Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/57

Rh produced without an exact equilibrium, and unless the northern hemisphere be counterbalanced by the southern. The whole being necessarily subject to the laws by which its parts are governed, the instant the northern pole should preponderate over the southern, a dreadful disorder would seize on the globe; the waters would flow precipitately, to collect in Greenland, Nova Zembla, Russia, and Norway; and, inundating the whole of those countries, as well as that of the Eskimaus, the multitude of lakes, morasses, and accumulations of snow, which would result, would justify more than ever the application of the epithet of Ovid: omnia pontus erat. With what surprize we should see the promontories of snow, collected around Cape Horn, pass rapidly along the coasts of the Burning Zone!

The equilibrium established and preserved by that Sovereign Being who created things by number, weight, and measure, of itself maintains its correspondence and harmony. This assertion, deduced both from physics and astronomy, appears to be free from any doubt: it ought therefore to regulate our discourses, and to give a tone to our speculations. On a survey, however, of the history of human discoveries, the facts which ought to correspond with the principles agreed on are not to be met with in the southern hemisphere. Being principally occupied by the ocean, the third part of the territories which lie in the northern hemisphere cannot be found; and as the weight of the earth, the average being taken between the different gravities of the parts of which it is composed, is to that of water, as two to one, it would seem that a sufficient proportion of matter is not to be found in that part of the globe, to counterbalance the one which is opposite.

Philosophers feeling themselves oppressed by the weight of Rh