322 



GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1870. 



and the process will be repeated again and 

 again. Mori-ill's "Four Voyages" has long 

 been recognized in this country as belonging 

 to a class of publications somewhat popular 

 thirty or forty years ago, narratives of voyages 

 of discovery, or adventures in savage coun- 

 tries, in which fiction and facfr were intimately 

 blended. Riley's "Narrative," Niel's Klim's 

 "Journey under Ground," Captain Semmes's 

 " Story of the Inner World," and half a dozen 

 more works of a similar character, will be readi- 

 ly recalled by our older readers. Benjamin 

 Morrill had possibly entered the Antarctic 

 zone, but his account of his discoveries there 

 was undoubtedly drawn almost wholly from 

 his own imagination. 



One of the most interesting contributions to 

 geographical science made during the past 

 year is a volume of Notes on Iceland and the 

 Icelanders, by Mr. Jon A. Hjaltalin, a native 

 Icelander. He gives, in a plain and unpretend- 

 ing way, but with great clearness, the history, 

 ethnology, manners, customs, and political, 

 educational, and social condition of the people, 

 with a very full account of the climate, sea- 

 sons, volcanoes, natural curiosities, and pro- 

 ductions, animal, vegetable, and mineral, of 

 the island. He adduces conclusive evidence 

 that the climate is much more severe than 

 formerly ; that 800 years ago wheat and other 

 grains were abundantly produced there ; that 

 sheep and cattle, as well as horses, were able 

 to browse for themselves throughout the win- 

 ter, and that the fall of snow was much less 

 than now. To what cause these climatic 

 changes are to be attributed he does not at- 

 tempt to say. That they have taken place 

 in Northern Europe and Asia, and probably 

 also in the northern portion of our own con- 

 tinent, does not admit of a question. Are these 

 countries susceptible of restoration to their 

 former climatic conditions ? How far are they 

 affected by changes known to have taken place 

 in ocean-currents, aud what would be the 

 effect of a possible diversion of the Gulf- 

 Stream by the cutting of a ship-canal through 

 the Isthmus of Darien? These are questions 

 of importance not only to the geographer and 

 political economist, but to the governments 

 which may attempt to change the natural 

 course of ocean-currents, and, without intend- 

 ing to do so, may effect such changes. 



II. THK NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT next 

 claims our attention. In British America little 

 has been done for geographical science during 

 . 1870. A more careful survey of the route, part 

 railway and part steamer, from Ontario to 

 British Columbia, has been made, and measures 

 proposed to quiet the restless uneasiness of the 

 Western provinces ; but the road is not likely 

 soon to be built, and the Northern Pacific, 

 now in progress under the energetic manage- 

 ment of Messrs. Jay Cooke & Co., will prob- 

 ably obviate its necessity by connecting British 

 Columbia with the States of the Mississippi 

 Valley and the Atlantic. The Red River coun- 



try, Winnepeg, or, as it recently has been 

 named,, Manitoba, has bef n somewhat more 

 fully explored the past year than before, in 

 consequence of an insurrection there, but we 

 have as yet no evidence that the explorations 

 have inured to the benefit of geographical 

 science. 



United States. There have been a few items 

 of interest to geographers in the Atlantic 

 States and the Mississippi Valley. On the 

 Reading Railroad near Phcenixville, Pa., a 

 bone-cave was discovered near the close of the 

 year. The animals whose remains were en- 

 tombed in the cave lived before the epoch of 

 the great northern drift. Among them were 

 a mastodon with tusks eleven feet long, the 

 great cave bear, the megalonyx, or gigantic 

 sloth, thought to be a different species from 

 that found in Virginia, a rhinoceros, and a very 

 singular little horse, supposed also to be a new 

 species. No human remains nor any imple- 

 ments fashioned by human hands were found 

 in the cave. 



A cave has also been discovered in Iowa, 

 on the line of the projected Dubuque and Min- 

 nesota Railroad, which seems to be the work of 

 human hands, and is rather a series of cham- 

 bers hewn in the solid rock, as a mausoleum 

 or temple, than any adaptation of a natural 

 cavern. The workmen, while engaged in ex- 

 cavating for the road-bed in limestone, came, 

 at the foot of a bluff, upon a flat stone covered 

 with strange characters. This being removed, 

 opened the way into a passage about four feet 

 wide and six feet high, leading directly into 

 the heart of the bluff. At the distance of about 

 fifty feet from the entrance, another stone, simi- 

 lar to the first, had to be removed, when a large 

 chamber revealed itself, cut out of the solid 

 rock, about twenty-five feet square and twenty 

 feet high. The floor was hard and smooth, 

 while the walls and roof were carved, in a sort 

 of rude fiasso-rilievo,wiih figures of birds, trees, 

 stars, serpents, and chariots. The south wall 

 was adorned "with a representation of the 

 sun, and immediately below this the figure of 

 a man in the act of stepping out of a boat, and 

 holding in his hand a dove." So far the revela- 

 tions were not very different from many pre- 

 vious ones in similar caves and rock-chambers 

 throughout our Western country. But the 

 most curious part of the discovery was yet to 

 come. A flat slab in the floor of the cavern, 

 being raised, revealed below a vault filled with 

 skeletons of unusual size, the largest being 

 seven feet and eight inches high by actual 

 measurement. By the side of each skeleton 

 was set a small vase filled with yellow earth, 

 beneath which were found animal bones and 

 particles of animal matter. The skeletons were 

 placed in a semicircle toward the southwest. 

 This rock-chamber points with great positive- 

 ness to the Oriental origin of the people who 

 hewed it out of the rock, and while there 

 would seem to be a marked reference to the 

 deluge, the figures of chariots, serpents, etc., 



