Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/307

Rh land, there could be no tendency toward a current. Some other cause must be sought, and, fortunately, his imagination proved equal to the task.

Accepting as probable the suggestion of one whom he designates as 'a writer of no common celebrity,' to the effect that the cause of the general deluge was a melting of the ice at the two poles of the earth, he proceeded to explain in his own way the details of the catastrophe, though acknowledging that no positive testimony could possibly be adduced to substantiate the fact.

Having admitted the possibility of the earth's changing its position, so that the sun would pass immediately over the two poles on an unknown meridian, he showed that there would then result a rapid dissolution of the existing ice-caps such as would yield an ample supply of material, it being only necessary to give it direction. Considering as essential to the problem only the northern hemisphere, he remarks that, from this polar cap there were but two outlets, the one into the Pacific through the narrow Bering Straits, and the other through the wider channel between Greenland and Lapland into the Atlantic. Hence, when the melting ensued, by far the larger volume of water passed into the latter ocean. No sooner was this operation established and this accession of strength and power thrown into the Atlantic Ocean in particular, than its tide began to rise above its common limits, accompanied by a consequent current, both constantly increasing, the one in height and the other in rapidity.

At the commencement of this frightful drama the current, it is highly probable, was divided by the craggy heights of Spitzbergen and a part thrown into the White Sea, while the other was thrown back upon the eastern and southern coast of Greenland and thence in a southwestern direction until it struck the southern coast of Labrador, along which it swept, through the straits of Belle Isle, across Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and along the Atlantic coast into the Gulf of Mexico. In a short space of time the southern and eastern coast of Labrador was desolated. The soil was hurled adrift and carried across the country into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and across a part of New England into the sea or general current of the ocean.

Continuing to rise, the waters spread across Davis Straits and rolled their tumultuous surges into Hudsons Bay, embracing the whole coast of Labrador, while the current of the St. Lawrence was forced back and upward to its parent source.

At length the floods of the pole, forming a junction with Baffins Bay and the Arctic Sea, defying all bounds, overran their ancient limits and hurled their united forces in dread confusion across the bleak regions of the north to consummate the awful scene. Thus, lakes and seas uniting, formed one common ocean which was propelled with inconceivable rapidity across the continent between the chains of mountains, into the Gulf of Mexico, and probably over the unpeopled wilds of South America into the southern ocean. Fulfilled