Forlong - Rivers of Life

Introductory Chapter.
The water which formed these stalagmite floors was, of course, drippings with lime
in solution. The lamina is extremely thin, and though a portion of the stalagmite
was removed from under the dripping twenty-two years ago, yet not a vestige of
fresh laminæ can be traced, but over the figures 1618 and 1615, well under the drip,
a thin flake of less than 1-20th of an inch is apparent, which gives us the period
necessary for this upper coat,—720,00 years. By another calculation this goes as high
as 900,000 years. Taken by itself we might incline to reject such calculations, but
when so much else points to the extreme age of the earth, geologists are justified in
here showing us what these floors really mean. What stopped the drip for so many
thousands of years and again renewed it? Had not a new, perhaps polar temperature,
passed over this portion of the globe at that period? If so, then at the present rate
of progression, Mr. T. Lumisden Strange, whose excellent paper on the “Earth’s age” 1
I received when writing the above, tells us that two and a fourth millions of years
would be required between the formation of the first floor and beginning of the formation
of the second stalagmite base. Mr. Strange also gives us several calculations of man’s
astronomical efforts, which go back to the time when the second cypress forest of New
Orleans was probably being submerged. We have two very ancient zodiacs; one at
Esne on the Nile, above Dendera (where are two somewhat modern ones), and one in
India. Sir Wm. Drummond goes minutely into that of Esne, and calculates from its
vernal equinox being between Gemini and Taurus, and therefore giving a retrogression
of 3 signs or 1 deg. 20 min. from their present places, that the age of this zodiac when
he wrote in 1811 was 6450 years, and therefore in 1873 its age would be 6512 years.
Dupuis thinks that Virgo is the zenith of the Indian zodiac, and that its age it
therefore nearly 1000 years more, or 7430 years; but by assuming the vernal equinox
between Libra and Virgo, the Egyptian zodiacs would date back to 14,955 years, and
the Indian one with Capricorn in zenith to 13,083 years. The only other alternation
would involve putting the Indian zodiac back to 22,576, and the Egyptian one to
30,100 years, so far as the signs of the zodiac are concerned. The precession of the
equinoxes and real astronomical zodiac seems to have come to Europe through Hipparchus,
who flourished 150 B.C. The Chinese had discovered the zodiac and various
astronomical cycles in the time of their great emperor Hwangti, who flourished 2640
B.C., and a glance down my Chart will show that hosts of busy minds were bent on
these subjects all the way down to Hipparchus’ days.
In regard to the theory of men springing from one stock, its advocates should
note that Egypt gives us, in the year 3060 B.C., or thereabouts, pictures of Asiatics and
negroes, and that a very ample time indeed must be allowed for the conversion of the
white man to the negro, or vice versa. I must here, however, very briefly call attention
to another great class of facts, which every year is bringing more forcibly before
us. The great Creator of the Universe does nothing but for some wise purpose, and
1 In Thomas Scott’s Series, vol. viii, and Strange’s Development of Creation, &c.
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