Read Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizatio for Free Online Page A
Authors: David Standish
the principles of matter, wherein I show proofs of the above positions, account for various phenomena, and disclose Dr. Darwin’s “Golden Secret.”
My terms are the patronage of THIS and the NEW WORLDS.
I dedicate to my wife and her ten children.
I select Dr. S.L. Mitchill, Sir H. Davy, and Baron Alexander Von Humboldt as my protectors.
I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia, in the fall season, with reindeer and sleighs, on the ice of the frozen sea; I engage we find a warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching one degree northward of lattitude 82; we will return in the succeeding spring. 4
J.C.S.
This wasn’t a stray brainstorm that occurred to him during a nightmare brought on by a bad fish or after getting a little too corned up at the tavern. He had been thinking and thinking on this. How he came to these conclusions—and how he came to believe so passionately and persistently in them—is a mystery. But until he died in 1829 at age forty-eight, the hollow earth was his obsession, his only dream, his tragedy.
Born in Sussex County, New Jersey, in 1780, Symmes was named for a prominent uncle whose generosity would figure in his future. The older Symmes was a Revolutionary War veteran and chief justice of New Jersey, who in 1787 put together a corporation to buy a 330,000-acre tract of public land in the southwestern corner of the present state of Ohio, between the Big and Little Miami rivers, north of the Ohio River, a deal sometimes known as the Symmes Purchase.
His younger namesake started out well enough. His father, Timothy Symmes, was a Revolutionary War veteran and a judge in New Jersey who married twice and had nine children altogether. John Cleves was the oldest in the second crop of six. He had the usual semi-haphazard elementary education. Years later he recalled reading, at age eleven, “a large edition of ‘Cook’s Voyages,’” which his father, “though himself a lover of learning, reproved me for spending so much of my time from work, and said I was a book-worm.” 5 He added that at “about the same age I used to harangue my playmates in the street, and describe how the earth turned round; but then as now, however correct my positions, I got few or no advocates.” Poor Symmes. Already a visionary pariah in grade school.
He joined the army as an ensign—the lowest officer rank—at age twenty-two and was commissioned as captain in January 1812, months before war was declared against Great Britain. He did most of his service on the western frontier near the Mississippi River.
Symmes was at Fort Adams fifty miles below Natchez in 1807, as the final act in Aaron Burr’s delusional scheme of personal empire was unfolding near there. Another dreamer! Burr was on his way down the Mississippi with an armed flotilla, rumored to be planning to seize New Orleans, in cahoots with the territorial governor, James Wilkenson. But Wilkenson got cold feet, ratted Burr out to President Jefferson, and rushed additional troops to several forts along the river, including Fort Adams, ordering those stationed in New Orleans to prepare for an attack. Burr got wind of this betrayal and went ashore north of Natchez, where he was arrested. Managing to fast-talk his way out of the charges, he masqueraded as a river boatman and melted into the wilderness on the eastern side of the river, making his way toward Spanish Pensacola. But as additional information about his schemes came to light, he was rearrested near Mobile and taken to Richmond, where he was tried for treason before Chief Justice John Marshall—and, somehow, acquitted.
Symmes became involved in his own drama at this time. He described it in detail in a long letter to his brother, Celadon, dated Fort Adams, June 28, 1807. When a fellow officer named Marshall declared Symmes was “no gentleman,” Symmes sought him out to publicly
My terms are the patronage of THIS and the NEW WORLDS.
I dedicate to my wife and her ten children.
I select Dr. S.L. Mitchill, Sir H. Davy, and Baron Alexander Von Humboldt as my protectors.
I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia, in the fall season, with reindeer and sleighs, on the ice of the frozen sea; I engage we find a warm and rich land, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching one degree northward of lattitude 82; we will return in the succeeding spring. 4
J.C.S.
This wasn’t a stray brainstorm that occurred to him during a nightmare brought on by a bad fish or after getting a little too corned up at the tavern. He had been thinking and thinking on this. How he came to these conclusions—and how he came to believe so passionately and persistently in them—is a mystery. But until he died in 1829 at age forty-eight, the hollow earth was his obsession, his only dream, his tragedy.
Born in Sussex County, New Jersey, in 1780, Symmes was named for a prominent uncle whose generosity would figure in his future. The older Symmes was a Revolutionary War veteran and chief justice of New Jersey, who in 1787 put together a corporation to buy a 330,000-acre tract of public land in the southwestern corner of the present state of Ohio, between the Big and Little Miami rivers, north of the Ohio River, a deal sometimes known as the Symmes Purchase.
His younger namesake started out well enough. His father, Timothy Symmes, was a Revolutionary War veteran and a judge in New Jersey who married twice and had nine children altogether. John Cleves was the oldest in the second crop of six. He had the usual semi-haphazard elementary education. Years later he recalled reading, at age eleven, “a large edition of ‘Cook’s Voyages,’” which his father, “though himself a lover of learning, reproved me for spending so much of my time from work, and said I was a book-worm.” 5 He added that at “about the same age I used to harangue my playmates in the street, and describe how the earth turned round; but then as now, however correct my positions, I got few or no advocates.” Poor Symmes. Already a visionary pariah in grade school.
He joined the army as an ensign—the lowest officer rank—at age twenty-two and was commissioned as captain in January 1812, months before war was declared against Great Britain. He did most of his service on the western frontier near the Mississippi River.
Symmes was at Fort Adams fifty miles below Natchez in 1807, as the final act in Aaron Burr’s delusional scheme of personal empire was unfolding near there. Another dreamer! Burr was on his way down the Mississippi with an armed flotilla, rumored to be planning to seize New Orleans, in cahoots with the territorial governor, James Wilkenson. But Wilkenson got cold feet, ratted Burr out to President Jefferson, and rushed additional troops to several forts along the river, including Fort Adams, ordering those stationed in New Orleans to prepare for an attack. Burr got wind of this betrayal and went ashore north of Natchez, where he was arrested. Managing to fast-talk his way out of the charges, he masqueraded as a river boatman and melted into the wilderness on the eastern side of the river, making his way toward Spanish Pensacola. But as additional information about his schemes came to light, he was rearrested near Mobile and taken to Richmond, where he was tried for treason before Chief Justice John Marshall—and, somehow, acquitted.
Symmes became involved in his own drama at this time. He described it in detail in a long letter to his brother, Celadon, dated Fort Adams, June 28, 1807. When a fellow officer named Marshall declared Symmes was “no gentleman,” Symmes sought him out to publicly
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