634 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



fore lost in an inextricable confusion of conflicting facts, which 

 must be left to future discoveries, or forever remain an unan- 

 swered problem, a mystery of mysterious nature. 



Scientists, whose most ambitious flights of speculation can 

 hardly go back ot the withered age of time, assert, by a process 

 of analogous reasoning, that climatic change is due to glacial 

 formation ; that the earth shifts about on its axis to maintain its 

 equilibrium, which is destroyed through a gradual process of ice 

 formations at its poles. As a result of this shifting movement, 

 one portion of the earth is submerged as the other rises, the 

 change being so gradual, however, as to be perceptible only after 

 ages of observation and comparison. There are evidences that 

 at one time nearly all of North America was under water, at 

 which period South America must have been of much greater 

 extent than it is now, and must also have had a very different 

 temperature. Then, as North America gradually rose, by reason 

 of heavy glaciers collecting at the South Pole, South America 

 was slowly being submerged, thus reversing their climates and 

 undergoing the most radical changes, which are partially ex- 

 plained by geologic and fossiliferous formations and remains 

 found on mountain tops and in deep valleys. The remarkable 

 ruins of temples found in Greenland indicate most conclusively 

 that that country must have had a comparatively mild climate at 

 one time, favorable to agriculture and a high state of civilization, 

 while now it is a desolate waste from the intense cold which pre- 

 vails. Further proofs of a reversal of climate, from warm to 

 cold, in the Arctic region, seems to be found in the extinct animal 

 life of Northern Siberia, unless it can be accounted for on the 

 Syrnmes' theory. This is now the coldest district of the earth, 

 but along the rigorous coast are numerous remains of the mam- 

 moth, elephant, rhinoceros, and other equatorial beasts. The 

 change of temperature seems to have been so sudden that they 

 were overwhelmed before being able to retreat to a warmer cli- 

 mate, unless their remains were drifted there by currents in the 

 Arctic Ocean from a warm country near the pole, as claimed by 

 Capt. Symmes and his supporters. The mammoth may possibly 



