Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 393
adventitious, there would be a natural tendency to return to the pre-comet condition. The extraordinary evaporation would of itself have produced refrigeration. Hence the cloud-eaps would grow and advance steadily toward the equator, casting down continually increasing volumes of rain. Snow would begin to form near the poles, and it too would advance. We would finally have, down te say the thirty-fifth degree of north and south latitude, vast belts of rain and snow, while the equator would stili be blazing with the tropical heat which would hold the condensation back. Here, then, we would have precisely the condition of things described in the “ Younger Edda” of the Northmen :
“Then said Jafnhar: ‘All that part of Ginungagap’ (the Atlantic) ‘that turns toward the north was filled with thick, heavy ice and rime, (snow,) ‘and everywhere within were drizzling gusts and rain. But the south part of Ginungagap was lighted up by the glowing sparks that flew out of Muspelheim’ (Africa ?). Added Thride: ‘ As cold and all things grim proceeded from Niflheim, so that which bordered on Muspelheim was hot and bright, and Ginungagap’ (the Atlantic near Africa?) ‘was as warm and mild as windless air.’ ”
Another may say:
“But how does all this agree with your theory that the progenitors of the stock from which the white, the yellow, and the brown races were differentiated, were saved in one or two cayerns in one place? How did they get to Africa, Asia, and America?”
In the first place, it is no essential part of my case that man survived in one place or a dozen places ; it can not, in either event, affect the question of the origin of the Drift. It is simply an opinion of my own, open to modification upon fuller information. If, for instance, men dwelt in Asia at that time, and no Drift deposits