Читать книгу The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream онлайн

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“This conclusion is unwelcome; it may seem destructive to those natural hopes which the approaching completion of this wonderful enterprise—the Panama Canal—have so freely and inevitably fostered. Science in the last resource to her councils must be austerely judicial. She cannot take cognizance of man’s projects or respect his hopes. The Panama Canal as part of the Isthmus of Panama participates in all the vicissitudes of the latter, and we know that those vicissitudes mean dislocation and subsidence. When such frightful results will happen, it is impossible to say; that they must happen, we can positively assert.”

The lecture was over. The lecturer retreated, and again repeated his deferential nod to the chairman, Dr. Smith, as if importuning his assistance in corroboration of his mournful vaticination. The audience still remained immobile, coagulated into a sort of mental prostration by this dismal prophecy, and yet again as if contemplating, like a cat’s stagnation, preparatory to its murderous spring, some outward and physical resentment. And the spring came.