Volcanic Origin of Lakes 271 
during a cyclone, may be sufficient to bring on an earthquake 
or a volcanic eruption already imminent. Whether this be 
so or not, there can be no doubt that at the melting away of 
the ice of the glacial period there was an enormous change in 
the strains on the earth’s crust. Ice that had been piled up 
mountains high at the poles and along the chain of the Andes 
all through tropical America melted away and ran down to 
the ocean beds. This great transference of weight could not 
have been accomplished without many rendings of the earth’s 
crust and many outpourings of lava and volcanic outbursts. 
Let us reflect, too, that not only was an enormous mass of 
matter, before lying over the poles, removed nearer to the 
equator, and many mountain-chains relieved of the ice of 
thousands and tens of thousands of years, but that there 
must have been an actual change in the earth’s centre of 
gravity. All our experience shows that the ice was more 
developed on some meridians than others; probably nowhere 
in the whole world did it lie so thick as along the American 
continents; and everywhere it must have been greater over 
the land than over the sea. When it assumed its liquid 
form, and arranged itself freely according to its specific 
gravity, the centre of gravity of the earth must have been 
effectively changed. All who have studied the present 
statical condition of the earth’s crust will readily admit that 
such a change might produce greater volcanic outbursts than 
any known to history. 
Then when we turn to the most ancient traditions of the 
human race in both the old and the new worlds, and find 
everywhere fire and water linked together in the accounts 
of the great catastrophes that are said nearly to have anni- 
hilated the human race, I for one am inclined to accept 
them, and to believe that when, in the ‘‘ Leo Amontli,” 
as translated by Brasseur de Bourbourg, we read of “ the 
volcanic convulsions that lasted four days and four nights,” 
of “the thunder and lightning that came out of the sea,” 
of “the mountains that were rising and sinking when the 
great deluge happened,” and that when Plato on the other 
side of the Atlantic speaks of the earthquakes that accom- 
panied the engulfment of Atlantis, we hear the dim echoes 
that have been sounding down through all time from that 
