of
ice, memorials of the uselessness of struggling against destiny, and to
furnish proofs of the same great truth in the instance of the others;
who, if they did enter the polar basins as masters of the great deep,
either left their bones there, or returned in the same characters as
they went. From the appearance of animal nature on the earth, down to
the period when the monikin race arose, the regions in question were not
only uninhabited, but virtually uninhabitable. When, however, nature,
always wary, wise, beneficent, and never to be thwarted, had prepared
the way, those phenomena were exhibited that cleared the road for the
new species. I have alluded to the internal struggle between fire and
water, and to their progeny, steam. This new agent was now required to
act. A moment's attention to the manner in which the next great step in
the progress of civilization was made, will show with what foresight
and calculation our common mother had established her laws. The earth
is flattened at the poles, as is well imagined by some of the human
philosophers, in consequence of its diurnal movement commencing while
the ball was still in a state of fusion, which naturally threw off a
portion of the unkneaded matter towards the periphery. This was not done
without the design of accomplishing a desired end. The matter that was
thus accumulated at the equator, was necessarily abstracted from other
parts; and in this manner the crust of the globe became thinnest at the
poles. When a sufficiency of steam had been generated in the centre
of the ball, a safety-valve was evidently necessary to prevent a total
disruption. As there was no other machinist than nature, she worked with
her own tools, and agreeably to her own established laws. The thinnest
portions of the crust opportunely yielded to prevent a catastrophe,
when the superfluous and heated vapor escaped, in a right line with the
earth's axis, into vacuum. This phenomenon occurred, as nearly as we
have been able to ascertain, about the year 700 before the Christian era
commenced, or some two centuries previously to the birth of the first
monikins."

"And why so early, may I presume to inquire, Doctor?"

"Simply that there might be time for the new climate to melt the ice
that had accumulated about the islands and continents of that region
(for it was only at the southern extremity of the earth that the
explosion had taken place), in the course of so many centuries. Two
hund