hundred miles in circumference, sank into the interior of the earth, and
the boiling lava came to the surface. We can scarcely conceive of the
awful effect when the Antarctic Sea poured over the circumference of
this mass of boiling earth and metal.

"Now it must be considered that this boiling lava was not merely a great
surface of white-hot matter, in which case it would, relatively
speaking, soon have cooled. To flood its edges with an overflow of ten
feet of water would be comparable to running a film of water a hundredth
of an inch in depth over the top of a red-hot stove in which a large
fire continues to burn and constantly to renew the heat on its surface.
This surface of boiling lava must have had a practically limitless
depth, and the water which poured over it must have evaporated
instantly. After thinking the matter over, with the _data_ which I have
well in view, I concluded that it required about two hundred years for
the water to reach the limit which it finally attained as water _en
masse_. A little thought on the subject has shown me that Peters is
telling the truth, because his description, to my mind, harmonizes with
the laws of physics. One of the earliest phenomena presented by this
condition, was that so much sea-water evaporated, and evaporated so
rapidly, that masses of rock-salt formed, creating a partial barrier to
the inroads of the sea--I say a partial barrier, because the
deliquescence of salt would cause it to be the poorest of all barriers
to water. Still, we must remember that the immediately surrounding water
must have reached, so far as salt is concerned, the saturation point,
and would have been a very slow solvent of hard rock-salt in enormous
masses and several miles in extent. Then, two other conditions soon
arose: First, the warm surrounding water permitted a coral-like
development, as shown by present appearances, and second, volcanic
action began.