tropical regions and Texas and the adioin-
ing states will be burned-out desert. Of the 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
framework of islands; the new glacier period has
comet 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 island will be to our
descendants In those days the submits of gigantic
mountain ranges
And now the proof of what I am stating We
know that planet travels around the sum- not in
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 1912 degrees. Now, because
the earth moves around the sun in an elipse, with
the in of the foci, it follows that the part
of the earths orbit, which is in the perihelion is
shorter than the 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 % to March 81 in 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 81 to September %
therefore eight days more and as during this time
the southern hemisphere has its cold season, it is
evident that there in the south every year eight
days than in the north favorable to the for
nation of ice. This gives, in 5000 years, the sum
of 10000 winter days, or about 10 winter years
more than for the north. Moreover, the attractive
power of the in the perhelion 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 than in the north and conse-
quently water is streaming to the south which
causes the equilibrium of the two hemisnheres TO