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The fog, clouds, vapor, and peculiar kind of snow met with at the poles ought to set one to thinking what produces them. There are too many peculiar conditions to come from no particular cause, and all just alike at the North and South poles. Take Africa and Norway, regions which are not at all alike in anything--the game, the vegetation, the people, the climates are as different as the pies a man's wife makes from those his mother used to make. Yet if one travels in the opposite direction, till one reaches the Arctic and Antarctic circles, all become as like as one is to himself.
The earth being hollow, the atmosphere in passing out, either north or south, would affect the country it passes into in the same manner. That is why one finds so many things in common in both polar regions: vapors, snows, auroras, winds, and falling meteors, each locality filled with fowl, warmer, and open water. The following extracts, with comments there-on, will throw some light on this interesting subject. Peary says: "On the ice-cap a fresh breeze was blowing, and though the sun was shining brightly, and there was blue sky overhead, all the upper part of McCormick Bay was hidden by lead-colored cumulus clouds, and Inglefield Gulf lay invisible behind a dazzling white mist." (Page 232.)
Nothing appears to be so common in the Far Northern regions as those low, dark cumulus clouds, that are frequently seen rising on the horizon, or, as it is frequently expressed, from the ocean, while the sky is perfectly clear and the sun shining brightly. Nothing but warmer air from the interior of the earth could produce such clouds. This could not, or would not, be the case if the earth were solid: there is no reason why it should be warmer near the poles.
The earth obtains its heat from the sun; and yet when one is where the sun's rays do not strike the earth for months at a time, it is found that the north winds are warmer than the south winds. This fact ought to suggest that that wind must come from some place other than the North Pole. The interior of the earth is the only place from which warm winds could come in the winter.
The same explorer says on pages 314 and 315: "Another discouraging day with-in sight of the baleful shores of this Arctic Sahara, but we are on the heights once more--for good, I hope, and, I also trust, free from further obstacles. If there is any truth in the superstition of the evil eye, the coast of this Inland Ice surely has evil eyes. Just as long as the black cliffs peer up at us over the round of the ice-cap, just so long are we beset with crevasses, slippery ice, hummocks, howling wind storms, furious drifts, and fogs."
This term "evil eye" seems to apply to conditions that are usually found on reaching the extreme north, as Peary speaks of being one would meet with if the earth were hollow. Note that Peary says the black cliffs peer up over the ice-cap. In making the turn when the earth curves, one cliff or projection would follow like the spokes to the wheel of a wagon--one comes up as one goes under. While the earth's curve is not so short as one might imagine, yet it is short enough to make things appear strange to persons looking for level country to the pole. The clouds, mists, slippery ice, etc., are just what one would meet in summer at the entrance to the interior of the earth; yet if the earth is solid there is no reason why they should be met.
Bernacchi gives descriptions of weather conditions in the southern polar regions that have a bearing on this subject. On page 264 he says: "A dense mist lay over the water, which made it impossible to see any farther than the length of the ship. The mist or vapor. was in a state of congelation, so that the whole ship was covered in frost rime. This mist was no more than fifty feet high, and in the crow's-nest it was a gloriously fine day, not a cloud being visible in the sky, and the sun shining brightly over the barrier (ice barrier). On deck it was too thick to see anything." Page 266, he says: "The fog was so dense that we were compelled to stop and lay-to for some time. During the night the temperature sank to 3° 8 F. When the wind changed to E. and N. E., it immediately rose to +17° F."