THE DELUGE OF THE FUTURE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 827, 20 June 1871, Page 3

THE DELUGE OF THE FUTURE.

The Melbourne "Telegraph" says Mr William Walker is away from us ; but that is nothing. Age does not wither, nor latitude stale his infinite variety. In London he is Tom Cringle still. He has devoted his attention of late to cyclical deluges, and has published his views in a handsome little volume, which he has made due haste to send us, and which we are grateful to receive, notwithstanding the shock it 3 contents are calculated to convey. The uncomfortable conclusion at which Mr Walker arrives is that the Deluge was the result of a disturbance of the equilibrium of the ocean the inevitable consequence of a change of its centre of gravity, which will occur again. He quotes M. de Hon. to the effect that fourteen such deluges have already occured, and his independent observations point to the arrival of the fifteenth. Australia is rising, the " ice cap " at the North Pole is increasing, the world, which we know has a singular list already, will get tilted a little more, and the water will rush to the other side. The result is feelingly depicted. "The South Pacific South Atlantic, and Antarctic oceans will be suddenly poured across the equator, submerge the Notkern Hemisphere ; the high grounds rising above the level of the southern oceans will form the archipelago of a new Polynesia. Australia, by the Great Barrier Beef, being laid dry, will be joined to New Guinea, and thus acquire a new eastern sea-board 1200 miles long, between which and the present Australian coast will be a wide valley, now the navigable channel for ships bound northwards, which would soon be covered with cocoanuts, palms, and other beautiful flora of the Southern Hemisphere ; while England, Scotland, and Ireland will become what they wtre before the last catastrophe, which happened in the opposite direction." The peril of our friends in England should, indeed, induce a general application for passage warrants. A few families, Mr Cringle anticipates, may eccape to the mountain ranges, but they will "survive " only to fall back into a state of torpid barbarism, which shows no gleam of hope in its utter desolation." London Bridge itself will not be left for the historic New Zealander to muse upon. The time, it appears from the " profound work " of Mons. Alphonse Joseph Adhemar, entitled " Revolutions de la Mer," may be accurately calculated. The |oceanic cataclysm—a good word, Mr "Walker, a very good word —will occur 6300 years hence. Mr Cringle's cycle is completed, therefore, in a little under 9000 years, calculating fruin Noah's Deluge, according to the chronology of the learned "Usher. We shall only stop to point out that our author differs from the illustrious Mr Muddle in Marryatt's novel, whose cycle was fixed at 33,494 years. Mr Muddle's catastrophe is the furthest off, and we prefer that.