USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > The founder of the city of Cleveland, and other sketches > Part 11
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How all this could happen, or by what nat- ural law these vast ice fields, covering both the northern and southern hemispheres during the glacial period, were generated, recruited, and preserved in their movement for thousands of years, none of the eminent advocates of the glacial theory have condescended to tell us, or to give us any reasons for such an occurrence which are consistent with natural law or logical inference. We all know that rain and snow are generated by the evaporation of water under the influence of heat. The vapors ascend into a higher and colder region of atmosphere, where they condense and fall in the form of rain or snow. The two hemispheric icc-fields of the glacial period could not by their own pressure have generated a sufficient degree of heat to produce vapors and at the same time slide in a congealing atmosphere, and thus prolong their existence by the fall of additional rain or snow.
If the glacial period ever existed, as claimed, it existed in violation of all known physical laws. All the waters of the globe are insuffi-
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cient to have furnished the depths of snow that are said to have inwrapped both the northern and southern hemispheres for thousands of years. It has been carefully estimated that if the globe were reduced to an even round surface and all its waters equally diffused over it, the uniform depth of water would be less than one mile. In the light of this fact the entire waters of the globe, if frozen when thus diffused, would not equal the depth of snow and ice that existed in the glacial period, which was, as our glacialists say, from one to eight miles thick, or more.
Glacialists cannot assume with any consist- ency that the sun ever failed to shed his rays on the earth as he now does, nor that the earth ever wandered from her orbit, or reversed her axis; nor can they assume or prove, by astro- nomical calculation, that the precession of the equinoxes, in the course of twenty-one thousand years, resulted in the production of the glacial era. If there ever were any such irregularities, the earth and sun must have changed their relations to each other, and all the rivers, lakes, and seas, north and south of the equator, must have been frozen to solidity, and, of course, all animal and vegetable life must have perished. Nature has never been known to stultify her- self, nor does she work miraeles in violation of her own fixed laws.
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It seems evident, therefore, that the so-called "glacial period " of the past was nothing more than the glacial period of the present. All the mountains that lift their heads above the snow- line, wherever located, are capped with snow and ice, and consequently generate more or less massive glaciers, which slide sluggishly into the adjoining valleys, where they melt and leave their débris, or slide, if located near the ocean, into its waters, where they float in the character of icebergs.
Many of these icebergs are immense in their dimensions as well as formidable in their antag- onism. They are, in fact, Nature's ships at sea engaged in the commerce of the polar re- gions with the temperate zones. Their keels are spiked with bowlders that striate the rocks in the ocean-bed, and pulverize mineral sub- stances into sediments which, when hardened by heat and pressure, constitute the sheets of clay and stratified rocks which are found in ocean-beds, the counterparts of which are also found beneath the drift or soil of the dry land, and in which are embedded more or less primi- tive shells and relies of the flora and fauna of different climes.
The general aspects of the earth's erust, whether under water or above water, are much the same. The ocean-beds have their moun-
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tains, hills, plains, and valleys. In the course of unmeasured time ocean-beds are lifted into the sunlight of continents, and continents sunk into the darkness of ocean-beds. In Nature's calendar there is no recognition of time. She works in the "eternal now," slowly for the most part, but sometimes violently. By an interchange of continents with ocean-beds she recruits impoverished soils, and prepares new conditions for the production of a still higher order of plant and animal life, and probably a higher order of man.
The crust of the earth has been estimated to be from ten to fifty miles thick. It is doubtless . much thinner at some points than at others. Its interior is believed to be composed of molten minerals, which, when cooled, constitute the earth's crust. This vast interior mass includes in all probability more than nine-tenths of the entire material of the globe.
It may be inferred, therefore, that the earth's interior is a billowy sea of molten matter, roll- ing in majestic fluctuations, or tidal waves, ever beating and breaking against the inside of the earth's crust with a violence that disrupts it, or results at long periods in upheavals and subsidences of continents, throwing both the stratified and conglomerate rocks into strange relations to each other. It is this sublime and
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irresistible work of nature which has so dis- tinctly marked in the primitive rocks the suc- cession of the geological ages. There is no reasonable doubt that the igneous and aqueous forces, acting slowly or violently, are the dom- inant agencies which nature employs in the execution of her evolutionary work. She could not, if she would, call to her aid a glacial period.
Strange as it may seem, the earth has three oceans, - an atmospheric ocean, a surface ocean, and an interior ocean. These three oceans are constantly engaged in working out the same ultimate problem and are governed by the same general law of circulation. They all have their currents and counter-currents. The activities of the atmospheric ocean are generated by heat and cold, at different points. The results are counter-currents of hot and cold winds, rain and snow, thunder and lightning, cloudbursts and cyclones. The surface ocean has similar activi- ties for similar reasons, resulting in thermal currents, cold currents, tidal waves, and water- spouts. The interior ocean gives birth to earth- quakes, volcanoes, upheavals, and subsidences. It is the sublime and violent work of these several oceans that has given to the earth its present aspects. The one ocean sometimes aids the other in a subordinate capacity. Yet all
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act in harmony and with a view, seemingly, to achieve the same evolutionary results.
It was unquestionably rapid currents of water, or floods in connection with icebergs at sea, that transported both the bowlders and the relics of the flora and fauna of different climes from their original localities and deposited them in foreign localities, where they are now found on the surface, or embedded in clay or drift, the world over. It was rapid currents of water that polished many of the transported bowlders, while some were transported in the rough state in which they fell from their birthplace in the mountains upon the surface of floating icebergs at sea, or were hurled broadcast by volcanic explosion. All this may have occurred in some sections of the earth at one time, and in other sections at another time, and probably did. The changes in the aspects of the earth, thus wrought, are in harmony with nature's geologi- cal record of events.
The fallacy of the glacial theory cannot be better illustrated, perhaps, than by alluding to the views expressed by some of our enthusiastic glacialists in reference to the origin of our Great North-western Lakes. They say there was a preglacial period in which these lakes did not exist, except as a great river; and that in the subsequent glacial period, or ice age,
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huge glaciers followed the line of this river, excavated its channel into a series of lake basins, and filled up the interspaces with deposits of drift.
But when we take into consideration the extent and depth of these lakes, it seems not only improbable, but impossible, that the exca- vation of their rocky basins was the work of glacial action. If we may accept the report of the United States Survey, the maximum depth of Lake Superior is 1,008 feet, Huron 750 feet, Michigan 870 feet, Erie 270 feet, and Ontario 500 feet. It is also shown by the same report that they all have a mean height above the level of the sea of 517 feet, and a mean depth below the level of the sea of 271 feet, and that the total area of their surface exceeds the total area of England, Scotland, and Wales, while the distance, on a central line, from the head of Lake Superior to the foot of Lake Ontario, exceeds twelve hundred miles. If we can be- lieve our Great Lakes were excavated by glacial action, we can with equal reason believe that glaciers excavated the Red Sea, or Gulf of Mexico.
The entire region of our Great Lakes has evidently been, at some remote period, sub- jected to violent disturbances. This fact in- duces the supposition that they were originally
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a range of mountains, and that they suddenly collapsed during an upheaval and subsidence of the entire lake region. This suggestion seems verified by the testimony of the rocks which encircle the lakes. Some of these rocks have a volcanic appearance, while others crop out that belong to the primitive geological series.
It can hardly be doubted that the St. Law- renee River Valley and the lake region were included in the same general volcanic disturb- ance. The rocky channels of both the St. Lawrence and Niagara strengthen the supposi- tion, and what should remove all reasonable doubt is the fact that iron and other metals, the products of volcanic action, are found at various points along the line of these rivers and lakes in connection with relics of the flora and fauna of widely different climes.
On the southern border of Lake Erie, near Cleveland, a Cleveland company, in boring for gas, in 1889, struck a bed of solid salt, fifty feet thick or more, at the depth of one thou- sand feet. This fact, in connection with many others that might be cited, proves that the lake region was at one time submerged beneath the waters of the ocean, and that, at an upheaval, it retained in a valley or basin of the earth's erust a broad sheet of salt water, which, by subsequent heat and pressure, crystallized and became salt.
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In fact, it would seem that the entire valley of the Mississippi from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains must have been submerged and upheaved, probably at the same time with the lake region, if we may judge from the vol- canic rocks and mineral deposits which abound in different parts of the valley's broad domains.
In Louisiana an oil company, in 1886, struck, . at the depth of six hundred and fifteen feet, an extensive bed of pure sulphur, twenty feet thick, which was unquestionably deposited by volcanic action in some remote geological age.
We have further proof of volcanic disturb- ances in the fact that there are three distinct ridges of land bordering the southerly shore of Lake Erie, which are composed of the same material as the present shore, and which cor- respond with its angles. These ridges lie from one to three miles apart, and vary in height above the present level of the lake from eighty to three hundred feet. They were evidently, at some former period, the boundaries of the lake. The lake must have been at one time at least six hundred feet deep, instead of an aver- age depth of seventy feet, as at present. These ancient boundaries indicate that the lake was suddenly drained of a share of its waters at three widely different periods. This must have been done by three equally sudden subsidences
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of the lake and the region south-easterly of it in the direction of the St. Lawrence River. It is simply a question of time how soon Niagara Falls will reach Black Rock, and drain Lake Erie.
It is not possible that polar glaciers could have excavated the basins of the lakes and left the islands, undisturbed, where they now are. It cannot be true, therefore, that polar glaciers striated the rocks at Kelley's Island and San- dusky Bay, or at other points on the lake coast. The striations or grooves which are seen in the rocks were probably made by volcanic eruptions. in the bed of the lake which lifted the islands
into their present positions. These eruptions would, of course, cause a sudden overflow of the lake, and, if occurring in the winter, would lift vast sheets of ice with the water and carry in rushing currents, ice, sand, gravel, and bowl- ders, and thus striate the surface rocks on the islands and along the lake coast.
These striations, or grooves, ought not to be accepted as proof of a glacial period. for the reason that similar markings or grooves are to be seen on the highest mountains as well as in the valleys to a greater or less extent in every - part of the world, and. in all probability, were produced by igneous and aqueous forces, the only instrumentalities which Nature seems to
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have employed or needed in giving to the earth its present aspects.
We all know that earthquakes are of frequent occurrence in the world. The whole number, as statistics show, exceeds five hundred per annum. Fifty or more have occurred in the lake region and Mississippi Valley within the last half century.
At New Madrid, in 1811, an earthquake sunk several islands in the Mississippi River, lifted and broke the earth's crust into yawning chasms, created new lakes, and set back the current of the river eighteen miles. The shocks continued for several days and changed materially the aspects of that region of the country.
The earthquake at Charleston, South Caro- lina, in 1886, was still more disastrous in its effects. It not only fractured the earth's crust, but destroyed a considerable part of the city and killed a number of citizens. The shocks were repeated for several days and felt through- out nearly all the Southern States. In fact, overwhelming earthquakes may occur at any time when least expected.
Geology, though comparatively a modern science, is based on visible facts, which are · verified by the constant activities of nature; while glaciology, though called a science, is based on an assumption of facts which never
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existed. The glacial theory is, therefore, noth- ing more than a phantom flitting in the twilight of science.
The grand problem of the creation, however, cannot be solved; nor can the antiquity of man, or the conditions of his origin, be traced to any definite geological era. Yet we live in an age of philosophers, who seem to think the impos- sible possible. But when we consider that the universe has neither centre nor eircumference, we are lost in the limitless field that lies open to seientific investigation, and shrink with a feeling of instinctive awe and reverence from the attempt to explore it. In a field of thought so vast and unlimited, we are lost for the want of a thought broad enough and strong enough to grasp the infinite. The revelations of sei- ence, however, assure us that a divine intelli- gence pervades the universe - the intelligence of a paternal Sovereignty that is crowned with the stars.
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