The protracted struggle
between science and the classics appears to be drawing to a close, with victory
about to perch on the banner of science, as a perusal of almost any university
or college catalogue shows. While a limited knowledge of both Greek and Latin
is important for the correct use of our own language, the amount till recently
required, in my judgment, has been absurdly out of proportion to the intrinsic
value of these branches, or perhaps more correctly roots, of study. The
classics have been thoroughly and painfully threshed out, and it seems
impossible that anything new can be unearthed. We may equal the performances of
the past, but there is no opportunity to surpass them or produce anything
original. Even the much-vaunted "mental training" argument is
beginning to pall; for would not anything equally difficult give as good
developing results, while by learning a live matter we kill two birds with one
stone? There can be no question that there are many forces and influences in
Nature whose existence we as yet little more than suspect. How much more
interesting it would be if, instead of reiterating our past achievements, the
magazines and literature of the period should devote their consideration to
what we do not know! It is only through investigation and research that
inventions come; we may not find what we are in search of, but may discover
something of perhaps greater moment. It is probable that the principal glories
of the future will be found in as yet but little trodden paths, and as Prof.
Cortlandt justly says at the close of his history, "Next to religion, we
have most to hope from science."
I.-JUPITER.3
II.-ANTECEDENTAL17
III.-PRESIDENTBEARWARDEN’SSPEECH20
IV.-PROF.CORTLANDT’SHISTORICALSKETCHOFTHEWORLDINA.D.200034
V.-DR.CORTLANDT’SHISTORYCONTINUED52
VI.-FAR-REACHINGPLANS80
VII.-HARDATWORK95
VIII.-GOOD-BYE109
I.-THELASTOFTHEEARTH121
II.-SPACEANDMARS130
III.-HEAVENLYBODIES144
IV.-PREPARINGTOALIGHT155
V.-EXPLORATIONANDEXCITEMENT162
VI.-MASTODONANDWILL-O’-THE-WISP172
VII.-ANUNSEENHUNTER186
VIII.-SPORTSMEN’SREVERIES195
IX.-THEHONEYOFDEATH207
X.-CHANGINGLANDSCAPES220
XI.-AJOVIANNIAGARA232
XII.-HILLSANDVALLEYS247
XIII.-NORTH-POLARDISCOVERIES266
XIV.-THESCENESHIFTS281
I.-SATURN299
II.-THESPIRIT’SFIRSTVISIT310
III.-DOUBTSANDPHILOSOPHY328
IV.-APROVIDENTIALINTERVENTION339
V.-AYRAULT’SVISION347
VI.-AGREATVOIDANDAGREATLONGING353
VII.-THESPIRIT’SSECONDVISIT373
VIII.-CASSANDRAANDCOSMOLOGY387
IX.-DR.CORTLANDTSEESHISGRAVE410
X.-AYRAULT421
XI.-DREAMLANDTOSHADOWLAND431
XII.-SHEOL442
XIII.-THEPRIEST’SSERMON450
XIV.-HICILLEJACET458
XV.-MOTHEREARTH471
TheCallistoandtheCometFrontispiece
TheCallistowasgoingstraightup115
TheSignalsfromtheArcticCircle127
DiagramoftheComparativeSizesofthePlanets155
TheRideontheGiantTortoise190
ABattleRoyalonJupiter208
TheCombatwiththeDragons342
Ayrault’sVision350
TheylookintotheFuture414
TheReturn474
Jupiter -- the
magnificent planet with a diameter of 86,500 miles, having 119 times the
surface and 1,300 times the volume of the earth -- lay beneath them.
They had often seen it
in the terrestrial sky, emitting its strong, steady ray, and had thought of
that far-away planet, about which till recently so little had been known, and a
burning desire had possessed them to go to it and explore its mysteries. Now,
thanks to apergy, the force whose existence the ancients suspected, but of
which they knew so little, all things were possible.
Ayrault manipulated the
silk-covered glass handles, and the Callisto moved on slowly in comparison with
its recent speed, and all remained glued to their telescopes as they peered
through the rushing clouds, now forming and now dissolving before their eyes.
What transports of delight, what ecstatic bliss, was theirs! Men had discovered
and mastered the secret of apergy, and now, "little lower than the
angels," they could soar through space, leaving even planets and comets behind.
"Is it not
strange," said Dr. Cortlandt, "that though it has been known for over
a century that bodies charged with unlike electricities attract one another,
and those charged with like repel, no one thought of utilizing the counterpart
of gravitation? In the nineteenth century, savants and Indian jugglers
performed experiments with their disciples and masses of inert matter, by
causing them to remain without visible support at some distance from the
ground; and while many of these, of course, were quacks, some were on the right
track, though they did not push their research."
President Bearwarden
and Ayrault assented. They were steering for an apparently hard part of the
planet’s surface, about a degree and a half north of its equator.
Since Jupiter’s axis is
almost at right angles to the plane of its orbit," said the doctor,
"being inclined only about one degree and a half, instead of twenty-three
and a half, as was the earth’s till nearly so recently, it will be possible for
us to have any climate we wish, from constantly warm at the equator to
constantly cool or cold as we approach the poles, without being troubled by
extremes of winter and summer."
Until the Callisto
entered the planet’s atmosphere, its five moons appeared like silver shields
against the black sky, but now things were looking more terrestrial, and they
began to feel at home. Bearwarden put down his note-book, and Ayrault returned
a photograph to his pocket, while all three gazed at their new abode. Beneath
them was a vast continent variegated by chains of lakes and rivers stretching
away in all directions except toward the equator, where lay a placid ocean as
far as their telescopes could pierce. To the eastward were towering and massive
mountains, and along the southern border of the continent smoking volcanoes,
while toward the west they saw forests, gently rolling plains, and table-lands
that would have satisfied a poet or set an agriculturist’s heart at rest.
"How I should like to mine those hills for copper, or drain the swamps to
the south!" exclaimed Col. Bearwarden. "The Lake Superior mines and
the reclamation of the Florida Everglades would be nothing to this."
"Any inhabitants
we may find here have so much land at their disposal that they will not need to
drain swamps on account of pressure of population for some time," put in
the doctor.
"I hope we may
find some four-legged inhabitants," said Ayrault, thinking of their
explosive magazine rifles. "If Jupiter is passing through its Jurassic or
Mesozoic period, there must be any amount of some kind of game." Just then
a quiver shook the Callisto, and glancing to the right they noticed one of the
volcanoes in violent eruption. Smoke filled the air in clouds, hot stones and
then floods of lava poured from the crater, while even the walls of the
hermetically sealed Callisto could not arrest the thunderous crashes that made
the interior of the car resound.
"Had we not better
move on?" said Bearwarden, and accordingly they went toward the woods they
had first seen. Finding a firm strip of land between the forest and an arm of
the sea, they gently grounded the Callisto, and not being altogether sure how
the atmosphere of their new abode would suit terrestrial lungs, or what its
pressure to the square inch might be, they cautiously opened a port-hole a
crack, retaining their hold upon it with its screw. Instantly there was a rush
and a whistling sound as of escaping steam, while in a few moments their
barometer stood at thirty-six inches, whereupon they closed the opening.
"I fancy,"
said Dr. Cortlandt, "we had better wait now till we become accustomed to
this pressure. I do not believe it will go much higher, for the window made but
little resistance when we shut it."
Finding they were not
inconvenienced by a pressure but little greater than that of a deep coal-mine,
they again opened the port, whereupon their barometer showed a further rise to
forty-two, and then remained stationary. Finding also that the chemical
composition of the air suited them, and that they had no difficulty in
breathing, the pressure being the same as that sustained by a diver in fourteen
feet of water, they opened a door and emerged. They knew fairly well what to
expect, and were not disturbed by their new conditions. Though they had
apparently gained a good deal in weight as a result of their ethereal journey,
this did not incommode them; for though Jupiter’s volume is thirteen hundred
times that of the earth, on account of its lesser specific gravity, it has but
three hundred times the mass -- i. e., it would weigh but three hundred times
as much. Further, although a cubic foot of water or anything else weighs 2.5 as
much as on earth, objects near the equator, on account of Jupiter’s rapid
rotation, weigh one fifth less than they do at the poles, by reason of the
centrifugal force. Influenced by this fact, and also because they were
483,000,000 miles from the sun, instead of 92,000,000 as on earth, they had
steered for the northern limit of Jupiter’s tropics. And, in addition to this,
they could easily apply the apergetic power in any degree to themselves when
beyond the limits of the Callisto, and so be attracted to any extent, from
twice the pull they receive from gravitation on earth to almost nothing.
Bearwarden and Ayrault
shouldered their rifles, while Dr. Cortlandt took a repeating shot-gun with No.
4 shot, and, having also some hunting-knives and a sextant, all three set out
in a northwesterly direction. The ground was rather soft, and a warm vapor
seemed to rise from it. To the east the sky was veiled by dense clouds of smoke
from the towering volcanoes, while on their left the forest seemed to extend
without limit. Clumps of huge ferns were scattered about, and the ground was
covered with curious tracks.
"Jupiter is
evidently passing through a Carboniferous or Devonian period such as existed on
earth, though, if consistent with its size, it should be on a vastly larger
scale," said the doctor. "I never believed in the theory," he
continued, "that the larger the planet the smaller should be its
inhabitants, and always considered it a makeshift, put forward in the absence
of definite knowledge, the idea being apparently that the weight of very large
creatures would be too great for their strength. Of the fact that mastodons and
creatures far larger than any now living on earth existed there, we have
absolute proof, though gravitation must have been practically the same then as
now."
Just here they came
upon a number of huge bones, evidently the remains of some saurian, and many
times the size of a grown crocodile. On passing a growth of most luxuriant
vegetation, they saw a half-dozen sacklike objects, and drawing nearer noticed
that the tops began to swell, and at the same time became lighter in colour.
Just as the doctor was about to investigate one of them with his duck-shot, the
enormously inflated tops of the creatures collapsed with a loud report, and the
entire group soared away. When about to alight, forty yards off, they distended
membranous folds in the manner of wings, which checked their descent, and on
touching the ground remained where they were without rebound.
"We expected to
find all kinds of reptiles and birds," exclaimed the doctor. "But I
do not know how we should class those creatures. They seem to have pneumatic
feet and legs, for their motion was certainly not produced like that of
frogs."
When the party came up
with them the heads again began to swell.
"I will perforate
the air-chamber of one," said Col. Bearwarden, withdrawing the explosive
cartridge from the barrel of his rifle and substituting one with a solid ball.
"This will doubtless disable one so that we can examine it."
Just as they were about
to rise, he shot the largest through the neck. All but the wounded one, soared
off, while Bearwarden, Ayrault, and Cortlandt approached to examine it more
closely.
"You see,"
said Cortlandt, "this vertebrate -- for that is as definitely as we can
yet describe it -- forces a great pressure of air into its head and neck,
which, by the action of valves, it must allow to rush into its very rudimentary
lower extremities, distending them with such violence that the body is shot
upward and forward. You may have noticed the tightly inflated portion
underneath as they left the ground."
While speaking he had
moved rather near, when suddenly a partially concealed mouth opened, showing
the unmistakable tongue and fangs of a serpent. It emitted a hissing sound, and
the small eyes gleamed maliciously.
"Do you believe it
is a poisonous species?" asked Ayrault.
"I suspect it
is," replied the doctor; "for, though it is doubtless able to leap
with great accuracy upon its prey, we saw it took some time to recharge the
upper air- chamber, so that, were it not armed with poison glands, it would
fall an easy victim to its more powerful and swifter contemporaries, and would
soon become extinct."
"As it will be
unable to spring for some time," said Bearwarden, " we might as well
save it the disappointment of trying," and, snapping the used shell from
his rifle, he fired an explosive ball into the reptile, whereupon about half
the body disappeared, while a sickening odour arose. Although the sun was still
far above the horizon, the rapidity with which it was descending showed that
the short night of less than five hours would soon be upon them; and though
short it might be very dark, for they were in the tropics, and the sun, going
down perpendicularly, must also pass completely around the globe, instead of,
as in northern latitudes on earth in summer, approaching the horizon obliquely,
and not going far below it. A slight and diffused sound here seemed to rise
from the ground all about them, for which they could not account. Presently it
became louder, and as the sun touched the horizon, it poured forth in prolonged
strains. The large trumpet-shaped lilies, reeds, and heliotropes seemed fairly
to throb as they raised their anthem to the sky and the setting sun, while the
air grew dark with clouds of birds that gradually alighted on the ground,
until, as the chorus grew fainter and gradually ceased, they flew back to their
nests. The three companions had stood astonished while this act was played. The
doctor then spoke:
"This is the most
marvellous development of Nature I have seen, for its wonderful divergence
from, and yet analogy to, what takes place on earth. You know our flowers offer
honey, as it were, as bait to insects, that in eating or collecting it they may
catch the pollen on their legs and so carry it to other flowers, perhaps of the
opposite sex. Here flowers evidently appeal to the sense of hearing instead of
taste, and make use of birds, of which there are enormous numbers, instead of
winged insects, of which I have seen none, one being perhaps the natural result
of the other. The flowers have become singers by long practice, or else, those
that were most musical having had the best chance to reproduce, we have a neat
illustration of the ‘survival of the fittest.’ The sound is doubtless produced
by a shrinking of the fibres as the sun withdraws its heat, in which case we
may expect another song at sunrise, when the same result will be effected by
their expanding."
Searching for a
camping-place in which to pass the coming hours, they saw lights flitting about
like will- o’-the-wisps, but brighter and intermittent.
"They seem to be
as bright as sixteen-candle-power lamps, but the light is yellower, and appears
to emanate from a comparatively large surface, certainly nine or ten inches
square," said the doctor.
They soon gave up the
chase, however, for the lights were continually moving and frequently went out.
While groping in the growing darkness, they came upon a brown object about the
size of a small dog and close to the ground. It flew off with a humming insect
sound, and as it did so it showed the brilliant phosphorescent glow they had
observed.
"That is a
good-sized fire-fly," said Bearwarden. "Evidently the insects here
are on the same scale as everything else. They are like the fire-flies in Cuba,
which the Cubans are said to put into a glass box and get light enough from to
read by. Here they would need only one, if it could be induced to give its
light continuously."
Having found an open
space on high ground, they sat down, and Bearwarden struck his repeater, which,
for convenience, had been arranged for Jupiter time, dividing the day into ten
hours, beginning at noon, midnight being therefore five o’clock.
"Twenty minutes
past four," said he, " which would correspond to about a quarter to
eleven on earth. As the sun rises at half-past seven, it will be dark about
three hours, for the time between dawn and daylight will, of course, be as
short as that we have just experienced between sunset and night."
"If we stay here
long," said the doctor, "I suppose we shall become accustomed, like
sailors, to taking our four, or in this case five, hours on duty, and five
hours off."
"Or," added
Ayrault, "we can sleep ten consecutive hours and take the next ten for
exploring and hunting, having the sun for one half the time and the moons for
the other."
Bearwarden and
Cortlandt now rolled themselves in their blankets and were soon asleep, while
Ayrault, whose turn it was to watch till the moons rose -- for they had not yet
enough confidence in their new domain to sleep in darkness simultaneously --
leaned his back against a rock and lighted his pipe. In the distance be saw the
torrents of fiery lava from the volcanoes reflected in the sky, and faintly
heard their thunderous crashes, while the fire-flies twinkled unconcernedly in
the hollow, and the night winds swayed the fernlike branches. Then he gazed at
the earth, which, but little above the horizon, shone with a faint but steady
ray, and his mind’s eye ran beyond his natural vision while he pictured to
himself the girl of his heart, wishing that by some communion of spirits he
might convey his thoughts to her, and receive hers. It was now the first week
of January on earth. He could almost see her house and the snow-clad trees in
the park, and knew that at that hour she was dressing for dinner, and hoped and
believed that he was in her heart. While he thus mused, one moon after another
rose, each at a different phase, till three were at once in the sky. Adjusting
the electric protection- wires that were to paralyze any creature that
attempted to come within the circle, and would arouse them by ringing a bell,
he knocked the ashes from his pipe, rolled himself in a blanket, and was soon
asleep beside his friends.
"Come in!"
sounded a voice, as Dr. Cortlandt and Dick Ayrault tapped at the door of the
President of the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company’s private office on the
morning of the 21st of June, A. D. 2000. Col. Bearwarden sat at his capacious
desk, the shadows passing over his face as April clouds flit across the sun. He
was a handsome man, and young for the important post he filled -- being
scarcely forty -- a graduate of West Point, with great executive ability, and a
wonderful engineer. "Sit down, chappies," said he; "we have
still a half hour before I begin to read the report I am to make to the
stockholders and representatives of all the governments, which is now ready. I
know you smoke," passing a box of Havanas to the professor.
Prof. Cortlandt, LL.
D., United States Government expert, appointed to examine the company’s calculations,
was about fifty, with a high forehead, greyish hair, and quick, grey eyes, a
geologist and astronomer, and altogether as able a man, in his own way, as Col.
Bearwarden in his. Richard Ayrault, a large stockholder and one of the honorary
vice-presidents in the company, was about thirty, a university man, by nature a
scientist, and engaged to one of the prettiest society girls, who was then a
student at Vassar, in the beautiful town of Poughkeepsie.
"Knowing the way
you carry things in your mind, and the difficulty of rattling you," said
Cortlandt, "we have dropped in on our way to hear the speech that I would
not miss for a fortune. Let us know if we bother you."
"Impossible, dear
boy," replied the president genially. "Since I survived your official
investigations, I think I deserve some of your attention informally."
"Here are my final
examinations," said Cortlandt, handing Bearwarden a roll of papers.
"I have been over all your figures, and testify to their accuracy in the
appendix I have added."
So they sat and chatted
about the enterprise that interested Cortlandt and Ayrault almost as much as
Bearwarden himself. As the clock struck eleven, the president of the company
put on his hat, and, saying au revoir to his friends, crossed the street to the
Opera House, in which he was to read a report that would be copied in all the
great journals and heard over thousands of miles of wire in every part of the
globe. When he arrived, the vast building was already filled with a
distinguished company, representing the greatest intelligence, wealth, and
powers of the world. Bearwarden went in by the stage entrance, exchanging
greetings as he did so with officers of the company and directors who had come
to hear him. Cortlandt and Ayrault entered by the regular door, the former
going to the Government representatives’ box, the latter to join his fiancee,
Sylvia Preston, who was there with her mother. Bearwarden had a roll of
manuscript at hand, but so well did he know his speech that he scarcely glanced
at it. After being introduced by the chairman of the meeting, and seeing that
his audience was all attention, he began, holding himself erect, his clear,
powerful voice making every part of the building ring.
"To the Bondholders
and Stockholders of the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company and
Representatives of Earthly Governments.
"GENTLEMEN: You
know that the objects of this company are, to straighten the axis of the earth,
to combine the extreme heat of summer with the intense cold of winter and
produce a uniform temperature for each degree of latitude the year round. At
present the earth’s axis -- that is, the line passing through its centre and
the two poles -- is inclined to the ecliptic about twenty-three and a half
degrees. Our summer is produced by the northern hemisphere’s leaning at that
angle towards the sun, and our winter by its turning that much from it. In one
case the sun’s rays are caused to shine more perpendicularly, and in the other
more obliquely. This wabbling, like that of a top, is the sole cause of the
seasons; since, owing to the eccentricity of our orbit, the earth is actually
fifteen hundred thousand miles nearer the sun during our winter, in the
northern hemisphere, than in summer. That there is no limit to a planet’s
inclination, and that inclination is not essential, we have astronomical proof.
Venus’s axis is inclined to the plane of her orbit seventy-five degrees, so
that the arctic circle comes within fifteen degrees of the equator, and the tropics
also extend to latitude seventy-five degrees, or within fifteen degrees of the
poles, producing great extremes of heat and cold.
"Venus is made
still more difficult of habitation by the fact that she rotates on her axis in
the same time that she revolves about the sun, in the same way that the moon
does about the earth, so that one side must be perpetually frozen while the
other is parched.
"In Uranus we see
the axis tilted still further, so that the arctic circle descends to the
equator. The most varied climate must therefore prevail during its year, whose
length exceeds eighty-one of ours.
The axis of Mars is
inclined about twenty-eight and two thirds degrees to the plane of its orbit;
consequently its seasons must be very similar to ours, the extremes of heat and
cold being somewhat greater.
"In Jupiter we
have an illustration of a planet whose axis is almost at right angles to the
plane of its orbit, being inclined but about a degree and a half. The
hypothetical inhabitants of this majestic planet must therefore have perpetual
summer at the equator, eternal winter at the poles, and in the temperate
regions everlasting spring. On account of the straightness of the axis,
however, even the polar inhabitants -- if there are any -- are not oppressed by
a six months’ night, for all except those at the very pole have a sunrise and a
sunset every ten hours -- the exact day being nine hours, fifty five minutes,
and twenty-eight seconds. The warmth of the tropics is also tempered by the
high winds that must result from the rapid whirl on its axis, every object at
the equator being carried around by this at the rate of 27,600 miles an hour,
or over three thousand miles farther than the earth’s equator moves in twenty-
four hours.
The inclination of the
axis of our own planet has also frequently considerably exceeded that of Mars,
and again has been but little greater than Jupiter’s at least, this is by all
odds the most reasonable explanation of the numerous Glacial periods through
which our globe has passed, and of the recurring mild spells, probably lasting
thousands of years, in which elephants, mastodons, and other semi-tropical
vertebrates roamed in Siberia, some of which died so recently that their flesh,
preserved by the cold, has been devoured by the dogs of modern explorers.
"It is not to be
supposed that the inclining of the axes of Jupiter, Venus, the Earth, and the
other planets, is now fixed; in some cases it is known to be changing. As long
ago as 1890, Major-Gen. A. W. Drayson, of the British Army, showed, in a work
entitled Untrodden Ground in Astronomy and Geology, that, as a result of the
second rotation of the earth, the inclination of its axis was changing, it
having been 23° 28’ 23" on January 1, 1750, 23° 27’ 55.3" on January
1, 1800, and 23° 27’ 30.9" on January 1, 1850; and by calculation one
hundred and ten years ago showed that in 1900 (one hundred years ago) it would
be 23° 27’ 08.8". This natural straightening is, of course, going on, and
we are merely about to anticipate it. When this improvement was mooted, all
agreed that the extremes of heat and cold could well be spared. ‘Balance those
of summer against those of winter by partially straightening the axis; reduce
the inclination from twenty-three degrees, thirty minutes, to about fifteen
degrees, but let us stop there,’ many said. Before we had gone far, however, we
found it would be best to make the work complete. This will reclaim and make
productive the vast areas of Siberia and the northern part of this continent,
and will do much for the antarctic regions; but there will still be change in
temperature; a wind blowing towards the equator will always be colder than one
blowing from it, while the slight eccentricity of the orbit will supply enough
change to awaken recollections of seasons in our eternal spring.
"The way to accomplish
this is to increase the weight of the pole leaving the sun, by increasing the
amount of material there for the sun to attract, and to lighten the pole
approaching or turning towards the sun, by removing some heavy substance from
it, and putting it preferably at the opposite pole. This shifting of ballast is
most easily accomplished, as you will readily perceive, by confining and
removing water, which is easily moved and has a considerable weight. How we
purpose to apply these aqueous brakes to check the wabbling of the earth, by
means of the attraction of the sun, you will now see.
"From Commander
Fillmore, of the Arctic Shade and the Committee on Bulkheads and Dams, I have
just received the following by cable telephone: ‘The Arctic Ocean is now in
condition to be pumped out in summer and to have its average depth increased
one hundred feet by the dams in winter. We have already fifty million square
yards of windmill turbine surface in position and ready to move. The cables
bringing us currents from the dynamos at Niagara Falls are connected with our
motors, and those from the tidal dynamos at the Bay of Fundy will be in contact
when this reaches you, at which moment the pumps will begin. In several of the
landlocked gulfs and bays our system of confining is so complete, that the
surface of the water can be raised two hundred feet above sea- level. The polar
bears will soon have to use artificial ice. Perhaps the cheers now ringing
without may reach you over the telephone.’"
The audience became greatly
interested, and when the end of the telephone was applied to a microphone the
room fairly rang with exultant cheers, and those looking through a kintograph
(visual telegraph) terminating in a camera obscura on the shores of Baffin Bay
were able to see engineers and workmen waving and throwing up their caps and
falling into one another’s arms in ecstasies of delight. When the excitement
subsided, the president continued:
"Chairman Wetmore,
of the Committee on Excavations and Embankments in Wilkesland and the Antarctic
Continent, reports: ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand square miles are now
hollowed out and enclosed sufficiently to hold water to an average depth of
four hundred feet. Every summer, when the basin is allowed to drain, we can, if
necessary, extend our reservoir, and shall have the best season of the year for
doing work until the earth has permanent spring. Though we have comparatively
little water or tidal power, the earth’s crust is so thin at this latitude, on
account of the flattening, that by sinking our tubular boilers and pipes to a
depth of a few thousand feet we have secured so terrific a volume of
superheated steam that, in connection with our wind turbines, we shall have no
difficulty in raising half a cubic mile of water a minute to our enclosure,
which is but little above sea-level, and into which, till the pressure
increases, we can fan or blow the water, so that it can be full three weeks
after our longest day, or, since the present unimproved arrangement gives the
indigenes but one day and night a year, I will add the 21st day of December.
"‘We shall be able
to find use for much of the potential energy of the water in the reservoir when
we allow it to escape in June, in melting some of the accumulated polar
ice-cap, thereby decreasing still further the weight of this pole, in lighting
and warming ourselves until we get the sun’s light and heat, in extending the
excavations, and in charging the storage batteries of the ships at this end of
the line. Everything will be ready when you signal "Raise water."’"
"Let me add
parenthetically," said Bearwarden, "that this means of obtaining
power by steam boilers sunk to a great depth is much to be commended; for,
though the amount of heat we can withdraw is too small to have much effect, the
farther towards the centre our globe can be cooled the deeper will the water of
the oceans be able to penetrate -- since it is its conversion into steam that
prevents the water from working its way in farther -- and the more dry land we
shall have."
"You see,"
the president continued, "the storage capacity at the south pole is not
quite as great as at the north, because it is more difficult to excavate a
basin than to close the exits of one that already exists, which is what we have
done in the arctic. The work is also not so nearly complete, since it will not
be necessary to use the southern reservoir for storing weight for six months,
or until the south pole, which is now at its maximum declination from the sun,
is turned towards it and begins to move away; then, by increasing the amount of
matter there, and at the same time lightening the north pole, and reversing the
process every six months, we decrease the speed at which the departing pole
leaves the sun and at which the approaching pole advances. The north pole, we
see, will be a somewhat more powerful lever than the south for working the
globe to a straight position, but we may be sure that the latter, in connection
with the former, will be able to hold up its end."
[The building here
fairly shook with applause, so that, had the arctic workers used the
microphone, they might have heard in the enthusiastic uproar a good counterpart
of their own period.]
"I only
regret," the president continued, "that when we began this work the
most marvellous force yet discovered -- apergy -- was not sufficiently
understood to be utilized, for it would have eased our labours to the point of
almost eliminating them. But we have this consolation: it was in connection
with our work that its applicability was discovered, so that had we and all
others postponed our great undertaking on the pretext of waiting for a new
force, apergy might have continued to lie dormant for centuries. With this
force, obtained by simply blending negative and positive electricity with
electricity of the third element or state, and charging a body sufficiently
with this fluid, gravitation is millifled or partly reversed, and the earth
repels the body with the same or greater power than that with which it still
attracts or attracted it, so that it may be suspended or caused to move away
into space. Sic itur ad astra, we may say. With this force and everlasting
spring before us, what may we not achieve? We may some day be able to visit the
planets, though many may say that, since the axes of most of those we have
considered are more inclined than ours, they would rather stay here. ‘Blessed
are they that shall inherit the earth,’" he went on, turning a four-foot
globe with its axis set vertically and at right angles to a yellow globe labelled
"Sun"; and again waxing eloquent, he added: "We are the
instruments destined to bring about the accomplishment of that prophecy, for
never in the history of the world has man reared so splendid a monument to his
own genius as he will in straightening the axis of the planet.
"No one need
henceforth be troubled by sudden change, and every man can have perpetually the
climate he desires. Northern Europe will again luxuriate in a climate that
favoured the elephants that roamed in northern Asia and Switzerland. To produce
these animals and the food they need, it is not necessary to have great heat,
but merely to prevent great cold, half the summer’s sun being absorbed in
melting the winter’s accumulation of ice.
"When the axis has
reached a point at which it inclines but about twelve degrees, it will become
necessary to fill the antarctic reservoir in June and the Arctic Ocean in
December, in order to check the straightening, since otherwise it might get
beyond the perpendicular and swing the other way. When this motion is
completely arrested, I suggest that we blow up the Aleutian Isles and enlarge
Bering Strait, so as to allow what corresponds to the Atlantic Gulf Stream in
the Pacific to enter the Arctic Archipelago, which I have calculated will raise
the average temperature of that entire region about thirty degrees, thereby
still further increasing the amount of available land.
"Ocean currents,
being the result of the prevailing winds, which will be more regular than at
present, can be counted upon to continue practically as they are. It may not be
plain to you why the trade winds do not blow towards the equator due south and
north, since the equator has much the same effect on air that a stove has in
the centre of a room, causing an ascending current towards the ceiling, which
moves off in straight lines in all directions on reaching it, its place being
taken by cold currents moving in opposite directions along the floor. Picture
to yourselves the ascending currents at the equator moving off to the poles
from which they came. As they move north they are continually coming to parts
of the globe having smaller circles of latitude than those they have left, and
therefore not moved forward as rapidly by the earth’s daily rotation as the
latitudes nearer the equator. The winds consequently run ahead of the surface,
and so move east of north -- the earth turning towards the east -- while the
heavier colder surface currents, rushing towards the equator to take the place
of the ascending column, coming from regions where the surface whirls
comparatively slowly to those where it is rotating faster, are continually left
behind, and so move southwest; while south of the equator a corresponding
motion results. Though this is not the most exact explanation, it may serve to
make the action clear. I will add, that if any one prefers a colder or a warmer
climate than that of the place in which he lives, he need only go north or
south for an hour; or, if he prefers his own latitude, he can rise a few
thousand feet in the air, or descend to one of the worked-out coal-mines which
are now used as sanitariums, and secure his object by a slight change of
altitude. Let us speed the departure of racking changes and extremes of
climate, and prepare to welcome what we believe prevails in paradise -- namely,
everlasting spring."
Appended to the address
was the report of the Government Examining Committee, which ran: "We have
critically examined the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company’s figures and
calculations, also its statements involving natural philosophy, physics, and
astronomy, all of which we find correct, and hereby approve. [Signed] "For
the Committee: "HENRY CHELMSFORD CORTLANDT, "Chairman."
The Board of Directors
having ratified the acts of its officers, and passed congratulatory
resolutions, the meeting adjourned sine die.
Prof. Cortlandt,
preparing a history of the times at the beginning of the great terrestrial and
astronomical change, wrote as follows: "This period -- A.D. 2000 -- is by
far the most wonderful the world has as yet seen. The advance in scientific
knowledge and attainment within the memory, of the present generation has been
so stupendous that it completely overshadows all that has preceded. All times
in history and all periods of the world have been remarkable for some
distinctive or characteristic trait. The feature of the period of Louis XIV was
the splendour of the court and the centralization of power in Paris. The year
1789 marked the decline of the power of courts and the evolution of government
by the people. So, by the spread of republican ideas and the great advance in
science, education has become universal, for women as well as for men, and this
is more than ever a mechanical age.
"With increased
knowledge we are constantly coming to realize how little we really know, and
are also continually finding manifestations of forces that at first seem like
exceptions to established laws. This is, of course, brought about by the modifying
influence of some other natural law, though many of these we have not yet
discovered.
"Electricity in
its varied forms does all work, having superseded animal and manual labour in
everything, and man has only to direct. The greatest ingenuity next to finding
new uses for this almost omnipotent fluid has been displayed in inducing the
forces of Nature, and even the sun, to produce it. Before describing the
features of this perfection of civilization, let us review the steps by which
society and the political world reached their present state.
"At the close of
the Franco -- Prussian War, in 1871, Continental Europe entered upon the
condition of an armed camp, which lasted for nearly half a century. The primary
cause of this was the mutual dislike and jealousy of France and Germany, each
of which strove to have a larger and better equipped national defence than the
other. There were also many other causes, as the ambition of the Russian Czar,
supported by his country’s vast though imperfectly developed resources and
practically unlimited supply of men, one phase of which was the constant
ferment in the Balkan Peninsula, and another Russia’s schemes for extension in
Asia; another was the general desire for colonies in Africa, in which one
Continental power pretty effectually blocked another, and the latent distrust
inside the Triple Alliance. England, meanwhile, preserved a wise and profitable
neutrality.
"These tremendous
sacrifices for armaments, both on land and water, had far-reaching results,
and, as we see it now, were clouds with silver linings. The demand for hardened
steel projectiles, nickel-steel plates, and light and almost unbreakable
machinery, was a great incentive to improvement in metallurgy while the
necessity for compact and safely carried ammunition greatly stimulated chemical
research, and led to the discovery of explosives whose powers no obstacle can
resist, and incidentally to other more useful things.
"Further
mechanical and scientific progress, however, such as flying machines provided
with these high explosives, and asphyxiating bombs containing compressed gas
that could be fired from guns or dropped from the air, intervened. The former
would have laid every city in the dust, and the latter might have almost
exterminated the race. These discoveries providentially prevented hostilities,
so that the ‘Great War,’ so long expected, never came, and the rival nations
had their pains for nothing, or, rather, for others than themselves.
"Let us now
examine the political and ethnological results. Hundreds of thousands, of the
flower of Continental Europe were killed by overwork and short rations, and
millions of desirable and often -- unfortunately for us -- undesirable people
were driven to emigration, nearly all of whom came to English-speaking
territory, greatly increasing our productiveness and power. As, we have seen,
the jealousy of the Continental powers for one another effectually prevented
their extending their influence or protectorates to other continents, which
jealousy was considerably aided by the small but destructive wars that did take
place. High taxes also made it more difficult for the moneyed men to invest in
colonizing or development companies, which are so often the forerunners of
absorption; while the United States, with her coal -- of which the
Mediterranean states have scarcely any -- other resources, and low taxes,
which, though necessary, can be nothing but an evil, has been able to expand
naturally as no other nation ever has before.
"This has given
the English-speakers, especially the United States, a free hand, rendering
enforcement of the Monroe doctrine easy, and started English a long way towards
becoming the universal language, while all formerly unoccupied land is now
owned by those speaking it.
"At the close of
our civil war, in 1865, we had but 3,000,000 square miles, and a population of
34,000,000. The country staggered beneath a colossal debt of over
$4,000,000,000, had an expensive but essentially perishable navy, and there was
an ominous feeling between the sections. The purchase of Alaska in 1867, by
which we added over half a million square miles to our territory, marked the
resumption of the forward march of the United States. Twenty-five years later,
at the presidential campaign of 1892, the debt had been reduced to
$900,000,000, deducting the sinking fund, and the charge for pensions had about
reached its maximum and soon began to decrease, though no one objected to any
amount of reward for bona fide soldiers who had helped to save the country. The
country’s wealth had also enormously increased, while the population had grown
to 65,000,000. Our ancestors had, completed or in building, a navy of which no
nation need be ashamed; and, though occasionally marred by hard times, there
was general prosperity.
"Gradually the
different States of Canada -- or provinces, as they were then called -- came to
realize that their future would be far grander and more glorious in union with
the United States than separated from it; and also that their sympathy was far
stronger for their nearest neighbours than for any one else. One by one these
Northern States made known their desire for consolidation with the Union,
retaining complete control of their local affairs, as have the older States.
They were gladly welcomed by our Government and people, and possible rivals
became the best of friends. Preceding and also following this, the States of
Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America, tiring of the incessant
revolutions and difficulties among themselves, which had pretty constantly
looked upon us as a big brother on account of our maintenance of the Monroe
doctrine, began to agitate for annexation, knowing they would retain control of
their local affairs. In this they were vigorously supported by the American
residents and property-holders, who knew that their possessions would double in
value the day the United States Constitution was signed.
"Thus, in the
first place, by the encouragement of our people, and latterly, apparently, by
its own volition, the Union has increased enormously in power, till it now
embraces 10,000,000 square miles, and has a free and enlightened population of
300,000,000. Though the Union established by Washington and his contemporaries
has attained such tremendous proportions, its growth is by no means finished;
and as a result of modern improvements, it is less of a journey now to go from
Alaska to the Orinoco than it was for the Father of his Country to travel from
New York or Philadelphia to the site of the city named in his honour.
"Adequate and
really rapid transportation facilities have done much to bind the different
parts of the country together, and to rub off the edges of local prejudice.
Though we always favour peace, no nation would think of opposing the expressed
wishes of the United States, and our moral power for good is tremendous. The
name Japhet means enlargement, and the prophecy seems about to be literally
fulfilled by these his descendants. The bankrupt suffering of so many European
Continental powers had also other results. It enabled the socialists -- who
have never been able to see beyond themselves -- to force their governments
into selling their colonies in the Eastern hemisphere to England, and their
islands in the Western to us, in order to realize upon them. With the addition
of Canada to the United States and its loss to the British Empire, the land
possessions of the two powers became about equal, our Union being a trifle the
larger. All danger of war being removed by the Canadian change, a healthful and
friendly competition took its place, the nations competing in their growth on different
hemispheres. England easily added large areas in Asia and Africa, while the
United States grew as we have seen. The race is still, in a sense, neck-
and-neck, and the English- speakers together possess nearly half the globe. The
world’s recent rate of progress would have been impossible without this
approximation to a universal language. The causes that checkmated the
Continental powers have ceased to exist. Many millions of men whose principal
thought had been to destroy other members of the race became producers, but it
was then too late, for the heavy armaments had done their work.
"Let us now glance
at the times as they are, and see how the business of life is transacted.
Manhattan Island has something over 2,500,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by
a belt of population, several miles wide, of 12,000,000 more, of which it is
the focus, so that the entire city contains more than 14,500,000 souls. The
several hundred square miles of land and water forming greater New York are
perfectly united by numerous bridges, tunnels, and electric ferries, while the
city’s great natural advantages have been enhanced and beautified by every
ingenious device. No main avenue in the newer sections is less than two hundred
feet wide, containing shade and fruit trees, a bridle-path, broad sidewalks,
and open spaces for carriages and bicycles. Several fine diagonal streets and
breathing-squares have also been provided in the older sections, and the
existing parks have been supplemented by intermediate ones, all being connected
by parkways to form continuous chains.
"The hollow masts
of our ships -- to glance at another phase en passant -- carry windmills
instead of sails, through which the wind performs the work, of storing a great
part of the energy required to run them at sea, while they are discharging or
loading cargo in port; and it can, of course, work to better advantage while
they are stationary than when they are running before it. These turbines are
made entirely of light metal, and fold when not in use, so that only the frames
are visible. Sometimes these also fold and are housed, or wholly disappear
within the mast. Steam-boilers are also placed at the foci of huge concave
mirrors, often a hundred feet in diameter, the required heat being supplied by
the sun, without smoke, instead of by bulky and dirty coal. This discovery gave
commercial value to Sahara and other tropical deserts, which are now desirable
for mill-sites and for generating power, on account of the directness with
which they receive the sun’s rays and their freedom from clouds. Mile after
mile Africa has been won for the uses of civilization, till great stretches
that were considered impassible are as productive as gardens. Our condensers,
which compress, cool, and rarefy air, enabling travellers to obtain water and
even ice from the atmosphere, are great aids in desert exploration, removing
absolutely the principal distress of the ancient caravan. The erstwhile ‘Dark
Continent’ has a larger white population now than North America had a hundred
years ago, and has this advantage for the future, that it contains 11,600,000
square miles, while North America has less than 9,000,000. Every part of the
globe will soon sustain about as large and prosperous a population as the
amount of energy it receives from the sun and other sources will warrant;
public debts and the efficiency of the governments being the variable elements.
"The rabbits in
Australia, and the far more objectionable poisonous snakes in South America and
India, have been exterminated by the capture of a few dozen of the creatures in
the infested districts, their inoculation with the virus similar to the murus
tiphi, tuberculosis or any other contagious-germ complaint to which the species
treated was particularly susceptible, and the release of these individuals when
the disease was seen to be taking hold. The rabbits and serpents released at
once returned to their old haunts, carrying the plague far and wide. The
unfortunate rabbits were greatly commiserated even by the medicos that wielded
the death-dealing syringe; but, fortunately for themselves, they died easily.
The reptiles, perhaps on account of the wider distribution of the nerve
centres, had more lingering but not painful deaths, often, while in articulo
mortis, leaving the holes with which they seemed to connect their discomfort,
and making a final struggle along the ground, only to die more quickly as a
result of their exertions. We have applied this also to the potato-bug, locust,
and other insect pests, no victim being too small for the ubiquitous, subtle
germ, which, properly cultivated and utilized, has become one of man’s best
friends.
"We have microbe
tests that show us as unmistakably whether the germs of any particular disease
-- like malaria, typhoid, or scarlet fever -- are present in the air, as
litmus-paper shows alkalinity of a solution. We also inoculate as a preventive
against these and almost all other germ diseases, with the same success that we
vaccinate for smallpox.
"The medicinal
properties of all articles of food are so well understood also, that most cures
are brought about simply by dieting. This, reminds me of the mistakes
perpetrated on a friend of mine who called in Dr. Grave-Powders, one of the
old-school physicians, to be treated for insomnia and dyspepsia. This old
numskull restricted his diet, gave him huge doses of medicine, and decided most
learnedly that he was daily growing worse. Concluding that he had but a short
time to live, my friend threw away the nauseating medicines, ate whatever he had
a natural desire for, and was soon as well as ever -- the obvious moral of
which is, that we can get whatever treatment we need most beneficially from our
food. Our physicians are most serious and thoughtful men. They never claim to
be infallible, but study scientifically to increase their knowledge and improve
the methods of treatment. As a result of this, fresh air, regular exercise for
both sexes, with better conditions, and the preservation of the lives of
children that formerly died by thousands from preventable causes, the physique,
especially of women, is wonder fully improved, and the average longevity is
already over sixty.
"Our social
structure, to be brief, is based on science, or the conservation of energy, as
the Greek philosophers predicted. It was known to them that a certain amount of
power would produce only a certain amount of work -- that is, the weight of a
clock in descending or a spring in uncoiling returns theoretically the amount
of work expended in raising or coiling it, and in no possible way can it do
more. In practice, on account of friction, etc., we know it does less. This
law, being invariable, of course limits us, as it did Archimedes and
Pythagoras; we have simply utilized sources of power that their clumsy workmen
allowed to escape. Of the four principal sources -- food, fuel, wind, and tide
-- including harnessed waterfalls, the last two do by far the most work. Much
of the electrical energy in every thunderstorm is also captured and condensed
in our capacious storage batteries, as natural hygeia in the form of rain was
and is still caught in our country cisterns. Every exposed place is crowned by
a cluster of huge windmills that lift water to some pond or reservoir placed as
high as possible. Every stiff breeze, therefore, raises millions of tons of
water which operate hydraulic turbines as required. Incidentally these storage
reservoirs, by increasing the surface exposed to evaporation and the consequent
rainfall, have a very beneficial effect on the dry regions in the interior of
the continent, and in some cases have almost superseded irrigation. The
windmill and dynamo thus utilize bleak mountain-tops that, till their
discovery, seemed to be but indifferent successes in Dame Nature’s domain. The
electricity generated by these, in connection with that obtained by waterfalls,
tidal dynamos, thunderstorms, chemical action, and slow-moving
quadruple-expansion steam engines, provides the power required to run our
electric ships and water-spiders, railways, and stationary and portable motors,
for heating the cables laid along the bottom of our canals to prevent their
freezing in winter, and for almost every conceivable purpose. Sometimes a man
has a windmill on his roof for light and heat; then, the harder the wintry
blasts may blow the brighter and warmer becomes the house, the current passing
through a storage battery to make it more steady. The operation of our ordinary
electric railways is very simple: the current is taken from an overhead, side,
or underneath wire, directly through the air, without the intervention of a
trolley, and the fast cars, for they are no longer run in trains, make five
miles a minute. The entire weight of each car being used for its own traction,
it can ascend very steep grades, and can attain high speed or stop very
quickly.
"Another form is
the magnetic railway, on which the cars are wedge-shaped at both ends, and
moved by huge magnets weighing four thousand tons each, placed fifty miles
apart. On passing a magnet, the nature of the electricity charging a car is
automatically changed from positive to negative, or vice versa, to that of the
magnet just passed, so that it repels while the next attracts. The successive
magnets are charged oppositely, the sections being divided halfway between by
insulators, the nature of the electricity in each section being governed by the
charge in the magnet. To prevent one kind of electricity from uniting with and
neutralizing that in the next section by passing through the car at the moment
of transit, there is a "dead stretch" of fifty yards with rails not
charged at all between the sections. This change in the nature of the
electricity is repeated automatically every fifty miles, and obviates the
necessity of revolving machinery, the rails aiding communication.
Magnetism being
practically as instantaneous as gravitation, the only limitations to speed are
the electrical pressure at the magnets, the resistance of the air, and the
danger of the wheels bursting from centrifugal force. The first can seemingly
be increased without limit; the atmospheric resistance is about to be reduced
by running the cars hermetically sealed through a partial vacuum in a steel and
toughened glass tube; while the third has been removed indefinitely by the use
of galvanized aluminum, which bears about the same relation to ordinary
aluminum that steel does to iron, and which has twice the tensile strength and
but one third the weight of steel. In some cases the rails are made turned in,
so that it would be impossible for a car to leave the track without the
road-bed’s being totally demolished; but in most cases this is found to be
unnecessary, for no through line has a curve on its vast stretches with a
radius of less than half a mile. Rails, one hundred and sixty pounds to the
yard, are set in grooved steel ties, which in turn are held by a concrete
road-bed consisting of broken stone and cement, making spreading rails and
loose ballast impossible. A large increase in capital was necessary for these
improvements, the elimination of curves being the most laborious part,
requiring bridges, cuttings, and embankments that dwarf the Pyramids and would
have made the ancient Pharaohs open their eyes; but with the low rate of
interest on bonds, the slight cost of power, and great increase in business,
the venture was a success, and we are now in sight of further advances that
will enable a traveller in a high latitude moving west to keep pace with the
sun, and, should he wish it, to have unending day."
"In marine
transportation we have two methods, one for freight and another for passengers.
The old- fashioned deeply immersed ship has not changed radically from the
steam and sailing vessels of the last century, except that electricity has
superseded all other motive powers. Steamers gradually passed through the five
hundred-, six hundred-, and seven hundred-foot-long class, with other
dimensions in proportion, till their length exceeded one thousand feet. These
were very fast ships, crossing the Atlantic in four and a half days, and were
almost as steady as houses, in even the roughest weather.
"Ships at this
period of their development had also passed through the twin and triple screw
stage to the quadruple, all four together developing one hundred and forty thousand
indicated horse-power, and being driven by steam. This, of course, involved
sacrificing the best part of the ship to her engines, and a very heavy idle
investment while in port. Storage batteries, with plates composed of lead or
iron, constantly increasing in size, had reached a fair state of development by
the close of the nineteenth century.
"During the second
decade of the twentieth century the engineers decided to try the plan of
running half of a transatlantic liner’s screws by electricity generated by the
engines for driving the others while the ship was in port, this having been a
success already on a smaller scale. For a time this plan gave great
satisfaction, since it diminished the amount of coal to be carried and the
consequent change of displacement at sea, and enabled the ship to be worked
with a smaller number of men. The batteries could also, of course, be
distributed along the entire length, and placed where space was least valuable.
"The construction
of such huge vessels called for much governmental river and harbour dredging,
and a ship drawing thirty-five feet can now enter New York at any state of the
tide. For ocean bars, the old system of taking the material out to sea and
discharging it still survives, though a jet of water from force-pumps directed
against the obstruction is also often employed with quick results. For river
work we have discovered a better method. All the mud is run back, sometimes
over a mile from the river bank, where it is used as a fertilizer, by means of
wire railways strung from poles. These wire cables combine in themselves the
functions of trolley wire and steel rail, and carry the suspended cars, which
empty themselves and return around the loop for another load. Often the removed
material entirely fills small, saucer-shaped valleys or low places, in which
case it cannot wash back. This improvement has ended the necessity of building
jetties.
The next improvement in
sea travelling was the ‘marine spider.’ As the name shows, this is built on the
principle of an insect. It is well known that a body can be carried over the
water much faster than through it. With this in mind, builders at first
constructed light framework decks on large water-tight wheels or drums, having
paddles on their circumferences to provide a hold on the water. These they
caused to revolve by means of machinery on the deck, but soon found that the
resistance offered to the barrel wheels themselves was too great. They
therefore made them more like centipeds with large, bell-shaped feet, connected
with a superstructural deck by ankle-jointed pipes, through which, when
necessary, a pressure of air can be forced down upon the enclosed surface of
water. Ordinarily, however, they go at great speed without this, the weight of
the water displaced by the bell feet being as great as that resting upon them.
Thus they swing along like a pacing horse, except that there are four rows of
feet instead of two, each foot being taken out of the water as it is swung
forward, the first and fourth and second and third rows being worked together.
Although, on account of their size, which covers several acres, they can go in
any water, they give the best results on Mediterraneans and lakes that are free
from ocean rollers, and, under favourable conditions, make better speed than
the nineteenth-century express trains, and, of course, going straight as the
crow flies, and without stopping, they reach a destination in considerably
shorter time.
Some passengers and
express packages still cross the Atlantic on ‘spiders,’ but most of these light
cargoes go in a far pleasanter and more rapid way. The deep-displacement
vessels, for heavy freight, make little better speed than was made by the same
class a hundred years ago. But they are also run entirely by electricity,
largely supplied by wind, and by the tide turning their motors, which become
dynamos while at anchor in any stream. They therefore need no bulky boilers,
engines, sails, or coal-bunkers, and consequently can carry unprecedentedly
large cargoes with comparatively small crews. The officers on the bridge and
the men in the crow’s nest -- the way to which is by a ladder inside the mast,
to protect the climber from the weather -- are about all that is needed; while
disablement is made practically impossible, by having four screws, each with
its own set of automatically lubricating motors.
"This change, like
other labour-saving appliances, at first resulted in laying off a good many
men, the least satisfactory being the first to go; but the increase in business
was so great that the intelligent men were soon reemployed as officers at
higher rates of pay and more interesting work than before, while they as
consumers were benefited as much as any one else by the decreased cost of
production and transportation.
"With a view to
facilitating interchange still further, our Government has gradually completed
the double coast-line that Nature gave us in part. This was done by connecting
islands separated from shore by navigable water, and leaving openings for
ingress and exit but a few hundred yards wide. The breakwaters required to do
this were built with cribbing of incorrodible metal, affixed to deeply driven
metallic piles, and filled with stones along coasts where they were found in
abundance or excess. This, while clearing many fields and improving them for
cultivation, provided just the needed material; since irregular stones bind
together firmly, and, while also insoluble, combine considerable bulk with
weight. South of Hatteras, where stones are scarce, the sand dredged from parts
of the channel was filled into the crib, the surface of which has a concave
metallic cover, a trough of still water being often the best barrier against
the passage of waves. This double coast-line has been a great benefit, and
propelled vessels of moderate draught can range in smooth water, carrying very
full loads, from Labrador to the Orinoco. The exits are, of course, protected
by a line of cribbing a few hundred feet to seaward.
"The rocks have
been removed from all channels about New York and other commercial centres,
while the shallow places have been dredged to a uniform depth. This diminishes
the dangers of navigation and considerably decreases the speed with which the
tides rush through. Where the obstructions consisted of reefs surrounded by
deep water, their removal with explosives was easy, the shattered fragments
being allowed to sink to the bottom and remain there beneath the danger line.
"Many other great
works have also been completed. The canals at Nicaragua have been in operation
many years, it having been found best to have several sizes of locks, and to
use the large ones only for the passage of large vessels. The improved Erie and
Champlain Canals also enable ships four hundred feet long to reach New York
from the Great Lakes via the Hudson River.
"For flying, we
have an aeroplane that came in when we devised a suitable motor power. This is
obtained from very light paper-cell batteries that combine some qualities of
the primary and secondary type, since they must first be charged from a dynamo,
after which they can supply full currents for one hundred hours -- enough to
take them around the globe -- while partly consuming the elements in the cells.
The power is applied through turbine screws, half of which are capable of
propelling the flat deck in its inclined position at sufficient speed to
prevent its falling. The moving parts have ball bearings and friction rollers,
lubrication being secured automatically, when required, by a supply of vaseline
that melts if any part becomes hot. All the framing is of thin but very durable
galvanized aluminum, which has superseded steel for every purpose in which
weight is not an advantage, as in the permanent way on railways. The air ships,
whose length varies from fifty to five hundred feet, have rudders for giving a
vertical or a horizontal motion, and several strengthening keels that prevent
leeway when turning. They are entirely on the principle of birds, maintaining
themselves mechanically, and differing thus from the unwieldy balloon. Starting
as if on a circular railway, against the wind, they rise to a considerable
height, and then, shutting off the batteries, coast down the aerial slope at a
rate that sometimes touches-five hundred miles an hour. When near the ground the
helmsman directs the prow upward, and, again turning on full current, rushes up
the slope at a speed that far exceeds the eagle’s, each drop of two miles
serving to take the machine twenty or thirty; though, if the pilot does not
wish to soar, or if there is a fair wind at a given height, he can remain in
that stratum of the atmosphere by moving horizontally. He can also maintain his
elevation when moving very slowly, and though the headway be entirely stopped,
the descent is gradual on account of the aeroplane’s great spread, the
batteries and motors being secured to the under side of the deck.
The motors are so light
that they develop two horse power for every pound of their weight; while, to
keep the frames thin, the necessary power is obtained by terrific speed of the
moving parts, as though a steam engine, to avoid great pressure in its
cylinders, had a long stroke and ran at great piston speed, which, however, is
no disadvantage to the rotary motion of the electric motor, there being no
reciprocating cranks, etc., that must be started and stopped at each
revolution.
"To obviate the
necessity of gearing to reduce the number of revolutions to those possible for
a large screw, this member is made very small, and allowed to revolve three
thousand times a minute, so that the requisite power is obtained with great
simplicity of mechanism, which further decreases friction. The shafts, and even
the wires connecting the batteries with the motors, are made large and hollow.
Though the primary battery pure and simple, as the result of great recent
advances in chemistry, seems to be again coming up, the best aeroplane
batteries are still of the combination- storage type. These have been so
perfected that eight ounces of battery yield one horse power for six hours, so
that two pounds of battery will supply a horse power for twenty-four hours; a
small fifty-horse-power aeroplane being therefore able to fly four days with a
battery weight of but four hundred pounds.
"Limestone and
clarified acid are the principal parts of these batteries. It was known long
ago that there was about as much imprisoned solar energy in limestone as in
coal, but it was only recently that we discovered this way of releasing and
using it.
"Common salt plays
an important part in many of our chemical reactions. By combining it with
limestone, and treating this with acid jelly, we also get good results on
raising to the boiling-point.
"However enjoyable
the manly sport of yachting is on water, how vastly more interesting and
fascinating it is for a man to have a yacht in which he can fly to Europe in
one day, and with which the exploration of tropical Africa or the regions about
the poles is mere child’s play, while giving him so magnificent a bird’s-eye
view! Many seemingly insoluble problems are solved by the advent of these
birds. Having as their halo the enforcement of peace, they have in truth taken
us a long step towards heaven, and to the co-operation and higher civilization
that followed we shall owe much of the success of the great experiment on
Mother Earth now about to be tried.
"Another change
that came in with a rush upon the discovery of a battery with insignificant
weight, compact form, and great capacity, was the substitution of electricity
for animal power for the movement of all vehicles. This, of necessity brought
in good roads, the results obtainable on such being so much greater than on bad
ones that a universal demand for them arose. This was in a sense cumulative,
since the better the streets and roads became, the greater the inducement to
have an electric carriage. The work of opening up the country far and near, by
straightening and improving existing roads, and laying out new ones that
combine the solidity of the Appian Way with the smoothness of modern asphalt,
was largely done by convicts, working under the direction of State and
Government engineers. Every State contained a horde of these unprofitable
boarders, who, as they formerly worked, interfered with honest labour, and when
idle got into trouble. City streets had been paved by the municipality; country
roads attended to by the farmers, usually very unscientifically. Here was a
field in which convict labour would not compete, and an important work could be
done. When once this was made the law, every year showed improvement, while the
convicts had useful and healthful occupation.
"The electric
phaetons, as those for high speed are called, have three and four wheels, and
weigh, including battery and motor, five hundred to four thousand pounds. With
hollow but immensely strong galvanically treated aluminum frames and pneumatic
or cushion tires, they run at thirty-five and forty miles an hour on country
roads, and attain a speed over forty on city streets, and can maintain this
rate without recharging for several days. They can therefore roam over the
roads of the entire hemisphere, from the fertile valley of the Peace and grey
shores of Hudson Bay, to beautiful Lake Nicaragua, the River Plate, and
Patagonia, improving man by bringing him close to Nature, while they combine
the sensations of coasting with the interest of seeing the country well.
"To recharge the
batteries, which can be done in almost every town and village, two copper pins
attached to insulated copper wires are shoved into smooth-bored holes. These
drop out of themselves by fusing a small lead ribbon, owing to the increased
resistance, when the acid in the batteries begins to ‘boil,’ though there is,
of course, but little heat in this, the function of charging being merely to
bring about the condition in which part of the limestone can be consumed, the
batteries themselves, when in constant use, requiring to be renewed about once
a month. A handle at the box seat turns on any part of the attainable current,
for either going ahead or reversing, there being six or eight degrees of speed
for both directions, while the steering is done with a small wheel.
"Light but
powerful batteries and motors have also been fitted on bicycles, which can act
either as auxiliaries for hill-climbing or in case of head wind, or they can
propel the machine altogether.
"Gradually the
width of the streets became insufficient for the traffic, although the
elimination of horses and the consequent increase in speed greatly augmented
their carrying capacity, until recently a new system came in. The whole width
of the avenues and streets in the business parts of the city, including the
former sidewalks, is given up to wheel traffic, an iron ridge extending along
the exact centre to compel vehicles to keep to the right. Strips of nickel
painted white, and showing a bright phosphorescence at night, are let into the
metal pavement flush with the surface, and run parallel to this ridge at
distances of ten to fifteen feet, dividing each half of the avenue into four or
five sections, their width increasing as they approach the middle. All trucks
or drays moving at less than seven miles an hour are obliged to keep in the
section nearest the building line, those running between seven and fifteen in
the next, fifteen to twenty-five in the third, twenty-five to thirty-five in
the fourth, and everything faster than that in the section next the ridge,
unless the avenue or street is wide enough for further subdivisions. If it is
wide enough for only four or less, the fastest vehicles must keep next the
middle, and limit their speed to the rate allowed in that section, which is
marked at every crossing in white letters sufficiently large for him that runs
to read. It is therefore only in the wide thoroughfares that very high speed
can be attained. In addition to the crank that corresponds to a throttle, there
is a gauge on every vehicle, which shows its exact speed in miles per hour, by
gearing operated by the revolutions of the wheels.
"The policemen on
duty also have instantaneous kodaks mounted on tripods, which show the position
of any carriage at half- and quarter-second intervals, by which it is easy to
ascertain the exact speed, should the officers be unable to judge it by the
eye; so there is no danger of a vehicle’s speed exceeding that allowed in the
section in which it happens to be; neither can a slow one remain on the fast
lines.
"Of course, to
make such high speed for ordinary carriages possible, a perfect pavement became
a sine qua non. We have secured this by the half-inch sheet of steel spread
over a carefully laid surface of asphalt, with but little bevel; and though
this might be slippery for horses’ feet, it never seriously affects our wheels.
There being nothing harder than the rubber ties of comparatively light drays
upon it -- for the heavy traffic is carried by electric railways under ground
-- it will practically never wear out.
"With the
application of steel to the entire surface, car-tracks became unnecessary,
ordinary wheels answering as well as those with flanges, so that no new tracks
were laid, and finally the car companies tore up the existing ones, selling
them in many instances to the municipalities as old iron. Our streets also need
but little cleaning; neither is the surface continually indented, as the old
cobble-stones and Belgian blocks were, by the pounding of the horses’ feet, so
that the substitution of electricity for animal power has done much to solve
the problem of attractive streets.
"Scarcely a ton of
coal comes to Manhattan Island or its vicinity in a year. Very little of it
leaves the mines, at the mouths of which it is converted into electricity and
sent to the points of consumption by wire, where it is employed for all uses to
which fuel was put, and many others. Consequently there is no smoke, and the
streets are not encumbered with coal-carts; the entire width being given up to
carriages, etc. The ground floors in the business parts are used for large
warehouses, trucks running in to load and unload. Pedestrians therefore have
sidewalks level with the second story, consisting of glass floors let into
aluminum frames, while all street crossings are made on bridges. Private houses
have a front door opening on the sidewalk, and another on the ground level, so
that ladies paying visits or leaving cards can do so in carriages. In business
streets the second story is used for shops. In place of steel covering, country
roads have a thick coating of cement and asphalt over a foundation of crushed
stone, giving a capital surface, and have a width of thirty-three feet (two
rods) in thinly settled districts, to sixty-six feet (four rods) where the
population is greater. All are planted with shade and fruit trees, while the
wide driveways have one or two broad sidewalks. The same rule of making the
slow-moving vehicles keep near the outside prevails, though the rate of
increase in speed on approaching the middle is more rapid than in cities, and
there is usually no dividing ridge. On reaching the top of a long and steep
hill, if we do not wish to coast, we convert the motors into dynamos, while
running at full speed, and so change the kinetic energy of the descent into
potential in our batteries. This twentieth-century stage-coaching is one of the
delights to which we are heirs, though horses are still used by those that
prefer them.
We have been much aided
in our material progress by the facility with which we obtain the metals. It
was observed, some time ago, that when artesian and oil wells had reached a
considerable depth, what appeared to be drops of lead and antimony came up with
the stream. It finally occurred to a well-borer that if he could make his drill
hard enough and get it down far enough, keeping it cool by solidified carbonic
acid during the proceeding, he would reach a point at which most of the metals
would be viscous, if not actually molten, and on being freed from the pressure
of the crust they would expand, and reach the surface in a stream. This
experiment he performed near the hot geysers in Yellowstone Park, and what was
his delight, on reaching a depth scarcely half a mile beyond his usual
stopping- place, to be rewarded by a stream of metal that heralded its approach
by a loud explosion and a great rush of superheated steam! It ran for a month,
completely filling the bed of a small, dried-up river, and when it did stop
there were ten million tons in sight. This proved the feasibility of the
scheme, and, though many subsequent attempts were less successful, we have
learned by experience where it is best to drill, and can now obtain almost any
metal we wish.
"‘Magnetic eyes’
are of great use to miners and Civil engineers. These instruments are something
like the mariner’s compass, with the sensitiveness enormously increased by
galvanic currents. The ‘eye,’ as it were, sees what substances are underground,
and at what distances. It also shows how many people are in an adjoining room
-- through the magnetic properties of the iron in their blood -- whether they
are moving, and in what directions and at what speed they go. In connection
with the phonograph and concealed by draperies, it is useful to detectives,
who, through a registering attachment, can obtain a record of everything said
and done.
"Our political
system remains with but little change. Each State has still two United States
Senators, though the population represented by each representative has been
greatly increased, so that the Senate has grown numerically much more than the
House. It is the duty of each member of Congress to understand the conditions
existing in every other member’s State or district, and the country’s interest
always precedes that of party. We have a comprehensive examination system in
the civil service, and every officeholder, except members of the Cabinet,
retains his office while efficiently performing his duty, without regard to
politics. The President can also be re-elected any number of times. The Cabinet
members, as formerly, usually remain in office while he does, and appear
regularly in Congress to defend their measures.
"The really rapid
transit lines in New York are underground, and have six tracks, two being used
for freight. At all stations the local tracks rise several feet towards the
street and slope off in both directions, while the express tracks do this only
at stations at which the faster trains stop. This gives the passengers a
shorter distance to descend or rise in the elevators, and the ascent before the
stations aids the brakes in stopping, while the drop helps the motors to start
the trains quickly in getting away.
"Photography has
also made great strides, and there is now no difficulty in reproducing exactly
the colours of the object taken.
"Telephones have
been so improved that one person can speak in his natural voice with another in
any part of the globe, the wire that enables him to hear also showing him the
face of the speaker though he be at the antipodes. All telephone wires being
underground and kept by themselves, they are not interfered with by any
high-tension electric-light or power wires, thunderstorms, or anything else.
Rain-making is another
subject removed from the uncertainties, and has become an absolute science. We
produce clouds by explosions in the atmosphere’s heights and by surface air
forced by blowers through large pipes up the side of a mountain or natural
elevation and there discharged through an opening in the top of a tower built
on the highest part. The aeriduct is incased in a poor heat-conductor, so that
the air retains its warmth until discharged, when it is cooled by expansion and
the surrounding cold air. Condensation takes place and soon serves to start a
rain.
"Yet, until the
earth’s axis is straightened, we must be more or less dependent on the
eccentricities of the weather, with extremes of heat and cold, droughts and
floods, which last are of course largely the result of several months’ moisture
held on the ground in the form of snow, the congestion being relieved suddenly
by the warm spring rains.
"Medicine and
surgery have kept pace with other improvements -- inoculation and antiseptics,
as already seen, rendering most of the germ diseases and formerly dreaded
epidemics impotent; while through the potency of electrical affinity we form
wholesome food-products rapidly, instead of having to wait for their production
by Nature’s slow processes.
"The metric
system, now universal, superseded the old-fashioned arbitrary standards, so
prolific of mistakes and confusion, about a century ago.
"English, as we
have seen, is already the language of 600,000,000 people, and the number is
constantly increasing through its adoption by the numerous races of India,
where, even before the close of the last century, it was about as important as
Latin during the greatness of Rome, and by the fact that the Spanish and
Portuguese elements in Mexico and Central and South America show a constant
tendency to die out, much as the population of Spain fell from 30,000,000 to
17,000,000 during the nineteenth century. As this goes on, in the Western
hemisphere, the places left vacant are gradually filled by the more progressive
Anglo-Saxons, so that it looks as if the study of ethnology in the future would
be very simple.
"The people with
cultivation and leisure, whose number is increasing relatively to the
population at each generation, spend much more of their year in the country
than formerly, where they have large and well-cultivated country seats, parts
of which are also preserved for game. This growing custom on the part of
society, in addition to being of great ad vantage to the out-of- town
districts, has done much to save the forests and preserve some forms of game
that would otherwise, like the buffalo, have become extinct.
"In astronomy we
have also made tremendous strides. The old-fashioned double-convex lens used in
telescopes became so heavy as its size grew, that it bent perceptibly from its
own weight, when pointed at the zenith, distorting the vision; while when it
was used upon a star near the horizon, though the glass on edge kept its shape,
there was too much atmosphere between it and the observed object for successful
study. Our recent telescopes have, therefore, concave plate-glass mirrors,
twenty metres in diameter, like those used for converging the sun’s rays in
solar engines, but with curves more mathematically exact, which collect an
immense amount of light and focus it on a sensitive plate or on the eye of the
observer, whose back is turned to the object he is studying. An electrical
field also plays an important part, the electricity being as great an aid to
light as in the telephone it is to sound. With these placed generally on high
mountain peaks, beyond the reach of clouds, we have enormously increased the
number of visible stars, though there are still probably boundless regions that
we cannot see. These telescopes have several hundred times the power of the
largest lenses of the nineteenth century, and apparently bring Mars and
Jupiter, when in opposition, within one thousand and ten thousand miles,
respectively, so that we study their physical geography and topography; and we
have good maps of Jupiter, and even of Saturn, notwithstanding their distance
and atmospheric envelopes, and we are able to see the disks of third-magnitude
stars.
"It seems as if,
when we wish any particular discovery or invention, in whatever field, we had
but to turn our efforts in its direction to obtain our desire. We seem, in
fact, to have awakened in the scenes of the Arabian Nights; yet the mysterious
genius which we control, and which dims Aladdin’s lamp, is the gift of no fairy
godmother sustained by the haze of dreams, but shines as the child of science
with fadeless and growing splendour, and may yet bring us and our little planet
much closer to God.
"We should indeed
be happy, living as we do at this apex of attained civilization, with the
boundless possibilities of the future unfolding before us, on the horizon of
which we may fairly be said to stand.
"We are freed from
the rattling granite pavement of only a century ago, which made the occupant of
an omnibus feel like a fly inside of a drum; from the domination of our local
politics by ignorant foreigners; and from country roads that either filled the
eyes, lungs, and hair of the unfortunates travelling upon them with dust, or,
resembling ploughed and fertilized fields, saturated and plastered them with
mud. These miseries, together with sea-sickness in ocean travelling, are
forever passed, and we feel that ‘Excelsior!’ is indeed our motto. Our new and
increasing sources of power have so stimulated production and manufacturing
that poverty or want is scarcely known; while the development of the popular
demand, as a result of the supplied need, is so great that there is no visible
limit to the diversification of industry or the possibilities of the arts.
"It may seem
strange to some that apparently so disproportionate a number of inventions have
been made in the last century. There are several reasons. Since every discovery
or advance in knowledge increases our chance of obtaining more, it becomes
cumulative, and our progress is in geometric instead of arithmetical ratio.
Public interest and general appreciation of the value of time have also
effectively assisted progress. At the beginning of each year the President, the
Governors of the States, and the Mayors of cities publish a prospectus of the
great improvements needed, contemplated, and under way within their
jurisdiction -- it may be planning a new boulevard, a new park, or an improved
system of sewers; and at the year’s end they issue a resume of everything
completed, and the progress in everything else; and though there is usually a
great difference between the results hoped for and those attained, the effect
is good. The newspapers publish at length the recommendations of the
Executives, and also the results obtained, and keep up public interest in all
important matters.
"Free to delve in
the allurement and fascination of science, emancipated man goes on subduing
Nature, as his Maker said he should, and turning her giant forces to his
service in his constant struggle to rise and become more like Him who gave the
commandments and showed him how he should go.
Notwithstanding our
strides in material progress, we are not entirely content. As the requirements
of the animal become fully supplied, we feel a need for something else. Some
say this is like a child that cries for the moon, but others believe it the
awakening and craving of our souls. The historian narrates but the signs of the
times, and strives to efface himself; yet there is clearly a void, becoming
yearly more apparent, which materialism cannot fill. Is it some new subtle
force for which we sigh, or would we commune with spirits? There is, so far as
we can see, no limit to our journey, and I will add, in closing, that, with the
exception of religion, we have most to hope from science."
Knowing that the
rectification of the earth’s axis was satisfactorily begun, and that each year
would show an increasing improvement in climate, many of the delegates, after
hearing Bearwarden’s speech, set out for their homes. Those from the valley of
the Amazon and the eastern coast of South America boarded a lightning express
that rushed them to Key West at the rate of three hundred miles an hour. The
railroad had six tracks, two for through passengers, two for locals, and two
for freight. There they took a "water-spider," six hundred feet long
by three hundred in width, the deck of which was one hundred feet above the
surface, which carried them over the water at the rate of a mile a minute,
around the eastern end of Cuba, through Windward Passage, and so to the South
American mainland, where they continued their journey by rail.
The Siberian and
Russian delegates, who, of course, felt a keen interest in the company’s
proceedings, took a magnetic double-ender car to Bering Strait. It was eighteen
feet high, one hundred and fifty feet long, and had two stories. The upper,
with a toughened glass dome running the entire length, descended to within
three feet of the floor, and afforded an unobstructed view of the rushing
scenery. The rails on which it ran were ten feet apart, the wheels being beyond
the sides, like those of a carriage, and fitted with ball bearings to ridged
axles. The car’s flexibility allowed it to follow slight irregularities in the
track, while the free, independent wheels gave it a great advantage in rounding
curves over cars with wheels and axle in one casting, in which one must slip
while traversing a greater or smaller arc than the other, except when the slope
of the tread and the centrifugal force happen to correspond exactly. The fact
of having its supports outside instead of underneath, while increasing its
stability, also enabled the lower floor to come much nearer the ground, while
still the wheels were large. Arriving in just twenty hours, they ran across on
an electric ferry-boat, capable of carrying several dozen cars, to East Cape,
Siberia, and then, by running as far north as possible, had a short cut to
Europe.
The Patagonians went by
the all-rail Intercontinental Line, without change of cars, making the run of
ten thousand miles in forty hours. The Australians entered a flying machine,
and were soon out of sight; while the Central Americans and members from other
States of the Union returned for the most part in their mechanical phaetons.
"A prospective
improvement in travelling," said Bearwarden, as he and his friends watched
the crowd disperse, "will be when we can rise beyond the limits of the
atmosphere, wait till the earth revolves beneath us, and descend in twelve
hours on the other side."
"True," said
Cortlandt, "but then we can travel westward only, and shall have to make a
complete circuit when we wish to go east."
A few days later there
was a knock at President Bearwarden’s door, while he was seated at his desk
looking over some papers and other matters. Taking his foot from a partly
opened desk drawer where it had been resting, he placed it upon the handle of a
handsome brass-mounted bellows, which proved to be articulating, for, as he
pressed, it called lustily, "Come in!" The door opened, and in walked
Secretary of State Stillman, Secretary of the Navy Deepwaters, who was himself
an old sailor, Dr. Cortlandt, Ayrault. Vice-President Dumby, of the T. A. S.
Co., and two of the company’s directors.
"Good-morning,"
said Bearwarden, as he shook hands with his visitors. "Charmed to see
you."
"That’s a great
invention," said Secretary Stillman, examining the bellows. "We must
get Congress to make an appropriation for its introduction in the department
buildings in Washington. You have no idea how it dries my throat to be all the
time shouting, ‘Come in!’"
"Do you know,
Bearwarden," said Secretary Deepwaters, "I’m afraid when we have this
millennium of climate every one will be so well satisfied that our friend here
(pointing to Secretary Stillman with his thumb) will have nothing to do."
I have sometimes
thought some of the excitement will be gone, and the struggle of the ‘survival
of the fittest’ will become less problematical," said Bearwarden.
"The earth seems
destined to have a calm old age," said Cortlandt, "unless we can look
to the Cabinet to prevent it."
"This world will
soon be a dull place. I wish we could leave it for a change," said
Ayrault. "I don’t mean forever, of course, but just as people have grown
tired of remaining like plants in the places in which they grew. Alan has been
a caterpillar for untold ages; can he not become the butterfly?"
"Since we have
found out how to straighten the axis," said Deepwaters, "might we not
go one better, and improve the orbit as well? -- increase the difference
between aphelion and perihelion, and give those that still like a changing
climate a chance, while incidentally we should see more of the world -- I mean
the solar system -- and, by enlarging the parallax, be able to measure the
distance of a greater number of fixed stars. Put your helm hard down and shout ‘Hard-a-lee!’
You see, there is nothing simpler. You keep her off now, and six months hence
you let her luff."
"That’s an
idea!" said Bearwarden. "Our orbit could be enough like that of a
comet to cross the orbits of both Venus and Mars; and the climatic extremes
would not be inconvenient. The whole earth being simultaneously warmed or
cooled, there would be no equinoctials or storms resulting from changes on one
part of the surface from intense heat to intense cold; every part would have a
twelve-hour day and night, and none would be turned towards or from the sun for
six months at a time; for, however eccentric the orbit, we should keep the axis
absolutely straight. At perihelion there would simply be increased evaporation
and clouds near the equator, which would shield those regions from the sun,
only to disappear again as the earth receded.
"The only
trouble," said Cortlandt, "is that we should have no fulcrum.
Straightening the axis is simple enough, for we have the attraction of the sun
with which to work, and we have but to increase it at one end while decreasing
it at the other, and change this as the poles change their inclination towards
the sun, to bring it about. If a comet with a sufficiently large head would but
come along and retard us, or opportunely give us a pull, or if we could
increase the attraction of the other planets for us, or decrease it at times,
it might be done. If the force, the control of which was discovered too late to
help us straighten the axis, could be applied on a sufficiently large scale; if
apergy ---- "
"I have it!"
exclaimed Ayrault, jumping up. "Apergy will do it. We can build an
airtight projectile, hermetically seal ourselves within, and charge it in such
a way that it will be repelled by the magnetism of the earth, and it will be
forced from it with equal or greater violence than that with which it is
ordinarily attracted. I believe the earth has but the same relation to space
that the individual molecule has to any solid, liquid, or gaseous matter we
know; and that, just as molecules strive to fly apart on the application of
heat, this earth will repel that projectile when electricity, which we are
coming to look upon as another form of heat, is properly applied. It must be
so, and it is the manifest destiny of the race to improve it. Man is a spirit
cursed with a mortal body, which glues him to the earth, and his yearning to
rise, which is innate, is, I believe, only a part of his probation and
trial."
"Show us how it
can be done," shouted his listeners in chorus.
"Apergy is and
must be able to do it," Ayrault continued. "Throughout Nature we find
a system of compensation. The centripetal force is offset by the centrifugal;
and when, according to the fable, the crystal complained of its hard lot in
being unable to move, while the eagle could soar through the upper air and see
all the glories of the world, the bird replied, ‘My life is but for a moment,
while you, set in the rock, will live forever, and will see the last sunrise
that flashes upon the earth.’
"We know that
Christ, while walking on the waves, did not sink, and that he and Elijah were
carried up into heaven. What became of their material bodies we cannot tell,
but they were certainly superior to the force of gravitation. We have no reason
to believe that in miracles any natural law was broken, or even set aside, but
simply that some other law, whose workings we do not understand, became
operative and modified the law that otherwise would have had things its own
way. In apergy we undoubtedly have the counterpart of gravitation, which must
exist, or Nature’s system of compensation is broken. May we not believe that in
Christ’s transfiguration on the mount, and in the appearance of Moses and Elias
with him -- doubtless in the flesh, since otherwise mortal eyes could not have
seen them -- apergy came into play and upheld them; that otherwise, and if no
other modification had intervened, they would have fallen to the ground; and
that apergy was, in other words, the working principle of those miracles?"
"May we not also
believe," added Cortlandt, that in the transfiguration Christ’s companions
took the substance of their material bodies -- the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen,
and carbon -- from the air and the moisture it contained; for, though spiritual
bodies, be their activity magnetic or any other, could of course pass the
absolute cold and void of space without being affected, no mortal body could;
and that in the same manner Elijah’s body dissolved into air without the usual
intervention of decomposition; for we know that, though matter can easily
change its form, it can never be destroyed."
All assented to this,
and Ayrault continued: "If apergy can annul gravitation, I do not see why
it should not do more, for to annul it the repulsion of the earth that it
produces must be as great as its attraction, unless we suppose gravitation for
the time being to be suspended; but whether it is or not, does not affect the
result in this case, for, after the apergetic repulsion is brought to the degree
at which a body does not fall, any increase in the current’s strength will
cause it to rise, and in the case of electro-magnets we know that the
attraction or repulsion has practically no limit. This will be of great
advantage to us," he continued, "for if a projectile could move away
from the earth with no more rapid acceleration than that with which it
approaches, it would take too long to reach the nearest planet, but the maximum
repulsion being at the start by reason of its proximity to the earth -- for
apergy, being the counterpart of gravitation, is subject to Newton’s and Kepler’s
laws -- the acceleration of a body apergetically charged will be greatest at
first. Two inclined planes may have the same fall, but a ball will reach the
bottom of one that is steepest near the top in less time than on any other,
because the maximum acceleration is at the start. We are all tired of being
stuck to this cosmical speck, with its monotonous ocean, leaden sky, and single
moon that is useless more than half the time, while its size is so microscopic
compared with the universe that we can traverse its great circle in four days.
Its possibilities are exhausted; and just as Greece became too small for the
civilization of the Greeks, and as reproduction is growth beyond the
individual, so it seems to me that the future glory of the human race lies in
exploring at least the solar system, without waiting to become shades."
"Should you
propose to go to Mars or Venus?" asked Cortlandt.
"No," replied
Ayrault, "we know all about Mars; it is but one seventh the size of the
earth, and as the axis is inclined more than ours, it would be a less
comfortable globe than this; while, as our president here told us in his T. A.
S. Company’s report, the axis of Venus is inclined to such a degree that it
would be almost uninhabitable for us. It would be as if colonists tried to
settle Greenland, or had come to North America during its Glacial period.
Neither Venus nor Mars would be a good place now."
"Where should you
propose to go?" asked Stillman.
"To Jupiter, and,
if possible, after that to Sat urn," replied Ayrault; "the former’s
mean distance from the sun is 480,000,000 miles; but, as our president showed
us, its axis is so nearly straight that I think, with its internal warmth,
there will be nothing to fear from cold. Though, on account of the planet’s
vast size, objects on its surface weigh more than twice as much as here, if I
am able to reach it by means of apergy, the same force will enable me to
regulate my weight. Will any one go with me?"
"Splendid!"
said Bearwarden. "If Mr. Dumby, our vice-president, will temporarily
assume my office, nothing will give me greater pleasure."
"So will I go, if
there is room for me," said Cortlandt. "I will at once resign my
place as Government expert, and consider it the grandest event of my
life."
"If I were not
afraid of leaving Stillman here to his own devices, I’d ask for a berth as
well," said Deepwaters.
"I am afraid,"
said Stillman, if you take any more, you will be overcrowded."
"Modesty forbids
his saying," said Deepwaters, "that it wouldn’t do for the country to
have all its eggs in one basket."
"Are you not
afraid you will find the surface hot, or even molten?" asked
Vice-President Dumby. "With its eighty-six thousand five hundred mile
diameter, the amount of original internal heat must have been terrific."
"No, said
Cortlandt, "it cannot be molten, or even in the least degree luminous,
for, if it were, its satellites would be visible when they enter its shadow,
whereas they entirely disappear."
"I do not believe
Jupiter’s surface is even perceptibly warm," said Bearwarden. "We
know that Algol, known to the ancients as the ‘Demon Star,’ and several other
variable stars, are accompanied by a dark companion, with which they revolve
about a common centre, and which periodically obscures part of their light.
Now, some of these non-luminaries are nearly as large as our sun, and, of
course, many hundred times the size of Jupiter. If these bodies have lost
enough heat to be invisible, Jupiter’s surface at least must be nearly
cold."
"In the
phosphorescence of seawater," said Cortlandt, "and in other instances
in Nature, we find light without heat, and we may soon be able to produce it in
the arts by oxidizing coal without the intervention of the steam engine; but we
never find any considerable heat without light."
"I am
convinced," said Bearwarden, "that we shall find Jupiter habitable
for intelligent beings who have been developed on a more advanced sphere than
itself, though I do not believe it has progressed far enough in its evolution
to produce them. I expect to find it in its Palaeozoic or Mesozoic period,
while over a hundred years ago the English astronomer, Chambers, thought that
on Saturn there was good reason for suspecting the presence of snow."
"What sort of
spaceship do you propose to have?" asked the vice-president.
"As you have to
pass through but little air," said Deepwaters, "I should suggest a
short-stroke cylinder of large diameter, with a flat base and dome roof,
composed of aluminum, or, still better, of glucinum or beryllium as it is
sometimes called, which is twice as good a conductor of electricity as
aluminum, four times as strong, and is the lightest of all known metals, having
a specific gravity of only two, which last property will be of great use to
you, for of course the more weight you have to propel the more apergetic
repulsion you will have to develop."
"I will get some
drawing-paper I left outside in my trap," said Ayrault, "when with
your ideas we may arrive at something definite," saying which, he left the
room.
"He seems very
cynical in his ideas of life and the world in general," said Secretary
Stillman, "for a man of his age, and one that is engaged."
"You see,"
replied Bearwarden, " his fiancee is not yet a senior, being in the class
of two thousand and one at Vassar, and so cannot marry him for a year. Not till
next June can this sweet girl graduate come forth with her mortar-board and
sheepskin to enlighten the world and make him happy. That is, I suspect, one
reason why he proposed this trip."
In a few moments
Ayrault returned with pencils, a pair of compasses, and paper.
"Let us see, in
the first place," said Deepwaters, "how long the journey will take.
Since a stone falls 16.09 feet the first second, and 64+ feet the next, it is
easy to calculate at what rate your speed would increase with the repulsion
twice that of the ordinary traction. But I think this would be too slow. It
will be best to treble or quadruple the apergetic charge, which can easily be
done, in which case your speed will exceed the muzzle-velocity of a projectile
from a long-range gun, in a few seconds. As the earth’s repulsion decreases,
the attraction of mars and Jupiter will increase, and, there being no
resistance, your gait will become more and more rapid till it is necessary to
reverse the charge to avoid being dashed to pieces or being consumed like a
falling star by the friction in passing through Jupiter’s atmosphere. You can
be on the safe side by checking your speed in advance. You must, of course, be
careful to avoid collisions with meteors and asteroids but if you do, they will
be of use to you, for by attracting or repelling them you can change your
course to suit yourself, and also theirs in inverse ratio to their masses.
Jupiter’s moons will be like head and stern lines in enabling you to choose the
part of the surface on which you wish to land. With apergy it is as essential
to have some heavy body on which to work, within range, as to have water about
a ship’s propellers. Whether, when apergy is developed, gravitation is
temporarily annulled, or reversed like the late attraction of a magnet when the
current is changed, or whether it is merely overpowered, in which case your
motion will be the resultant of the two, is an unsettled and not very important
point; for, though we know but little more of the nature of electricity than
was known a hundred years ago, this does not prevent our producing and using
it."
"Jupiter, when in
opposition," he continued, "is about 380,000,000 miles from us, and
it takes light, which travels at the rate of 190,000 miles a second, just
thirty-four minutes to reach the earth from Jupiter. If we suppose the average
speed of your ship to be one- five-hundredth as great, it will take you just
eleven days, nineteen hours and twenty minutes to make the journey. You will
have a fine view of Mars and the asteroids, and when 1,169,000 miles from Jupiter,
will cross the orbit of Callisto, the fifth moon in distance from the giant
planet. That will be your best point to steer by."
"I think,"
said Ayrault, "as that will be the first member of Jupiter’s system we
pass, and as it will guide us into port, it would be a good name for our ship,
and you must christen her if we have her launched."
"No, no,"said
Deepwaters, "Miss Preston must do that; but we certainly should have a
launch, for you might have to land in the water, and you must be sure the ship
is tight."
"Talking of tight
ships," said Bearwarden, passing a decanter of claret to Stillman,
"may remind us that it is time to splice the ‘main brace.’ There’s a
bottle of whisky and some water just behind you," he added to Deepwaters,
"while three minutes after I ring this bell," he said, pressing a
button and jerking a handle marked ‘8,’ "the champagne cocktails will be
on the desk."
"I see you know
his ways," said Stillman to Bearwarden, drooping his eyes in Deepwaters’s
direction.
"Oh, yes, I’ve
been here before," replied Deepwaters. "You see, we navy men have to
hustle now-a-days, and can’t pass our time in a high-backed chair, talking
platitudes."
At this moment there
was a slight rumbling, and eight champagne cocktails, with the froth still on,
and straws on a separate plate, shot in and landed on a corner of the desk.
"Help yourselves,
gentlemen," said Bearwarden, placing them on a table; "I hope we
shall find them cold."
"Do you
know," said Deepwaters to Ayrault, while rapidly making his cocktail
disappear, "the Callisto’s cost with its outfit will be very great,
especially if you use glucinum, which, though the ideal metal for the purpose,
comes pretty high? I suggest that you apply to Congress for an appropriation.
This experiment comes under the ‘Promotion of Science Act,’ and any bill for it
would certainly pass."
"No, indeed,"
replied Ayrault; "the Callisto trip will be a privilege and glory I would
not miss, and building her will be a part of it. I shall put in everything conducive
to success, but will come to the Government only for advice."
"I will send a
letter to all our ambassadors and consuls," said Stillman, "to
telegraph the department anything they may know or learn that will be of use in
adjusting the batteries, controlling the machine, or anything else, and will
turn over to you in a succinct form all information that may be relevant, for
without such sorting you would be overwhelmed."
"And I," said
Deepwaters, "will order the commanders of our vessels to give you a
farewell salute at starting, and to pick you up in case you fail. When you have
demonstrated the suitability of apergy," he continued, "and the
habitability of Jupiter and Saturn -- ,which, with their five and eight moons,
respectively, and rings thrown in, must both be vastly superior to our little
second-rate globe -- we will see what can be done towards changing our orbit,
and if we cannot swing a little nearer to our new world or worlds. Then we’ll
lower, or rather raise, the boats in the shape of numerous Callistos, and have
a landing-party ready at each opposition, while a man or two can be placed in
charge of each projectile to bring it back in ballast. Thus we may soon have
regular interplanetary lines."
"As every place
seems to have been settled from some other," said Cortlandt, "I do
not see why, with increased scientific facilities, history should not repeat
itself, and this be the point from which to colonize the solar system; for, for
the present at least, it would seem that we could not get beyond that."
"As it will be
quite an undertaking to change the orbit, said Deepwaters, "we shall have
time meanwhile to absorb or run out all inferior races, so that we shall not
make the mistake of extending the Tower of Babel."
"He is putting on
his war-paint," said Stillman, "and will soon want a planet to
himself."
"I see no
necessity for even changing the orbit," said Bearwarden, "except for
the benefit of those that remain. If this attempt succeeds, it can doubtless be
repeated. An increase in eccentricity would merely shorten the journey, if
aphelion always coincided with opposition, which it would not."
"Let us know how
you are getting on," said Deepwaters to Ayrault, "and be sure you
have the Callisto properly christened. Step lively there, landlubbers!" he
called to Stillman; "I have an appointment at Washington at one, and it is
now twenty minutes past twelve. We can lunch on the way."
Ayrault immediately
advertised for bids for the construction of a glucinum cylinder twenty-five
feet in diameter, fifteen feet high at the sides, with a domed roof, bringing
up the total height to twenty-one feet, and with a small gutter about it to
catch the rain on Jupiter or any other planet they might visit. The sides,
roof, and floor were to consist of two sheets, each one third of an inch thick
and six inches apart, the space between to be filled with mineral wool, as a
protection against the intense cold of space. There were also to be several
keels and supports underneath, on which the car should rest. Large, toughened
plate-glass windows were to be let into the roof and sides, and smaller ones in
the floor, all to be furnished with thick shades and curtains. Ayrault also
decided to have it divided into two stories, with ceilings six and a half to
seven and a half feet high, respectively, with a sort of crow’s nest or observatory
at the top; the floors to be lattice- work, like those in the engine-room of a
steamer, so that when the carpets were rolled up they should not greatly
obstruct the view. The wide, flat base and the low centre of gravity would, he
saw, be of use in withstanding the high winds that he knew often prevailed on
Jupiter.
As soon as possible he
awarded the contract, and then entering his smart electric trap, steered for
Vassar University along what was the old post-road -- though its builders would
not have recognized it with its asphalt surface, straightened curves, and easy
grades -- to ask his idol to christen the Callisto when it should be finished.
Starting from the upper
end of Central Park, he stopped to buy her a bunch of violets, and then ran to
Poughkeepsie in two hours.
Sylvia Preston was a
lovely girl, with blue eyes, brown hair, and perfect figure, clear white skin,
and just twenty. She was delighted to see him, and said she would love to
christen the Callisto or do anything else that he wished. "But I am so
sorry you are going away," she went on. "I hate to lose you for so
long, and we shall not even be able to write."
"Why couldn’t we
be married now," he asked, "and go to Jupiter for our
honeymoon?"
"I’m afraid,
dear," she answered, "you would be sorry a few years hence if I didn’t
take my degree; and, besides, as you have asked those other men, there wouldn’t
be room for me."
"We could have
made other arrangements," he replied, "had I been able to persuade
you to go."
"Won’t you dine
with us at Delmonico’s this evening, and go to the play?" she asked.
"Papa has taken a box."
"Of course I
will," he said, brightening up. "What are you going to wear?"
"Oh, I suppose
something light and cool, for it’s so hot," she answered.
"I’ll go now, so
as to be ready," he said, getting up and going towards the door to which
Sylvia followed him.
A man in livery stood
at the step of the phaeton. Ayrault got in and turned on the current, and his
man climbed up behind.
On turning into the
main road Ayrault was about to increase his speed, when Sylvia, who had taken a
short cut appeared at the wayside carrying her hat in one hand and her gloves
in the other.
"I couldn’t let
you go all by yourself," she said. "The fact is, I wanted to be with
you."
"You are the
sweetest thing that ever lived, and I’ll love you all my days," he said,
getting down and helping Sylvia to the seat beside him. "What a nuisance
this fellow behind is!" he continued -- referring to the groom --
"for, though he is a Russian, and speaks but little English, it is
unpleasant to feel he is there."
"You’ll have to
write your sweet nothings, instead of saying them," Sylvia replied.
"For you to leave
around for other girls to see," answered Ayrault with a smile.
"I don’t know what
your other girls do," she returned, "but with me you are safe."
Ayrault fairly made his
phaeton spin, going up the grades like a shot and down like a bird. On reaching
New York, he left Sylvia at her house, then ran his machine to a florist’s,
where he ordered some lilies and roses, and then steered his way to his club,
where he dressed for dinner. Shortly before the time he repaired to Delmonico’s
-- which name had become historical, though the founders themselves were long
dead -- and sat guard at a table till Sylvia, wearing his flowers and looking
more beautiful than any of them, arrived with her mother and father, and
Bearwarden, whom they knew very well.
"How are the exams
getting on, Miss Preston?" Bearwarden asked.
"Pretty well,"
she replied, with a smile. "We had English literature yesterday, and
natural history the day before. Next week we have chemistry and
philosophy."
"What are you
taking in natural history?" asked Bearwarden, with interest.
"Oh, principally
physical geography, geology, and meteorology," she replied. "I think
them entrancing."
"It must be a
consolation," said Ayrault, " when your best hat is spoiled by rain,
to know the reason why. Your average," he continued, addressing Sylvia,
"was ninety in the semi-annuals, and I haven’t a doubt that the finals
will maintain your record for the year."
"Don’t be too
sure," she replied. "I have been loafing awfully, and had to engage a
‘grind’ as a coach."
After dinner they went
to the play, where they saw a presentation of Society at the Close of the
Twentieth Century, which Sylvia and Ayrault enjoyed immensely.
A few days after the
Delmonico dinner, while Bearwarden, Cortlandt, and Ayrault sat together
discussing their plans, the servant announced Ayrault’s family physician, Dr.
Tubercle Germiny, who had been requested to call.
"Delighted to see
you, doctor," said Ayrault, shaking hands. "You know Col. Bearwarden,
our President, and Dr. Cortlandt -- an LL. D., however, and not a medico."
"I have had the
pleasure," replied Dr. Germiny, shaking hands with both.
"As you may be
aware, doctor," said Ayrault, when they were seated, "we are about to
take a short trip to Jupiter, and, if time allows, to Saturn. We have come to
you, as one familiar with every known germ, for a few precautionary suggestions
and advice concerning our medicine-chest."
"Indeed!"
replied Dr. Germiny, "a thorough knowledge of bacteriology is the
groundwork of therapeutics. It is practically admitted that every ailment, with
the exception of mechanical injuries, is the direct result of a specific germ;
and even in accidents and simple fractures, no matter what may be the nature of
the bruise, a micro-organism soon announces its presence, so that if not the
parent, it is the inseparable companion, in fact the shadow, of disease. Now,
though not the first cause in this instance, it has been indubitably proved,
that much of the effect, the fever and pain, are produced and continued by the
active, omnipresent, sleepless sperm. Either kill the micrococcus or heal the
wound, and you are free from both. It being, therefore, granted that the ills
of life are in the air, we have but to find the peculiar nature of the case in
hand, its habits, tastes, and constitution, in order to destroy it. Impoverish
the soil on which it thrives, before its arrival, if you can foresee the nature
of the inoculation to which you will be exposed, by a dilute solution of
itself, and supply it only with what it particularly dislikes. For an already
established tubercle requiring rapid action of the blood, such as may well
exist among the birds and vertebrates of Jupiter and Saturn, I suggest a
hypodermic rattlesnake injection, while hydrocyanic acid and tarantula saliva
may also come in well. The combinations that so long destroyed us have already
become our panacea."
"I see you have
these poisons at your fingers’ ends," said Ayrault, "and we shall
feel the utmost confidence in the remedies and directions you prescribe."
They found that, in addition
to their medicine-chest, they would have to make room for the following
articles, and also many more: six shot-guns (three double-barrel 12-bores,
three magazine 10-bores,) three rifles, three revolvers; a large supply of
ammunition (explosive and solid balls), hunting-knives, fishing-tackle,
compass, sextant, geometrical instruments, canned food for forty days,
appliance for renewing air, clothing, rubber boots, apergetic apparatus,
protection-wires, aneroid barometer, and kodaks.
At last the
preparations were completed, and it was arranged that the Callisto should begin
its journey at eleven o’clock A. M., December 21st -- the northern hemisphere’s
shortest day.
Though six months’
operations could hardly be expected to have produced much change in the
inclination of the earth’s axis, the autumn held on wonderfully, and December
was pronounced very mild. Fully a million people were in and about Van
Cortlandt Park hours before the time announced for the start, and those near
looked inquiringly at the trim little air-ship, that, having done well on the
trial trip, rested on her longitudinal and transverse keels, with a battery of
chemicals alongside, to make sure of a full power supply.
The President and his
Cabinet-including, of course, the shining lights of the State and Navy
Departments -- came from Washington. These, together with Mr. and Mrs. Preston,
and a number of people with passes, occupied seats arranged at the sides of the
platform; while sightseers and scientists assembled from every part of the
world.
"There’s a ship
for you!" said Secretary Stillman to the Secretary of the Navy. "She’ll
not have to be dry- docked for barnacles, neither will the least breeze make
the passengers sick."
"That’s all you
landlubbers think of," replied Deepwaters. "I remember one of the
kings over in Europe said to me, as he introduced me to the queen: ‘Your
Secretary of State is a great man, but why does he always part his hair in the
middle?’
"‘So that it shall
not turn his head,’ I replied.
"‘But with so
gallant and handsome an officer as you to lean upon,’ he answered, ‘I should
think he could look