104 



THE CANADIAN SPORTSMAN AND NATURALIST. 



anxiety and unbounded hopes of him who had 

 delved to make it a satisfactory home for hie 

 ambition. 



The present reveal i rigs on Wie surface of 

 Greenland, where a few hundred years ago 

 were green fields, waving forests, flowing 

 rivers, populous and thrifty villages and a 

 contented people, show Only mountains of ice, 

 all nature congealed, a country of desolation 

 and snow. This change has been gradual, and 

 the temperature is still declining. 



Iceland, too, is slowly undergoing a similar 

 change. At the same rate of decadence in an- 

 other hundred years it will cease to be habit- 

 able. Already such portions of the population 

 as have means are removing to the northern 

 latitudes of America. The island, like Green- 

 land, will soon be a cold and dreary desolation, 

 to so remain until other changes shall tran- 

 spire, when it may again, in a lower latitude, 

 become the home of man ; but ages of frost 

 and ice must first mark its site; other lands 

 in turn, now nearly tropical, must become 

 frigid ; and then it is questionable if any traces 

 of 'man, even as insignificant as the stone axe 

 or arrow head, shall remain to excite wonder 

 or curiosity among those who shall delve in its 

 soil. 



While we can account for the gradual 

 changing of the polarity of the earth and the 

 shifting of climates — the glacial period always 

 existing in some parts of the earth — we can- 

 not, by the same mode of reasoning, explain 

 why whole continents are suddenly submerged, 

 or why the beds of oceans, as suddenly, become 

 continents. 



The equatorial diameter of the earth is 

 greater than the polar by some thirty-four 

 miles. While thecentre of gravity remains as 

 now the pjolar and equatorial regions will re- 

 main substantially the same; but if from any 

 cause the pilar shall preponderate, then a 

 change in polarity will ensue. Such, without 

 doubt, was the case when the tropical elephants 

 were encased in the icebergs of Nova Zembla 

 and Spitsbergen. 



Mountains of ice are continually forming 

 within the arctics. The heat, of summer can- 

 not reach them ; but century after century, 

 and age after age, the accumulation goes on, 

 adding to the polar density. Some disturbing 

 element as an earthquake shock convulsing 

 the globe, a volcanic erujjtion and upheaval, 



or the addition of some fragmentary pjlanet or 

 wandering body lost in space, which has been 

 attracted from its orbit by its nearness to our 

 earth, falls upon it, the equipoise is lost, and 

 the waters of the ocean, seeking their plane, 

 roll over their rocky bounds, engulf continents, 

 and sweep away every vestige of aspiring man 

 save the few favorable locations which acci- 

 dentally escape the general deluge and the 

 submergence of continents. 



Such has been, such will be again and again 

 the fate of the globe. Man beholds the traces 

 of his labors all around him, finds everywhere, 

 even deep down in the bowels of the earth, 

 evidences of his great antiquity, and looks up- 

 on all as stable and enduring He inquires of 

 the pyramids, ascends their summits, wanders 

 through their interior labyrinthian passages, 

 and seeks to find the motives for their con^ 

 8 traction. He deciphers the inscriptions on 

 their walls, and is astonished with the power 

 and wisdom of those who made them. He 

 finds their builders were interlopers from some 

 other country, and at a very remote age. 

 Human records fail to give the origin of these 

 people, or the country from which they came. 

 The antiquarian lends his aid. He finds the 

 mounds and tumuli of America identical in 

 general form, and evidently constructed for the 

 same perpose, with those covering the vast 

 steppes of Asia. The mounds are traced down 

 the valleys of the Tigrin and Euphrates, ami a 

 feeble idea of their magnitude is learned by 

 exploring the rained temrjle of Bel us — the 

 wonderful tower of Babel, of biblical story — on 

 the site of ancient Babylon. As we follow the 

 nomadic builders of those structures we over- 

 take them in the valley of the Nile, driving out 

 the native blacks, as they had already done in 

 Asia, setting up a new civilization peculiarly 

 their own, and erecting their mounds, towers 

 and pyramids, each step of their progress mark- 

 ing an improvement on the preceding, the 

 general idea and purpose of which their re- 

 mote ancestors carried out with them from a 

 continent which was gradually submerged, the 

 inhabitants retiring before the incoming ocean. 

 During the long periods of their journeyings, 

 resting for centuries by the way, and again 

 advancing, they reached that region ; foreigners 

 on a foreign shore, where we first find them 

 at the commencement of the historic age, 

 making aggressive inroads upon the native 

 populations of Asia and Africa. 



(to be continued.) 



