Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

his theory rather in its operation on a continent already established, than on the birth or primitive emersion of a continent from the

ocean.

As to the western part of this continent, I mean that which lies beyond the Alleghany mountains, if it were not originally gained from the ocean, it has received an accumulation of earth by no means less wonderful. Far beyond the Ohio, in piercing the earth for water, the stumps of trees, bearing the most evident impressions of the axe, and on one of them the rust of consumed iron, have been discovered between ninety and a hundred feet below the present surface of the earth. This is a proof, by the by, not only that this immense depth of soil has been accumulated in that quarter; but that that new country, as the inhabitants of the Atlantick states call it, is, indeed a very ancient one; and that North America has undergone more

revolutions in point of civilization, than have heretofore been thought of, either by the European or American philosophers. That part of this continent, which borders on the western ocean, being almost entirely unknown, it is impossible to say whether it exhibit the same evidence of immersion which is found here. M'Kenzie, however, the only traveller who has ever penetrated through this vast forest, records a curious tradition among some of the western tribes of Indians: to wit, that the world was once covered with water. The tradition is embellished, as usual, with a number of very highly poetical fictions. The fact, which I suppose to be couched under it, is the ancient submersion of that part of the continent; which, certainly looks much more like a world than the petty territory that was inundated by Eucalion's flood. If I remember aright, for I cannot immediately refer to the book, Stith, in his history of Virginia, has

recorded a similar tradition among the Atlantic ktribes of Indians. I have no doubt that if

M'Kenzie had been as well qualified for scientifick research, as he was undoubtedly honest, firm and persevering, it would have been in his power to have thrown great lights on this subject as it relates to the western country.

For my own part, while I believe the present mountains of America to have constituted the original stamina of the continent, I believe at the same time, the western as well as the eastern country to be the effect of alluvion; produced too by the same causes: the rotàtion of the earth, and the planetary attraction of the ocean.

The perception of this will be easy and simple, if, instead of confounding the mind, by a wide view of the whole continent as it now stands, we carry back our imaginations to the time of its birth, and suppose some one of the highest pinnacles of the Blue

Ridge to have just emerged above the surface of the sea. Now whether the rolling of the earth to the east give to the ocean, which floats loosely upon its bosom, an actual counter-current, to the west,* which is

This idea, which is merely stated hypothetically, is considered, by the Inquirer, as having been a position absolutely taken by the British Spy: and as the reverse principle, (to wit, that the motion of the waters is taken from and corresponds with that of the solid earth,) is so well established, he concludes that it must have been contested by the British Spy through mere inadvertence. But, for my part, I do not perceive how this hypothetical idea of the British Spy is, at all, in collision with the doctrine of the diurnal or annual revolution of the terraqueous globe.

The British Spy could not have been guilty of so great an absurdity as to intend that the waters of the ocean'deserted their bed and broke over the eastern coasts and lofty mountains of opposing continents, in order to maintain their actual counter-current to the west. It must have been clear to him, that the ocean, keeping its bed, must attend the motion of the earth, "not only on its axis, but in its orbit." But the question here is not as to

occasionally, further accelerated by the motion of the tides in that direction, or whether this be not the case; still to our newly emerged pinnacle, which is whirled, by the

the position of the whole ocean as it relates to the whole earth the question is merely as to the locomotion of the particles of the ocean, among themselves. For although the ocean, as well as the solid earth, must perform a complete revolution around their common axis once in twenty-four hours, it does not follow, as I take it, that the globules of the fluid ocean must, all this time, remain as fixed as the atoms of the solid earth: they certainly may and certainly have, from some cause or other, a subordinate motion among themselves, frequently adverse to the general motion of the globe; to wit, a current to the west. The atmosphere belongs as much to this globe as the waters of the ocean do: that is to say, it cannot any more than the ocean fly off and attach itself to any other planet. It feels, like the ocean, the gravitating power of the earth and the attraction of the neighboring planets. It is affected, no doubt very sensibly (at least the lower region of it) by the earths diurnal rotation, and like the ocean, is compelled to attend her in her annual journey around the sun. But what of this? Does the atmos

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »