The sergeant gravely shook his head. "There vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor must be some mistake, sir. The men of my own of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of mess had no hammocks. There were not ham- the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, mocks enough on board, and the men of the two cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, next messes laid hold of hammocks for themselves all taking to drinking together and going to as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my ruin? If not (I asked him), what did he say men out, as I may say." in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner's Jury, who, by signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great Tasmania chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome food? My official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other officers only comparatively better, those particular officers were superlatively the very best of all possible officers. "Had the squeezed-out men none then ?" "None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all." "Then you don't agree with the evidence on that point?" Certainly not, sir. A man can't, when he knows to the contrary." 66 Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink ?" "There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were under the impression-I knew it for a fact at the time-that it was not allowed to take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had things of that sort came to sell them purposely." "Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?" "They did, sir." (I believe there never was a more truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no inclination to make out a case.) "Many?" "Some, sir" (considering the question). "Soldier-like. There had been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads-no roads at all, in short-and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank, before taking a last look at it. Soldier-like." "Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for drink at that time?" The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with health, travelled round the place and came back to me. "Certainly, sir." "The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been severe ?" "It was very severe, sir." "Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover on board ship?" "So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped." The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told, Sergeant ?" 'Have you seen the food, sir?" "Some of it." My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey. The spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I burn and blush to remember it. It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for the consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings. No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape will be infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name. DELUGES. NOAH's was the last grand deluge; Adhémar's is to be the next. Noah floated in safety through the vast inundation which bears his name; it is not likely that ALPHONSE JOSEPH ADHÉMAR, author of the Révolution de la Mer, &c., will enjoy the same good fortune, seeing that he was born in 1797, and that his deluge is not to happen before the lapse of six thousand and nearly three hundred years. The event, of which such long notice is given, is to be the result of physical laws relating to heat and gravity, and of certain well-known astronomical facts. The immediate cause of the cataclysm thus predicted, is to be a disturbance of the equilibrium of the ocean-the inevitable conse "Have you seen the state of their mouths,quence of a change of its centre of gravity. sir ?" If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken the amount of a volume of this publication, he could not have settled that question better. I believe that the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship's provisions. I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefaction and The seas, shallow in comparison with the mass of the globe, are spread over the greater part of its surface, so as to render it (were it flat instead of spherical) like a dinner plate all but filled with water. Tilt the plate ever so little, and the water rushes to one side, leaving the opposite side uncovered. Shift the centre of gravity of the terrestrial globe, and the oceans must obey the new point of attraction as surely as the tides obey the moon. In Adhémar's deluge, the South Pacific, South Atlantic, and Antarctic Oceans are to be suddenly poured across the equator, to submerge our northern earth's centre of gravity is quite sufficient to hemisphere. The sea is to take repossession of produce these vast convulsions-vast relatively its ancient bed, which we now occupy and culti-to their effects on animated nature-so nice vate. High grounds, rising above the level of is the equilibrium. For, the depths of the the Southern Ocean, are to form the archipel- ocean and the highest mountain-tops are so agoes of a new Polynesia. Our hemisphere, trifling in comparison with the enormous size of which is continental at the present day, is to the globe, that Biot, as is well known, compared become what it was before the last catastrophe; them to the irregularities on the skin of an -oceanic, and vice versa. In the southern orange. M. Adhemar has calculated the comhemisphere, unknown continents are to spring parative volume of a chain, or rather a considerfrom the abyss, raising their summits to the able group of mountains; and he finds that, if clouds, and are soon to be covered with what we suppose the circumference of the globe to be is called eternal snow-that is, eternal until represented by an ordinary dinner plate, the the next oceanic revolution. In reality, the abdomen of a common house-fly will represent mountains will not rise; but the effect will be to the group of all the Alps united. The famous all intents the same, by the retiring of the sea chain of the Andes, the largest in the world, from that half of the earth's surface. By the appears enormous to an atom like man, but it depression of its level, the islands of the Pacific is in reality only a slight wrinkle, hardly equivawill at once become the culminating points of lent to the seventh part of our planet's circumnew chains of mountains. The continental ference. It is clear, then (to Adhémar), that if hemisphere will then lie on the other side of the anything occurs to shift the centre of gravity equator. only to a moderate distance, it will make all the difference on the outspread waters between stable and unstable equilibrium. Noah's flood was caused by the sudden departure of the northern seas, which rushed towards the Antarctic Pole; Adhémar's will take place in the contrary direction. The mass of the seas appears, therefore, to be carried alternately from one side of the equator to the other, nearly as a pendulum in motion swings from one side of the perpendicular to the other. Nothing can be simpler; nothing is more natural-as the philosophers just cited, profess to prove. It was a similar disturbance of equilibrium, Adhemar holds, which caused, "four thousand two hundred and six years and nine months ago," the preceding deluge, which is called THE deluge, because it is the only one tradition whereof subsists, and which, perhaps, is the only one that has had human beings for witnesses. All the general deluges are owing to the same cause-the displacement of the seas. M. Le Hon [whose Periodicité des Grands Déluges is now lying before us], a learned geologist and professor at the Military School at Brussels, counts no less than fourteen such A glance at the map of the world informs us deluges, from the beginning of the tertiary that the mass of waters is very unequally porperiod up to the present day. The oldest of tioned out between the northern and the southern these tertiary deluges (before which there were halves of the globe. In the northern hemisphere, plenty of others) mounts as far back as a the land bears to the sea the proportion of four hundred and forty thousand years. The only hundred and fifteen to one thousand; in the difference between them is, that, in two con- southern, of one hundred and twenty-nine to secutive deluges, the irruption of the waters one thousand. If you follow the same parallel of takes place in an opposite direction; that is, from latitude-forty degrees, for instance-above and south to north in one case, and from north to below the equator, in the northern hemisphere south in the other. M. Le Hon is so sure of it passes close to Madrid, Constantinople, Pekin, his facts, that he favours us with a map of several and Philadelphia, and is almost entirely conEuropean, and some African and Asiatic, lands, tinental; whilst, in the southern hemisphere, it is showing the degree to which they were sub- almost entirely maritime; and, except Patagonia merged namely, what was water and what and a few islands, there is nothing between it dry land-during the interval between Noah's and the pole, but ice and water. The fact is flood and the preceding one. From this he too evident to require further comment. The infers that the grand mass of ice surrounding antarctic seas, four times vaster than those of the North Pole reached, at the epoch of greatest the north, are also deeper. At the points cold, very nearly as far as Tornea, or sixty-six nearest to the North Pole which have been degrees of latitude; that the sites of most of reached, the sounding line has never given more the principal cities of Europe-London, Paris, than three hundred fathoms, whilst in the opMadrid, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, posite hemisphere it has marked two thousand Brussels, Constantinople, Athens, Turin, Munich, and more without touching bottom. Captain and many others—were all under water; that Ross found four thousand; M. d'Archiac cites Ireland was then a group of four separate a case in which the line, charged with a weight islands; England, of four likewise, divided of four hundred pounds, ran out to nine thoufrom Scotland by a strait; and that the Straits sand one hundred and forty-three mètres, or of Dover, so far from being a new invention, were very much wider than they are at present. They were probably first opened at the last deluge but one. A very slight alteration in the position of the about ten thousand yards, and only stopped for want of rope. In this abyss, the Pyrenees, Mont Blanc, and Ararat itself might be sunk, without leaving a trace. Everest, the giant of the Himalayas, measured by Colonel Waugh, would be covered by a stratum of water more than three hundred yards in depth. If, in comparing the northern and the southern oceans, the depth is taken into consideration as well as the surface, it will result that the mass of water constituting the latter is four times as great as that constituting the former. Why is this? Another question: If you look at maps of the polar regions, you will observe that at the North Pole, with two or three exceptions, the ice is far from extending down to the seventy-fifth degree of latitude; whilst, at the South Pole it forms a zone, or rather a circle, with a radius of more than twenty degrees. The only open point in this zone is where the Erebus, the immense volcano discovered by Ross, whose flames dart to the height of two thousand feet, explains the existence of this unfrozen patch of sea. The arctic regions are capped by a circle of ice having a surface of two hundred and ninety-four square leagues; the antarctic regions consist of a continent of ice with a surface of seven hundred and fifty-five thousand square leagues. What is the reason of this disproportion? The answers to these two questions supply the clue to past and future deluges. Our philosophers state, as their conviction, that the northern hemisphere is gradually cooling; that the arctic ice is steadily encroaching on the yet unfrozen portions of Europe, Asia, and America; that the summers of France and England are not so hot as they were in olden times. Where, for instance, are the English vineyards now? And while the northern hemisphere is cooling, the southern is accumulating heat. While the ice here is gaining ground, there it is retreating. Compare the route followed by Captain Cook, when his orders were to coast the ice as closely as possible, with the limits attained by contemporary navigators, Ross, and the unfortunate Dumont-d'Urville. There is no need to wonder why Cook and Desfournaux, in the last century, failed to discover the lands which their successors subsequently found; for, in their time, these were beneath the ice. Why this increase of cold in one hemisphere and of warmth in the other? Why do both changes date from 1248 ? What is the explanation of Robert Stephenson's statement cited by Cuvier, that the level of the North Sea and of the English Channel is rising? The outpouring of the waters is not caused by the uprising of any mountain-chain, as certain geologists have supposed. Earthquakes are not the parents of any grand deluge; they are inadequate to the enormous results which have occurred. There is no room here to argue the proposition; M. Adhémar has searched for the origin of oceanic revolutions in a source where no one thought of looking for it before; his theory does not rest on an hypothesis, but on one of the laws of the system of the world. In Germany, his book has been admired and translated; in France, the prophet has as yet found but little honour in his own country. M. Le Hon, his Belgian disciple, explains the indifference of the French learned public, thus: "The Academy pays no attention to the Mémoire, because it is in print; geologists do not read it, because it is the production of a mathematician; and mathematicians do not read it, because it meddles with geology." We may safely illustrate his theory as follows: first, the earth describes, in the course of a year, a nearly circular ellipse, one of whose foci is occupied by the sun. Secondly, the same season does not reign at the same time all over the globe; there is, on the contrary, a complete opposition in this respect between the northern and southern halves of the world. Our winter answers to the summer of the southern hemisphere, and our spring to its autumn. Thirdly, the seasons are not of equal length, which is the consequence of the elliptic form of the earth's orbit. Our spring and summer take place while the earth is describing the smaller are of its orbit, which is the one nearest the sun. She has, therefore, a shorter distance to travel during these seasons than during the other two; and, moreover, as the sun, being nearer, exerts at that time a greater power of attraction, the earth's motion becomes accelerated. Our autumn and our winter last, together, one hundred and seventy-nine days, our spring and summer one hundred and eighty-six difference, seven days. Thus, spring and summer, in our hemisphere, are seven days longer than autumn and winter; and the reverse takes place in the southern hemisphere. Fourthly, we did not always enjoy this privilege; it falls to each hemisphere by turns. There was a time when autumn and winter took place for us whilst the earth was travelling through the greater arc of her orbit, whilst she was at her greatest distance from the sun. A like time will return. This being the key to the theory which we are about to state, ought to be clearly understood. axis is parallel to these printed lines. This ellipse represents the orbit of the earth. Every ellipse has two foci. Suppose the sun to be in the left focus of our ellipse: the major axis meets the curve of the oval at two points, one to the right and one to the left. The point to the left evidently makes the nearest approach to the sun during the whole course of the earth's orbit, whence it is called the perihelion; the point to the right, being the most distant, is called the aphelion. These two extreme points are also called apsides, whence the name of apsidal line given to the major axis of the orbit. Now, in the year 1248, the first day of winter, or the winter solstice-we are speaking of our hemisphere-occurred when the earth was passing the perihelion; and the first day of summer, or the summer solstice, when the earth was passing the aphelion. To complete our figure, let us draw through the centre of the sun a straight line perpendicular to the major axis of the ellipse. This line will cut the oval orbit of the earth at two points, one above and the other below the major axis. The first is the point where, in 1248, the earth was at the autumnal equinox, that is, it was the first day of autumn; and the second where she was at the vernal equinox, or on the first day in spring. With this simple figure in view, the rest of our explanation is as plain as can be. During the whole course of a single year there is no sensible change in the inclination of the earth's axis; it remains, to all intents and purposes, parallel to itself; but, in the lapse of ages, this parallelism remains no longer unaltered. The earth is slightly swollen, or bulges out at the equator; the sun's attraction acting on this swelling has the effect of changing the inclination of the axis. It is analogous to the rolling of a top whilst its toe remains spinning on exactly the same spot of ground. The top's axis, more or less inclined towards. the ground, describes a conical surface round the line perpendicular to the plane on which the top is spinning. The solar attraction, combined with the diurnal movement, impresses a similar movement on the globe. This change of direction has the effect of altering the date of the equinoxes. In this way, since 1248, the vernal equinox has drawn nearer to the perihelion by more than ten degrees; consequently, the winter solstice, which was at the perihelion, retreats from it, the autumnal equinox advances towards the summer solstice, and the summer solstice towards the vernal equinox, for all the points of the orbit follow the same movement. As this movement goes on, the vernal equinox will at last take place at the time of the earth's passing the perihelion; it will then be beyond it, and will in time take the place of the autumnal equinox, which will have taken the place of the vernal equinox, exactly as the two solstices will also have mutually changed their positions. That is to say, at that time the order of the seasons will be reversed, in respect to the four principal points of the earth's orbit; our spring .. and summer will take place at the perihelion, our autumn and winter at the aphelion. The contrary will be the case for the southern hemisphere. Our autumn and winter will then be seven days longer than in the southern hemisphere, and every year the sun will shine seven days longer on the South Pole than on the North Pole. Be it remarked that the change of the equinoctial points takes place in a direction opposite to that of the earth's motion in her orbit, whence the name of the "Precession of the Equinoxes" given to this grand phenomenon, which has long been known to astronomers, although M. Adhémar was the first to build upon it his theory of the periodicity of great deluges. The rate of the movement of precession is so slow that its entire revolution round the earth's orbit requires twenty-five thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight years; but, in fact, it is practically shortened by another phenomenon, which modifies the duration of this long period: In consequence of the attractions exercised by the planets upon our globe, the major axis of the earth's orbit, or the apsidal line, changes its place; it moves in the place of the orbit, and in the same direction as the earth itself, and, consequently, in direction contrary to the equinoctial revolution. Thus to have a clear idea of the case-whilst the vernal equinox goes backwards towards the perihelion, the perihelion, in consequence of the gradual motion of the apsidal line, comes forward to meet the vernal equinox. The effect of the displacement of the apsides is, therefore, a shortening of the duration of the revolution of the equinoxes, abbreviating it, in round numbers, to twenty-one thousand years. Consequently, every ten thousand five hundred years, the order of the seasons in the two hemispheres is reversed, in respect to the equinoctial and solstitial points; that is, the dates when spring, summer, autumn, and winter begin. Now let us follow the bold deductions that are drawn from these established astronomical premises. At the poles, the year consists of only one day and one night; the day lasts as long as the united spring and summer of the corresponding hemisphere; the night, as long as the united autumn and winter; consequently the North Pole's day is one hundred and sixty-eight hours longer than the South Pole's. But, during day, the earth receives the heat of the sun, whilst, by night, it loses it by radiation. If the length of the days is greater than the length of the nights, the earth is heated; it is cooled in the contrary case. Hence the North Pole every year lays in a stock of heat, and the South Pole loses heat. The former accumulates every year one hundred and sixty-eight times the quantity of heat received from the sun in the course of an hour of day, the second loses one hundred and sixty-eight times the heat which is dispersed by radiation in the course of an hour of night. What is the amount of this difference in the course of several thousand years-of ten thousand years, for instance? Three million three hundred and sixty thousand hours, which are equivalent to two hundred and eighty-two years. Nothing more is required to explain the unequal development of the arctic and the antarctic icy regions. Each of the earth's poles, therefore, is loaded with a vast glacier, but of unequal dimensions and elevation; as the antarctic mass is the more considerable, the centre of gravity of the whole mass of the globe is drawn into the southern hemisphere, along the radius which terminates at the South Pole, carrying with it the waters spread over the earth, and laying bare a portion of the continents of the northern hemisphere. As the displacement of the centre of gravity is slow, the displacement of the seas is also slow. They gradually retreat from one hemisphere, and gradually take possession of the other; and in this secular movement there is nothing which entitles it to the name of a catastrophe or a grand convulsion of nature. Let us note the consequences, and inquire what will happen ten thousand five hundred years after the seas have been amassed in the southern hemisphere. Little by little, the northern glacier increases, the southern diminishes. During a long period, the deep waters, nearest to the centre of attraction, transport themselves from the south to the north. The northern seas insensibly rise, the southern seas as gradually subside. On this side of the equator, lowlands, shores, cultivated fields, and forests are submerged; on the other side of the equator, the land gains upon the sea, which retires. But all this takes place on a limited scale, and small changes require long periods of time. At last, the hour arrives when this regular and progressive movement gives place to a sudden, a vast perturbation of equilibrium; namely, when the boreal glacier having reached its maximum of extension, and the austral glacier its minimum, this latter has become sufficiently softened and rotten by the accumulated heat of the sun. It is then broken up; and the instant of the breakup sounds the knell of an universal cataclysm. As soon as the fragments of the great southern glacier are converted into floating icebergs, drifting about at the mercy of the waves, the attraction of the northern glacier becomes preponderant; and the centre of gravity of the globe, suddenly traversing the plane of the equator, passes into the northern hemisphere, dragging after it, in a mighty torrent, almost the total mass of the waters. Ten thousand five hundred years afterwards, another deluge occurs, in an opposite direction; and so on, during the whole enormous period that the precession of the equinoxes has been, and shall be, an astronomical fact. M. Adhémar's theory, resting on one of the laws of the system of the world, has an impregnable basis; but disputants may claim leave to doubt the intensity of the results. Is the cause assigned, capable of alternately concentrating the great mass of the seas in the opposite hemispheres? The question might be resolved by observation; but unfortunately, observations are wanting. We do not exactly know, either the depth of the seas around the South Pole, nor the height of the antarctic ice above the level of the sea, nor its density. To supply those deficiencies, our author is obliged to reduce the question to a problem of statics. The depth of the ocean increases regularly from the North to the South Pole. The solid sphere which forms the globe, and the liquid sphere which is formed by the seas, are not parallel at their surfaces, and the centre of one is about half a league distant from the centre of the other. The point is to demonstrate that the eccentricity of these two spheres is caused by the attraction of the ice accumulated at the South Pole. With this view, the author inquires into the conditions of equilibrium between the earth, the sea, and the two polar glaciers. He arrives at the result that the immense mass of the seas is held in equilibrium by a force three hundred and eighty-two leagues from its natural centre. In order that the force of attraction possessed by the antarctic glacier can produce this astounding result, it must have a height of twenty leagues. This seems a prodigious altitude. But, by the help of the eclipses in which the earth casts her shadow on the moon, something may be ascertained respecting the projection of the polar ice. Kepler relates that the eclipse of the moon of the 26th of September, 1621, which was total and almost central, surprised him greatly; "for not only," he says, "the duration of total darkness was short, but the remainder of the duration of the eclipse, before and after the total obscurity, was still shorter, as if the earth were elliptical or lemon-shaped, and had a shorter diameter across the equator than from pole to pole.' It is curious to compare Adhémar's theory with some well-known geological phenomena. A great catastrophe has devastated the surface of the globe, leaving in our hemisphere, to witness its power, the extraordinary phenomenon which has been named the diluvium of the north. Innumerable blocks of all dimensions have been torn from regions near the pole and have been transported along every meridian, down to the fifty-second parallel, and raised to altitudes exceeding five hundred yards. They are scattered over the plains and table-lands of the Old and the New Worlds. In all cases, they have been arrested by the heights, and they have been stranded on the northern slopes of mountains, whilst open grounds and lowlands have admitted their passage. Their abundance and their volume is in proportion to the latitude; and the nearer they are to the pole, the more considerable is their number and dimensions. On beholding the sharpness of their edges, the prominence of their angles, the freshness of their fractures, and their perfect preservation, you are tempted to say that some colossal hand, clutching them at their point of departure, had deposited them unaltered at their destination. The whole of America which is situated between Newfoundland and the Upper Mississippi, is thickly strewn with these erratic boulders. They all lie on the south or the south-east side of the mountains from whence they come. |