Evening star., 1935-07-21

Perhaps, viewed in the cold light of
q century later, the most fantastic that
has aroused enthusiasm to date in
America was the strange dream of
the Symmesites.
Congress was being pestered with
pleading and threatening letters from
them in 1923. They wanted the ma
tional legislative body Immediately to
provide for United States naval ex-
pedition into the interior of the earth
to discover and take possession of the
vast and fertile territories to be found
there. in the name of the United
States.
Although neither House nor Senate
took them very seriously, the Symme-
sites may almost have succeeded in
pushing Uncle Sam into this most
fantastic Of all exploring expeditions.
The evidence is not conclusive. 1t
scarcely was a matter of pride to the
Government a few years later. But
recently discovered documents give at
least some basis for the belief that a
United States Navy ship was actually
on the joint of sailing to discover and
claim that strange land of Symme-
Sonia-geographically contiguous if
not identical with the popularity sup
ooSed location of Hell-with its strange
seas, rivers and peoples on the bot
tom side Of the earth's crust. Unbe-
lievable as the story is today, it was
taken quite seriously in 1928.
Started With Officer.
It all started with an eccentric
and perhaps paranoid-Regular Army
officer, Capt. John Cleves Symmes.
After a duel with a brother officer,
Capt. Symmes left the service in 1916
and went into business as a trader IL,
st. Louis, where he made some profit
able contracts for supplying Army
posts. At about the same time he
married an INDECENT widow with 10
children and the hungry mouths of
these youngsters may have spurred
his imagination. On the other hand
he may have been perfectly sincere in
the proposals he made.
His first move was to issue a cir
eular letter, copies of which were
sent to all the universities and in
stitutionS of learning in America and
Europe. None of them, so far as can
be ascertained, paid any attention to
1t. The letter follows:
"St. Louis, Missouri Territory,
April 10, 1918.
"I declare that the earth is hollow,
habitable within, and containing a
number of hollow, concentric spheres,
one within the other. and that it is
open at the poles IL to Is degrees. I
pledge my life in support of this truth,
II the world will support and aid me
in the undertaking.
Il have ready for the press a trea-
tise on the principles of matter. where
in show proofs of the above PROPOSE
ton, account for various phenomena,
and disclose DR.. Darwin's Golden
Secret My terms are the patronage
of this new world, which I dedicate
to my wife and her 10 children. I
select DR.. S. L. Mitchell, Sir Hum
phrey Davy and Baron Alexander von
Humboldt as my protectors.
Asked 100 Companions.
IT ask for 100 brave companions,
well equipped, to start from Siberia
in the Fall season, with reindeer and
sledges on the ice of the frozen sea.
engage we find warm and rich
land, stocked with thrifty vegetables
and animals, if not men. on reach
ing one degree northward of latitude
80. We will return the following
Spring.
u. c. Symmes, late captain of
Infantry"
This seems. offhand. mad fam
tasy, but it made profound impress
sion on many minds. Among the con-
verts was the young Edgar Allan Poe
to whom the scheme, in some of its
later ramifications, afforded the basis
for one of his most stirring tales.
"The Adventures of Arthur Gordon
Pym."
Actually, in the light of the geo.
physics of the time, the proposal was
far less fantastic than it seems today.
Almost the same ideas had been sug-
gested before by the great English
astronomer, Edmund HALEY, and the
Swiss mathmetician, Leonhardt Euler,
who must be considered among the
foremost intellects of their time.
Immediately after issuing his circu-
lar. Capt. Symmes started on lecture
tour. Although he is described as
having been clumsy and unconvinc-
ing speaker, he made many converts.
His ideas, as he presented them. were
quite logical, and he marshaled an
enormous amount of evidence in sup
port of them. Even the foremost
scientists of the day hesitated to ridi-
cule the captain and their extant re-
plies are quite circumspect.
He began by picturing the pri-
maeval, uniformed matter of the earth
in rotation while it still was in gaseous
or fluid state, long before the cooling
and solidifying process responsible
for its present contours had taken
place.
Centrifugal force would tend to
throw the rotating material away
from its axis while gravity would tend
to hold It together. The result would
be that matter would be projected on
all sides to a distance determined by
the balance of the two forces. The
effect would be somewhat the same as
that of the rotating potter's wheel on
clay-only in this case it would have
been open on both sides.
Argument of Symmes.
So, argued Symmes, nebular mass
IN rotation-as the planet was pic
tured during its formative period
would not have taken the form of a
solid sphere but of hollow one with
openings, the size of which could be
calculated mathematically, at top and
bottom. All this seemed plausible and
sound to the unframed mind of 1919
The former Infantry captain, in fact,
carried his ideas much farther and
worked out logical cosmology which
might be considered the Einstein
theory Of his generation.
The same hollow-sphere effect, he
reasoned, must have been produced in
rotating matter ali the way from the