Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and GravelDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Comets; Drift
Can any one suppose that ice could so discriminate?
And if it by any means effected this separation of the particles of
granite, indissolubly knit together, how could it perpetuate that
separation while moving over the land, crushing all beneath and
before it, and leave it on the face of the earth free from commixture
with the surface rocks?
Again: the ice-sheets which now exist in the remote north do not move
with a constant and regular motion southward, grinding up the rocks
as they go. A recent writer, describing the appearance of things in
Greenland, says:
"The coasts are deeply indented with numerous bays and fiords or
firths, which, when traced inland, are almost invariably found to
terminate against glaciers. Thick ice frequently appears, too,
crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which _it droops
in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections_, until its own
weight forces it to break away and topple down the precipices into
the sea."[1]
This does not represent an ice-sheet moving down continuously from
the high grounds and tearing up the rocks. It rather breaks off like
great icicles from the caves of a house.
Again: the ice-sheets to-day do not striate or groove the rocks over
which they move.
Mr. Campbell, author of two works in defense of the iceberg
theory--"Fire and Frost," and "A Short American Tramp"--went, in
1864, to the coasts of Labrador, the Strait of Belle Isle, and the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, for the express purpose of witnessing the
effects of icebergs, and testing the theory he had formed. On the
coast of Labrador he reports that at Hanly Harbor, where
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1874, p. 646.]
{p. 36}
the whole strait is blocked up with ice each winter, and the great
mass swung bodily up and down, "grating along the bottom at all
depths," he "found the rocks ground smooth, but _not striated_."[1]
At Cape Charles and Battle Harbor, he reports, "the rocks at the
water-line are _not striated_."[2] At St. Francis Harbor, "the
water-line is much rubbed smooth, but _not striated_."[3] At Sea
Islands, he says, "No striæ are to be seen at the land-wash in these
sounds or on open sea-coasts near the present waterline."[4]
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