The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras Part 81

"Insuperable!" cried Hatteras with warmth; "there are no insuperable obstacles; there are more or less determined minds, that is all!"

"Well," said Johnson, "we are here, and it is well. But, Doctor, will you tell me, once for all, what there is so remarkable about the Pole?"

"It is this, Johnson, that it is the only motionless part of the globe, while all the rest is turning with extreme rapidity."

"But I don't see that we are more motionless here than at Liverpool."

"No more than you perceive the motion at Liverpool; and that is because in both cases you partic.i.p.ate in the movement or the repose.

But the fact is no less certain. The earth rotates in twenty-four hours, and this motion is on an axis with its extremities at the two poles. Well, we are at one of the extremities of the axis, which is necessarily motionless."

"So," said Bell, "when our countrymen are turning rapidly, we are perfectly still?"

"Very nearly, for we are not exactly at the Pole."

"You are right, Doctor," said Hatteras seriously, and shaking his head; "we are still forty-five seconds from the precise spot."

"That is not far," answered Altamont, "and we can consider ourselves motionless."

"Yes," continued the doctor, "while those living at the equator move at the rate of three hundred and ninety-six leagues an hour."

"And without getting tired!" said Bell.

"Exactly!" answered the doctor.

"But," continued Johnson, "besides this movement of rotation, doesn't the earth also move about the sun?"

"Yes, and this takes a year."

"Is it swifter than the other?"

"Infinitely so; and I ought to say that, although we are at the Pole, it takes us with it as well as all the people in the world. So our pretended immobility is a chimera: we are motionless with regard to the other points of the globe, but not so with regard to the sun."

"Good!" said Bell, with an accent of comic regret; "so I, who thought I was still, was mistaken! This illusion has to be given up! One can't have a moment's peace in this world."

"You are right, Bell," answered Johnson; "and will you tell us, Doctor, how fast this motion is?"

"It is very fast," answered the doctor; "the earth moves around the sun seventy-six times faster than a twenty-four-pound cannon-ball flies, which goes one hundred and ninety-five fathoms a second. It moves, then, seven leagues and six tenths per second; you see it is very different from the diurnal movement of the equator."

"The deuce!" said Bell; "that is incredible, Doctor! More than seven leagues a second, and that when it would have been so easy to be motionless, if G.o.d had wished it!"

"Good!" said Altamont; "do you think so, Bell? In that case no more night, nor spring, nor autumn, nor winter!"

"Without considering a still more terrible result," continued the doctor.

"What is that?" asked Johnson.

"We should all fall into the sun!"

"Fall into the sun!" repeated Bell with surprise.

"Yes. If this motion were to stop, the earth would fall into the sun in sixty-four days and a half."

"A fall of sixty-four days!" said Johnson.

"No more nor less," answered the doctor; "for it would have to fall a distance of thirty-eight millions of leagues."

"What is the weight of the earth?" asked Altamont.

"It is five thousand eight hundred and ninety-one quadrillions of tons."

"Good!" said Johnson; "those numbers have no meaning."

"For that reason, Johnson, I was going to give you two comparisons which you could remember. Don't forget that it would take seventy-five moons to make the sun, and three hundred and fifty thousand earths to make up the weight of the sun."

"That is tremendous!" said Altamont.

"Tremendous is the word," answered the doctor; "but, to return to the Pole, no lesson on cosmography on this part of the globe could be more opportune, if it doesn't weary you."

"Go on, Doctor, go on!"

"I told you," resumed the doctor, who took as much pleasure in giving as the others did in receiving instruction,--"I told you that the Pole was motionless in comparison with the rest of the globe. Well, that is not quite true!"

"What!" said Bell, "has that got to be taken back?"

"Yes, Bell, the Pole is not always exactly in the same place; formerly the North Star was farther from the celestial pole than it is now. So our Pole has a certain motion; it describes a circle in about twenty-six years. That comes from the precession of the equinoxes, of which I shall speak soon."

"But," asked Altamont, "might it not happen that some day the Pole should get farther from its place?"

"Ah, my dear Altamont," answered the doctor, "you bring up there a great question, which scientific men investigated for a long time in consequence of a singular discovery."

"What was that?"

"This is it. In 1771 the body of a rhinoceros was found on the sh.o.r.e of the Arctic Sea, and in 1799 that of an elephant on the coast of Siberia. How did the animals of warm countries happen to be found in these lat.i.tudes? Thereupon there was much commotion among geologists, who were not so wise as a Frenchman, M. Elie de Beaumont, has been since. He showed that these animals used to live in rather high lat.i.tudes, and that the streams and rivers simply carried their bodies to the places where they were found. But do you know the explanation which scientific men gave before this one?"

"Scientific men are capable of anything," said Altamont.

"Yes, in explanation of a fact; well, they imagined that the Pole used to be at the equator and the equator at the Pole."

"Bah!"

"It was exactly what I tell you. Now, if it had been so, since the earth is flattened more than five leagues at the pole, the seas, carried to the equator by centrifugal force, would have covered mountains twice as high as the Himalayas; all the countries near the polar circle, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Siberia, Greenland, and New Britain, would have been buried in five leagues of water, while the regions at the equator, having become the pole, would have formed plateaus fifteen leagues high!"

"What a change!" said Johnson.

"O, that made no difference to scientific men!"

"And how did they explain the alteration?" asked Altamont.

"They said it was due to the shock of collision with a comet. The comet is the _deus ex machina_; whenever one comes to a difficult question in cosmography, a comet is lugged in. It is the most obliging of the heavenly bodies, and at the least sign from a scientific man it disarranges itself to arrange everything."