The Monster of Lake Lametrie

Inclosed you will find some portions of the diary it has
been my life-long custom to keep, arranged in such a manner as to
narrate connectedly the history of some remarkable occurrences that
have taken place here during the last three years. Years and years
ago, I heard vague accounts of a strange lake high up in an almost
inaccessible part of the mountains of Wyoming. Various incredible
tales were related of it, such as that it was inhabited by creatures
which elsewhere on the globe are found only as fossils of a long
vanished time.

The lake and its surroundings are of volcanic origin, and not the
least strange thing about the lake is that it is subject to periodic
disturbances, which take the form of a mighty boiling in the centre,
as if a tremendous artesian well were rushing up there from the bowels
of the earth. The lake rises for a time, almost filling the basin of
black rocks in which it rests, and then recedes, leaving on the shores
mollusks and trunks of strange trees and bits of strange ferns which
no longer grow--on the earth, at least--and are to be seen elsewhere
only in coal measures and beds of stone. And he who casts hook and
line into the dusky waters, may haul forth, ganoid fishes completely
covered with bony plates.

All of this is described in the account written by Father LaMetrie
years ago, and he there advances the theory that the earth is hollow,
and that its interior is inhabited by the forms of plant and animal
life which disappeared from its surface ages ago, and that the lake
connects with this interior region. Symmes' theory of polar orifices
is well known to you. It is amply corroborated. I know that it is true
now. Through the great holes at the poles, the sun sends light and
heat into the interior.

Three years ago this month, I found my way through the mountains here
to Lake LaMetrie accompanied by a single companion, our friend, young
Edward Framingham. He was led to go with me not so much by scientific
fervor, as by a faint hope that his health might be improved by a
sojourn in the mountains, for he suffered from an acute form of
dyspepsia that at times drove him frantic.