234 TALKS OF THE TURF. 



strange history have led me to surrender Him that fealty 

 which, when my days are numbered, will insure a home 

 where I hope we will be again united. 



"Symmes died ridiculed by scientists, and 'Symmes* 

 Hole' is a fruitful subject to this day, to them in my land 

 for derision, yet this land is a reality, and I'm sure I now 

 live in it. My theory is that a branch of the Gulf Stream 

 carried me here. If it will only carry this bottle back to 

 my friends I shall be satisfied." 



(Captain John Cleve Symmes was a visionary Ameri- 

 can theorizer, who died in 1829. He always contended 

 that the Gulf Stream, after leaving the temperate zone, 

 entered the Arctic Circle by an unknown channel and 

 made a circuit of the North Pole, when it disappeared, 

 passing through the center of the earth, which was, ac- 

 cording to him, inhabited by men whose habits and cus- 

 toms were very similar to the Anglo-Saxons, and which 

 was lighted by two small sublunarian planets named 

 Pluto and Prosperina. Captain Symmes publicly invited 

 Humboldt and Sir Humphrey Davy to explore the under 

 world. While neither of them accepted the invitation, 

 they looked into the matter sufficiently to learn that the 

 celebrated astronomer Halley, in the latter part of the 

 seventeenth century, and the learned Norwegian satirist 

 and dramatist, Holberg, in the eighteenth century, had the 

 same fantastic notion. Those who ridiculed Captain 

 Symmes referred to his pet theory as "Symmes' Hole," 

 the latter being supposed to represent the whirlpool at the 

 North Pole, where the Gulf Stream, after dodging among 

 the icebergs and floes, sank into the center of the earth to 

 warm the inhabitants of the great unknown land, appear- 

 ing again near the equator, the warmer water gradually 

 coming to the surface through the craters of submerged 

 volcanoes. — Ed. ) 



