Identifier: ridpathshistoryo01ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's history of the world; being an account of the ethnic origin, primitive estate, early migrations, social conditions and present promise of the principal families of men ..
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history Ethnology
Publisher: New York, Merrill & Baker
Contributing Library: Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston University

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was at this timethat the general form and physical fea-tures of the different countries of the 68 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. northern hemisphere were determined.Now it was, as time rolled on and as theglacial period came to a close, that thegreat valleys were formed and definedin the bottoms of which to the presentday the descendent streams of the ancientflood-rivers creep along on their way tothe seas. In all the continents andcountries of the northern hemisphere itis notable that the river valleys are outof all proportion larger than the streams the earths surface by the crushing andplunging plowshares of the glaciers. The circumstances and conditions herereferred to are a part of geological in-quiry; but the reader will Man-life beginshave observed that the line <» this side of the glacial of definition between astro- floods,nomical antecedents and geological ef-fects is quite difficult to draw. Whatwe are here to consider is this, that theappearance of man on the earth is a fact
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FORMATION OF GLACIAL RIVER.—Drawn by Riou. of water which they have respectivelyborne at any time within the historicalperiod. An examination of these valleyswill show, moreover, unmistakably thatthey were once occupied with vast rollingrivers, extending from hill to hill, manytimes miles in width, and bearing down-ward under pressure of the prodigiousfloods all manner of flotsam and jetsamfrom the previous geological age, mixedwith the detritus rubbed or scoured from lying this side of the glacial epoch. Thepresent state of inquiry points distinctlyto the era of the subsidence of the gla-cial rivers—that is, the great volumes ofwater produced by the melting away ofthe ice cap of the northern hemisphere—into the channels, still large and swol-len, but approximately the same whichare now occupied by the great streamsof our continents, as the time when man-life began on the surface of our planet. TIME OF THE BEGINNING.—ASTRONOMICAL ARGUMENT b9 It is not needed, in this connectio

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