The Square Pegs

by Irving Wallace

  With growing confidence in his concept of the universe, Symmes at last came down to earth. He read the writings of a Professor Burnet, who believed that the earth had once been a small core covered with oil to which the fluid of the atmosphere had adhered, thus forming the earth crust. He read the writings of a Professor Woodward, who contended “that the earth is now formed of distinct strata, arranged in concentric layers, ‘like the coats of an onion.’” He read the writings of Whiston, who believed that the earth had been conceived of a comet, and that a liquid abyss had formed on that comet and then been covered by a shell, so that in final appearance the earth resembled the yolk, albumen, and shell of an egg.

  Symmes’s vague conjectures gradually assembled themselves into a clear pattern. The earth, like the planets beyond, was hollow, and filled with concentric spheres that is, with smaller globes placed one within the other and all possessing a common center. Excitedly, he reached back into the past for any corroboration. He did not have to reach far. Throughout history there had been those who had supposed that the earth might be hollow and might contain smaller planets within itself. Plato had spoken of “huge subterranean streams” and “passages broad and narrow in the interior of the earth.” In 1692 the eminent Dr. Edmund Halley, later astronomer royal and Oxford professor, who ten years earlier had observed the famous comet that was to be named after him, informed the Royal Society of London that beneath the earth’s 500-mile crust lay a void through which three planets the size of Venus, Mars, and Mercury spun. Halley’s theory was adopted by the great German mathematician Leonhard Euler, who modified the three inner planets to one, and gave that planet daylight and a prospering civilization.

  In 1721 Cotton Mather spoke of an interior universe, and two decades later Baron Holberg wrote a novel in which his hero fell inside the earth and there discovered a sun and a solar system and himself became a whirling satellite for three days. In the early 1800’s a Scottish mathematician and physicist, Sir John Leslie, renowned for his work in radiation, speculated on a hollow earth furnished with two blazing planets similar to the sun called Proserpina and Pluto.

  These readings gave Symmes the courage to undertake his next step. He needed courage, for while others had spoken of concentric spheres within a hollow earth, Symmes’s thinking had gone much further. He conceived, as no one had before him, of gaping holes at the North and South poles through which he and other bold spelunkers might sail to the five planets inside. In the spring of 1818 he acted. From his shop in the Missouri wilderness he mailed to leading scientific academies of Europe, to presidents and professors of American universities, and to members of the United States Congress five hundred copies of an announcement with the simple heading “Circular,” and the motto “Light gives light to light discover ad infinitum.” Addressed from St. Louis, Missouri Territory, North America, and dated April 10, 1818, the notice of discovery read:

  I declare that the earth is hollow, habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres; one within the other, and that it is open at the pole twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking. John Cleves Symmes of Ohio, Late Captain of Infantry.

  To this startling notice was attached another, an afterthought in the form of a postscript, which read:

  N.B. I have ready for the press a treatise on the principles of Matter, wherein I show proofs of the above proposition, account for various phenomina, and disclose Dr. Darwin’s “Golden Secret.”

  My terms are the patronage of this and the new world, I dedicate to my wife and her ten children.

  I select Dr. S. L. Mitchel. Sir H. Davy and Baron Alexander Von Humbolt as my protectors. I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped to start from Siberia, in the fall season, with reindeer and sledges, 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 latitude 82; we will return in the succeeding spring, J. C. S.

  With these notices, we are told, Symmes enclosed a medical report testifying to his sanity. This last was wholly unnecessary. For though the French Academy regarded his discovery and proposal with dismay, other recipients were more tolerant. In England, scientists, remembering their own revered Dr. Halley, cautiously withheld criticism. In Russia, scientists were definitely impressed, and eventually, as we shall see, showed their willingness to cooperate. In the United States, scientists, whatever their personal reactions, were loath to poke fun at a war veteran. They withheld judgment, though soon enough large portions of the lay public would voice approval.

  His initial circular having brought him no patronage though it had established his priority as author of what he called his “Theory of Concentric Spheres” Captain Symmes decided to appeal directly to the people of his native land. From his St. Louis trading post he issued two more circulars, and in less than a year, three more, one of which elaborated upon his original notion that there were holes at the North and South poles through which an explorer might enter the interior world. Soon these polar openings came to be commonly known as Symmes’s Hole or Symmes’s Cavity.

  Obsessed by his theory and the need to prove it, Symmes moved his person, his books, and his large family to Newport, Kentucky. He read heavily, thought deeply, and then began to write numerous articles for the popular press, one of the earliest being a piece entitled “Light Between The Spheres,” published in the Cincinnati National Intelligencer during August 1819. In Kentucky he gathered about him his first devoted disciples, citizens who would soon impress their local representative, Congressman Richard M. Johnson, with the necessity of presenting Symmes’s case in Washington. In Kentucky, too, Symmes made the decision to stump the nation on behalf of his theory.

  His first lecture was delivered before a large audience in Cincinnati during 1820. Shortly after, he addressed other large gatherings in Lexington, Frankfort, Zanesville, and Hamilton. One of our rare glimpses of Symmes as a human being is of him as a lecturer. “The arrangement of his subject was illogical, confused, and dry, and his delivery was poor,” John W. Peck wrote in 1909. “However, his earnestness and the interesting novelty of his subject secured him attentive audiences wherever he spoke.”

  Of his physical aspect in those years we know nothing. We know only that his erudition surprised his skeptics, that his temper flared quickly in the face of ridicule, that his lack of patience did not permit him to co-ordinate his radical ideas into any organized and detailed form, that his old military companions still spoke of him as “zealous and faithful” and that an impressed college disciple thought him “a high-minded, honorable man.” But if his personality made no impression on his time, his imaginative theory certainly did. Through his muddled writings and halting lectures Symmes doggedly spread the gospel of a new world underfoot. Soon few communities in America’s Midwest or South did not have some knowledge of the Captain’s stimulating ideas.

  Once, when he attempted to enlighten both the student body and faculty of Union College in Kentucky with a series of scientific lectures, an undergraduate named P. Clark made “copious notes.” It is to Clark that history owes the only record extant of Symmes declaiming his theory in public.

  “The earth is globular, hollow, and open at the poles,” said Symmes in his initial lecture. “The diameter of the northern opening is about two thousand miles, or four thousand miles from outside to outside. The south opening is somewhat larger. The planes of these openings are parallel to each other, but form an angle of 12° with the equator, so that the highest part of the north plane is directly opposite the lowest part of the south plane. The shell of the earth is about one thousand miles thick, and the edges of this shell at the openings are called verges, and measure, from the regular concavity within to the regular convexity without, about fifteen hundred miles.”

  The details of the projected expedition, by which Symmes hoped to prove his th
eory, were familiar to all who heard or read the discoverer’s words. Symmes would lead “one hundred brave companions” in two ships equipped with reindeer and sleighs to Siberia, and thence to the hole or verge at the North Pole, which was 4,000 miles in diameter in contrast to the larger hole at the South Pole, which was 6,000 miles in diameter. The great opening would be reached by sailing through the Bering Strait. Every sign, argued Symmes, pointed to its existence. For one thing, explorers often spoke of the brilliant twilight of the Arctic regions. “This twilight coming from the north,” said Symmes, “may be caused by the sun’s rays thrown into the interior through the southern opening, which by two refractions, one at each opening, and two or three reflections from the inner concave surface, would pass out at the north over the verge, and produce there this strong twilight.” Also, explorers often reported that mysterious warm air currents melted ice in the Arctic Sea. The best explanation for these currents would be that they rose out of the North Pole cavity. Finally, the curious migration of wild life birds winging north into the cold regions, instead of south was conclusive evidence “that there is a land beyond the frozen Arctic belt, wither some beasts, fowls and fish go at the approach of winter and whence they return in the spring sleek and fat.”

  Symmes was not certain that the members of his expedition would know at once when they entered the earth’s interior. There was probably no dropping-off place. Rather, the curvature of the wide rim might be so gradual as to “not be apparent to the voyager, who might pass from the outer side of the earth over the rim and down the inner side a great distance before becoming aware of the fact at all.” Once inside the earth, the travelers would not tumble off the concave inner shell. Aerial fluid would encompass them and press them safely to water and land.

  Symmes did not think that the interior would be a world of darkness. While there would be no dazzling sunlight, there would be a softer, more congenial light, the reflection of the sun’s rays as they slanted through the North Pole opening. The expedition would probably meet a new race of people, of what physique Symmes dared not guess, and it would come across lands that might “abound with animals, with organs only adapted to the medium which they are destined to inhabit.”

  Within this spacious earth interior would be five more earths, one inside the other, like the parts of some incredible Chinese puzzle. Each would have an opening “filled with a very light, subtile, elastic substance … of the nature of hydrogen gas,” and this escaping gas would create earthquakes and form volcanic ranges. Ocean currents and marine life would gush through these openings, and the expedition, if not yet unnerved, might continue downward into the inferno from inner planet to inner planet until it reached the very core.

  This was the theory. On its behalf, as one critic remarked caustically, “the master and his disciples have traversed the whole country, from south to north, and from west to east, so that all men, in all places, might be enlightened in the truth.” That by now there were influential disciples, there is ample written evidence. The foremost of these was a wealthy resident of Hamilton, Ohio, James McBride, a trustee of Miami University who possessed a valuable library of six thousand volumes. It may have been McBride who encouraged Symmes to move to Hamilton in 1824. Or the move may have been inspired by Symmes’s desire to dwell in a community that had been receptive to his lectures. At any rate, once Symmes was settled in Hamilton, McBride became his patron and collaborator.

  Symmes being reluctant to assemble his notes into book form, McBride assumed the responsibility. In 1826 the firm of Morgan, Lodge and Fisher, in Cincinnati, published a slender volume entitled Symmes’ Theory of Concentric Spheres, by James McBride. The disciple’s prose was less fanatic than the master’s:

  “According to captain Symmes, the planet which has been designated the Earth, is composed of at least five hollow concentric spheres, with spaces between each, an atmosphere surrounding each; and habitable as well upon the concave as the convex surface. Each of these spheres are widely open at their poles… . Although the particular location of the places where the verges of the polar openings are believed to exist, may not have been ascertained with absolute certainty, yet they are believed to be nearly correct; their localities have been ascertained from appearances that exist in those regions; such as a belt or zone surrounding the globe where trees and other vegetation (except moss) do not grow; the tides of the ocean flowing in different directions, and appearing to meet; the existence of volcanoes; the ground swells in the sea being more frequent; the Aurora Borealis appearing to the southward… .”

  In commenting upon this modest and restrained effort, the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly noted: “The author undertakes to set forth the theory without asserting its truth, disclaiming scientific ability to pass upon it, inviting criticism, but requesting any who assert its fallacy to furnish some other rational and satisfactory explanation of the facts advanced.”

  Another valuable disciple was the Union College student, P. Clark, who during 1826 and 1827 jotted notes on Symmes’s speeches, but who was of too conservative a cast to publish them at once. As a matter of fact, it was not until 1873 that Clark paid belated tribute to his idol with an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Symmes Theory of the Earth.” So constant was his faith, however, that even the passage of almost a half century (during which time many of Symmes’s contentions had been discredited) had not dulled his defense:

  “Since this theory was promulgated by its author, enough has come to light to prove that he was correct in his views of the existence of a warmer climate at the north, and of an open polar sea. And it is believed that, if his theory had been fully made public long ago, much hardship, suffering, and expense would or might have been avoided in the futile attempts to find a passage through the bleak and desolate regions around Baffin’s Bay. That Behring’s Straits offer the best route into the arctic regions admits of little or no doubt, and an expedition for this purpose from the Pacific coast is well worth the consideration of the government.”

  But if Symmes had his small coterie of partisans, as well as his larger following of adherents merely curious to see his eccentricity put to test, he also had his detractors. In fact and in fiction his ideas were disparaged and his person ridiculed. During 1820 the publishing house of J. Seymour, New York, issued a novel entitled Symzonia; a Voyage of Discovery, by Captain Adam Seaborn, obviously a pseudonym. This entertaining work of science fiction was a burlesque of Symmes, his theory, and his projected expedition. In the narrative, the author-narrator, inspired by Symmes, outfits an expedition to the polar regions, supposedly to hunt seal. Nearing the location of the “icy hoop” that leads into the interior world, the crew find the bones of a monster on an island. Before the crew can mutiny, the Captain allows his steamship to be drawn rapidly south by powerful currents. Soon they are inside the earth. A new continent stretches before them. The Captain names it Symzonia. In its metropolis the Captain and crew find an albino race of human beings, attired in snow-white garments and speaking a musical language. Symzonia, lit by two suns and two moons, is a socialist Utopia. The albino people, ruled by a Best Man, possess prosperity, gold, and advanced inventions, such as dirigibles armed with flame throwers that spew burning gas for a half mile and more. Eager to maintain their Utopia, the Symzonians force the Captain and his crew to return to the more avaricious outer world.

  Most attacks on Symmes were more direct. In 1827 the American Quarterly Review dissected the hollow earth theory. “Captain Symmes not only believes the earth to be hollow,” said the periodical, “but that it is inhabited on the inner surface. If it be so, the inhabitants must be placed in a most unstable position.” The magazine deduced that men dwelling 150 miles inside the earth could weigh only eight ounces each on the average. Of course, “it would be one of the advantages of these inner men, that they might fly through the air, with great ease, by the aid of a lady’s fan.” Not only were Symmes’s ideas unscientific, but his efforts to finance an exped
ition “travelling, from place to place, and, like a second Peter the Hermit, zealously preaching up a crusade to this Holy Land” were absurdity itself. “We are gravely told, that, to judge by the size of the seals, and bears … which come from the interior of the globe, it must be better suited for animal life than the portion which has fallen to our lot, so that by emigrating to this land of promise, we may probably be relieved from many of the evils to which mankind are subjected here above… . However, we fear that this desirable change can never be effected, and that we must be content to finish the journey of life, in the less comfortable condition of outside passengers.” In conclusion, though Symmes “may be a gallant soldier and an estimable man,” he remains a “very unsound philosopher.”

  Neither this type of criticism nor his repudiation by Congress disheartened Symmes. Determined as ever to explore the interior, he appeared as principal speaker at a benefit rally staged in the Cincinnati Theatre in Cincinnati during 1824. Though the rally was well attended, the curiosity of his audience did not open its pocketbooks. For lack of funds the expedition was deferred. But in 1825 Symmes learned that the Russian government, so receptive to his original circular, was preparing an expedition to northeastern Siberia. Only three years before, another expedition, under a Russian navy captain named Fabian Bellingshausen, had made the first discoveries of land south of the Antarctic Circle, and this had now encouraged the Tsar to support an exploration of the Arctic. Because the destination of the new Russian expedition sounded reasonably close to his northern “verge,” Symmes hastened to write its powerful leader, Count Romanozov, offering his services. The Russians, still impressed by his knowledge of the polar wastes, accepted his offer. Though excited by the high position offered him, Symmes was forced to withdraw at the eleventh hour. He did not have funds to cover his fare to St. Petersburg.