A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
The computation of the power of the Waves is less satisfactory. While
only the average power of the wind, and the average height of the tide,
were taken before, now the extreme height of the waves is used, for they
are made to rise ten feet above the level of the sea, to which, adding
ten more for depression, we have twenty feet, or the extreme height of a
wave. Indeed, the power of the waves, which is produced by the wind
blowing obliquely and at disadvantage upon the water, is made to be, not
only three thousand times greater than that of the tide, but one hundred
times greater than that of the wind itself, meeting its object at right
angles. Moreover, this power is measured by the area of the vessel, and
not by its length mainly, and it seems to be forgotten that the motion
of the waves is chiefly undulatory, and exerts a power only within the
limits of a vibration, else the very continents, with their extensive
coasts, would soon be set adrift.
Finally, there is the power to be derived from Sunshine, by the
principle on which Archimedes contrived his burning-mirrors, a
multiplication of mirrors reflecting the rays of the sun upon the same
spot, till the requisite degree of heat is obtained. The principal
application of this power will be to the boiling of water and production
of steam. So much for these few and more obvious powers, already used to
a trifling extent. But there are innumerable others in nature, not
described nor discovered. These, however, will do for the present. This
would be to make the sun and the moon equally our satellites. For, as
the moon is the cause of the tides, and the sun the cause of the wind,
which, in turn, is the cause of the waves, all the work of this planet
would be performed by these far influences.
“We may store up water in some eminent pond, and take out of this store,
at any time, as much water through the outlet as we want to employ, by
which means the original power may react for many days after it has
ceased.... Such reservoirs of moderate elevation or size need not be
made artificially, but will be found made by nature very frequently,
requiring but little aid for their completion. They require no
regularity of form. Any valley, with lower grounds in its vicinity,
would answer the purpose. Small crevices may be filled up. Such places
may be eligible for the beginning of enterprises of this kind.”
The greater the height, of course, the less water required. But suppose
a level and dry country; then hill and valley, and “eminent pond,” are
to be constructed by main force; or, if the springs are unusually low,
then dirt and stones may be used, and the disadvantage arising from
friction will be counterbalanced by their greater gravity. Nor shall a
single rood of dry land be sunk in such artificial ponds as may be
wanted, but their surfaces “may be covered with rafts decked with
fertile earth, and all kinds of vegetables which may grow there as well
as anywhere else.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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