[Redactor's Notes: "Ragnarok" is a sequel to "Atlantis" but goes far
beyond presaging the pseudo-science of Velikovsky's "Worlds in
Collision". The original scans and HTML were provided by Mr. J.B.
Hare. In this edition the illustrations and figures have been
replaced by the glyph "###". Because of the numerous notes, they have
been retained on the original page. Searching on "[" will reveal the
set of notes for the current page. The page numbers of the original
have been retained as {p.117} for example. The HTML is plain vanilla
with no illustrations. For a fully illustrated version the reader is
referred to the website http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/rag/index.htm
where other explanatory material prepared by Mr. Hare is available.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
RAGNAROK:
THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.
BY
IGNATIUS DONNELLY,
AUTHOR OF "ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD."
_"I am not inclined to conclude that man had no existence at all
before the epoch of the great revolutions of the earth. He might have
inhabited certain districts of no great extent, whence, after these
terrible events, he repeopled the world. Perhaps, also, the spots
where he abode were swallowed up, and the bones lie buried under the
beds of the present seas."--CUVIER._
[1883]
###
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE DRIFT.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE DRIFT.
I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DRIFT 1
II. THE ORIGIN OF THE DRIFT NOT KNOWN 8
III. THE ACTION OF WAVES 10
IV. WAS IT CAUSED BY ICEBERGS? 13
V. WAS IT CAUSED By GLACIERS? 17
VI. WAS IT CAUSED BY A CONTINENTAL ICE-SHEET? 23
VII. THE DRIFT A GIGANTIC CATASTROPHE 43
VIII. GREAT HEAT A PREREQUISITE 58
PART II.
THE COMET.
I. A COMET CAUSED THE DRIFT 63
II. WHAT IS A COMET? 65
III. COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH? 82
IV. THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH 91
PART III.
THE LEGENDS.
I. THE NATURE OF MYTHS 113
II. DID MAN EXIST BEFORE THE DRIFT? 121
III. LEGENDS OF THE COMING OF THE COMET 132
IV. RAGNAROK 141
V. THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAËTON 154
VI. OTHER LEGENDS OF THE CONFLAGRATION 166
VII. LEGENDS OF THE CAVE-LIFE 195
VIII. LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF DARKNESS 208
IX. THE TRIUMPH OF THE SUN 233
X. THE FALL OF THE CLAY AND GRAVEL 251
XI. THE ARABIAN MYTHS 268
XII. THE BOOK OF JOB 276
XIII. GENESIS READ BY THE LIGHT OF THE COMET 316
PART IV.
CONCLUSIONS.
I. WAS PRE-GLACIAL MAN CIVILIZED? 341
II. THE SCENE OF MAN'S SURVIVAL 366
III. THE BRIDGE 376
IV. OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 389
V. BIELA'S COMET 408
VI. THE UNIVERSAL BELIEF OF MANKIND 424
VII. THE EARTH STRUCK BY COMETS MANY TIMES 431
VIII. THE AFTER-WORD 437
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE DRIFT Frontispiece.
TILL OVERLAID WITH BOWLDER-CLAY 5
SCRATCHED STONE, FROM THE TILL 6
RIVER ISSUING FROM A SWISS GLACIER 19
TERMINAL MORAINE 20
GLACIER-FURROWS AND SCRATCHES AT STONY POINT, 26
LAKE ERIE
DRIFT-DEPOSITS IN THE TROPICS 38
STRATIFIED BEDS IN TILL, LEITHEN WATER, 54
PEEBLESSHIRE, SCOTLAND
SECTION AT JOINVILLE 54
ORBITS OF THE PERIODIC COMETS 83
ORBIT OF EARTH AND COMET 88
THE EARTH'S ORBIT 89
THE COMET SWEEPING PAST THE EARTH 92
THE SIDE OF THE EARTH STRUCK BY THE COMET 93
THE SIDE NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET 93
THE GREAT COMET OF 1811 95
CRAG AND TAIL 98
SOLAR SPECTRUM 105
SECTION AT ST. ACHEUL 122
THE ENGIS SKULL 124
THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL 125
PLUMMET FROM SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, CALIFORNIA 180
COMET OF 1862 137
COURSE OF DONATI'S COMET 157
THE PRIMEVAL STORM 220
THE AFRITE IN THE PILLAR 270
DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY DIMIRIAT 272
EARTHEN VASE, FOUND IN THE CAVE OF FURFOOZ, 347
BELGIUM
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE MAMMOTH 349
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF REINDEER 350
PRE-GLACIAL MAN'S PICTURE OF THE HORSE 351
SPECIMEN OF PRE-GLACIAL CARVING 352
STONE IMAGE FOUND IN OHIO 353
COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET 356
UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS {front}
COPPER COIN, FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FEET 356
UNDER GROUND, IN ILLINOIS {back}
BIELA'S COMET, SPLIT IN TWO 409
SECTION ON THE SCHUYLKILL 432
RAGNAROK:
THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.
PART I.
The Drift
CHAPTER I.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DRIFT.
READER,--Let us reason together:--
What do we dwell on? The earth. What part of the earth? The latest
formations, of course. We live upon the top of a mighty series of
stratified rocks, laid down in the water of ancient seas and lakes,
during incalculable ages, said, by geologists, to be from _ten to
twenty miles in thickness_.
Think of that! Rock piled over rock, from the primeval granite
upward, to a height _four times greater than our highest mountains_,
and every rock stratified like the leaves of a book; and every leaf
containing the records of an intensely interesting history,
illustrated with engravings, in the shape of fossils, of all forms of
life, from the primordial cell up to the bones of man and his
implements.
But it is not with the pages of this sublime volume
{p. 2}
we have to deal in this book. It is with a vastly different but
equally wonderful formation.
Upon the top of the last of this series of stratified rocks we find
THE DRIFT.
What is it?
Go out with me where yonder men are digging a well. Let us observe
the material they are casting out.
First they penetrate through a few inches or a foot or two of surface
soil; then they enter a vast deposit of sand, gravel, and clay. It
may be fifty, one hundred, five hundred, eight hundred feet, before
they reach the stratified rocks on which this drift rests. It covers
whole continents. It is our earth. It makes the basis of our soils;
our railroads cut their way through it; our carriages drive over it;
our cities are built upon it; our crops are derived from it; the
water we drink percolates through it; on it we live, love, marry,
raise children, think, dream, and die; and in the bosom of it we will
be buried.
Where did it come from?
That is what I propose to discuss with you in this work,--if you will
have the patience to follow me.
So far as possible, [as I shall in all cases speak by the voices of
others] I shall summon my witnesses that you may cross-examine them.
I shall try, to the best of my ability, to buttress every opinion
with adequate proofs. If I do not convince, I hope at least to
interest you.
And to begin: let us understand what the Drift _is_, before we
proceed to discuss its origin.
In the first place, it is mainly unstratified; its lower formation is
altogether so. There may be clearly defined strata here and there in
it, but they are such as a tempest might make, working in a
dust-heap: picking up a patch here and laying it upon another there.
But there
{p. 3}
are no continuous layers reaching over any large extent of country.
Sometimes the material has been subsequently worked over by rivers,
and been distributed over limited areas in strata, as in and around
the beds of streams.
But in the lower, older, and first-laid-down portion of the Drift,
called in Scotland "the till," and in other countries "the hard-pan,"
there is a total absence of stratification.
James Geikie says:
"In describing the till, I remarked that the irregular manner in
which the stones were scattered through that deposit imparted to it a
confused and tumultuous appearance. The clay does not arrange itself
in layers or beds, but is distinctly unstratified."[1]
"The material consisted of earth, gravel, and stones, and also in
some places broken trunks or branches of trees. Part of it was
deposited in a pell-mell or unstratified condition during the
progress of the period, and part either stratified or unstratified in
the opening part of the next period when the ice melted."[2]
"The unstratified drift may be described as a heterogeneous mass of
clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the
transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded
or worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed
or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been scraped
together."[3]
The "till" of Scotland is "spread in broad but somewhat ragged
sheets" through the Lowlands, "continuous across wide tracts," while
in the Highland and upland districts it is confined principally to
the valleys.[4]
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 21.
2. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 220.
3. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 111.
4. "Great Ice Age," Geikie, p. 6.]
{p. 4}
"The lowest member is invariably a tough, stony clay, called 'till'
or 'hard-pan.' Throughout wide districts stony clay alone occurs."[1]
"It is hard to say whether the till consists more of stones or of
clay."[2]
This "till," this first deposit, will be found to be the strangest
and most interesting.
In the second place, although the Drift is found on the earth, it is
unfossiliferous. That is to say, it contains no traces of
pre-existent or contemporaneous life.
This, when we consider it, is an extraordinary fact:
Where on the face of this life-marked earth could such a mass of
material be gathered up, and not contain any evidences of life? It is
as if one were to say that he had collected the _detritus_ of a great
city, and that it showed no marks of man's life or works.
"I would reiterate," says Geikie,[3] "that nearly all the Scotch
shell-bearing beds belong to the _very close of the glacial_ period;
only in one or two places have shells ever been obtained, with
certainty, from a bed in the true till of Scotland. They occur here
and there in bowlder-clay, and underneath bowlder-clay, in maritime
districts; but this clay, as I have shown, is more recent than the
till--fact, rests upon its eroded surface."
"The lower bed of the drift is entirely destitute of organic
remains."[4]
Sir Charles Lyell tells us that even the stratified drift is usually
devoid of fossils:
"Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain that over large areas
in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, I might add throughout the northern
hemisphere, on both sides of the Atlantic, the stratified drift of
the glacial period is very commonly devoid of fossils."[5]
[1. "Great Ice Age," Geikie, p. 7.
2. Ibid., p. 9.
3. Ibid., p. 342.
4. Rev. O. Fisher, quoted in "The World before the Deluge," p. 461.
5. "Antiquity of Man," third edition, p. 268.]
{p. 5}
In the next place, this "till" differs from the rest of the Drift in
its exceeding hardness:
"This till is so tough that engineers would much rather excavate the
most obdurate rocks than attempt to remove it from their path. Hard
rocks are more or less easily assailable with gunpowder, and the
numerous joints and fissures by which they are traversed enable the
workmen to wedge them out often in considerable lumps. But till has
neither crack nor joint; it will not blast, and to pick it to pieces
is a very slow and laborious process. Should streaks of sand
penetrate it, water will readily soak through, and large masses will
then run or collapse, as soon as an opening is made into it."
###
TILL OVERLAID WITH BOWLDER-CLAY, RIVER STINCHAR.
_r_, Rock; _t_, Till; _g_, Bowlder-Clay; _x_, Fine Gravel, etc.
The accompanying cut shows the manner in which it is distributed, and
its relations to the other deposits of the Drift.
In this "till" or "hard-pan" are found some strange and
characteristic stones. They are bowlders, not water-worn, not
rounded, as by the action of waves, and yet not angular--for every
point and projection has been ground off. They are not very large,
and they differ in this and other respects from the bowlders found in
the other portions of the Drift. These stones in the "till" are
always striated--that is, cut by deep lines or grooves, usually
running lengthwise, or parallel to their longest diameter. The cut on
the following page represents one of them.
{p. 6}
Above this clay is a deposit resembling it, and yet differing from
it, called the "bowlder-clay." This is not so tough or hard. The
bowlders in it are larger and more angular-sometimes they are of
immense size; one at
###
SCRATCHED STONE (BLACK SHALE), FROM THE TILL.
Bradford, Massachusetts, is estimated to weigh 4,500,000 pounds. Many
on Cape Cod are twenty feet in diameter. One at Whitingham, Vermont,
is forty-three feet long by thirty feet high, or 40,000 cubic feet in
bulk. In some
{p. 7}
cases no rocks of the same material are found within two hundred
miles.[1]
These two formations--the "till" and the "bowlder-clay"--sometimes
pass into each other by insensible degrees. At other times the
distinction is marked. Some of the stones in the bowlder-clay are
furrowed or striated, but a large part of them are not; while in the
"till" _the stone not striated is the rare exception_.
Above this bowlder-clay we find sometimes beds of loose gravel, sand,
and stones, mixed with the remains of man and other animals. These
have all the appearance of being later in their deposition, and of
having been worked over by the action of water and ice.
This, then, is, briefly stated, the condition of the Drift.
It is plain that it was the result of violent action of some kind.
And this action must have taken place upon an unparalleled and
continental scale. One writer describes it as,
"A remarkable and stupendous period--a period so startling that it
might justly be accepted with hesitation, were not the conception
unavoidable before a series of facts as extraordinary as itself."[2]
Remember, then, in the discussions which follow, that if the theories
advanced are gigantic, the facts they seek to explain are not less
so. We are not dealing with little things. The phenomena are
continental, world-wide, globe-embracing.
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 221.
2. Gratacap, "Ice Age," "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1878.]
CHAPTER II.
THE ORIGIN OF THE DRIFT NOT KNOWN.
WHILE several different origins have been assigned for the phenomena
known as "the Drift," and while one or two of these have been widely
accepted and taught in our schools as established truths, yet it is
not too much to say that no one of them meets all the requirements of
the case, or is assented to by the profoundest thinkers of our day.
Says one authority:
"The origin of the unstratified drift is a question which has been
much controverted."[1]
Louis Figuier says,[2] after considering one of the proposed theories:
"No such hypothesis is sufficient to explain either the cataclysms or
the glacial phenomena; and we need not hesitate to confess our
ignorance of this strange, this mysterious episode in the history of
our globe. . . . Nevertheless, we repeat, no explanation presents
itself which can be considered conclusive; and in science we should
never be afraid to say, _I do not know_."
Geikie says:
"Many geologists can not yet be persuaded that till has ever formed
and accumulated under ice." [3]
A recent scientific writer, after summing up all the facts and all
the arguments, makes this confession:
[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 112.
2. "The World before the Deluge," pp. 435, 463.
3. "The Great Ice Age," p. 370.]
{p. 9}
From the foregoing facts, it seems to me that we are justified in
concluding:
"1. That however simple and plausible the Lyellian hypothesis may be,
or however ingenious the extension or application of it suggested by
Dana, it is not sustained by any proof, and the testimony of the
rocks seems to be decidedly against it.
"2. Though much may yet be learned from a more extended and careful
study of the glacial phenomena of all parts of both hemispheres, the
facts already gathered _seem to be incompatible with any theory yet
advanced_ which makes the Ice period simply a series of telluric
phenomena, and so far strengthens the arguments of those who look to
extraneous and cosmical causes for the origin of these phenomena."[1]
The reader will therefore understand that, in advancing into this
argument, he is not invading a realm where Science has already set up
her walls and bounds and landmarks; but rather he is entering a forum
in which a great debate still goes on, amid the clamor of many
tongues.
There are four theories by which it has been attempted to explain the
Drift.
These are:
I. The action of great waves and floods of water.
II. The action of icebergs.
III. The action of glaciers.
IV. The action of a continental ice-sheet.
We will consider these several theories in their order.
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," July, 1876, p. 290.]
{p. 10}
CHAPTER III.
THE ACTION OF WAVES.
WHEN men began, for the first time, to study the drift deposits, they
believed that they found in them the results of the Noachic Deluge;
and hence the Drift was called the Diluvium, and the period of time
in which it was laid down was entitled the Diluvial age.
It was supposed that--
"Somehow and somewhere in the far north a series of gigantic waves
was mysteriously propagated. These waves were supposed to have
precipitated themselves upon the land, and then swept madly over
mountain and valley alike, carrying along with them a mighty burden
of rocks and stones and rubbish. Such deluges were called 'waves of
translation.'"[1]
There were many difficulties about this theory:
In the first place, there was no cause assigned for these waves,
which must have been great enough to have swept over the tops of high
mountains, for the evidences of the Drift age are found three
thousand feet above the Baltic, four thousand feet high in the
Grampians of Scotland, and six thousand feet high in New England.
In the next place, if this deposit had been swept up from or by the
sea, it would contain marks of its origin. The shells of the sea, the
bones of fish, the remains of seals and whales, would have been taken
up by these great deluges, and carried over the land, and have
remained
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 26.]
{p. 11}
mingled in the _débris_ which they deposited. This is not the case.
The unstratified Drift is unfossiliferous, and where the stratified
Drift contains fossils they are the remains of land animals, except
in a few low-lying districts near the sea.
I quote:
"Over the interior of the continent _it contains no marine fossils or
relics_."[1]
Geikie says:
"_Not a single trace of any marine organism has yet been detected in
true till_."[2]
Moreover, if the sea-waves made these great deposits, they must have
picked up the material composing them either from the shores of the
sea or the beds of streams. And when we consider the vastness of the
drift-deposits, extending, as they do, over continents, with a depth
of hundreds of feet, it would puzzle us to say where were the
sea-beaches or rivers on the globe that could produce such
inconceivable quantities of gravel, sand, and clay. The production of
gravel is limited to a small marge of the ocean, not usually more
than a mile wide, where the waves and the rocks meet. If we suppose
the whole shore of the oceans around the northern half of America to
be piled up with gravel five hundred feet thick, it would go but a
little way to form the immense deposits which stretch from the Arctic
Sea to Patagonia.
The stones of the "till" are strangely marked, striated, and
scratched, with lines parallel to the longest diameter. No such
stones are found in river-beds or on sea-shores.
Geikie says:
"We look in vain for striated stones in the gravel which the surf
drives backward and forward on a beach,
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 220.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 15.]
{p. 12}
and we may search the _detritus_ that beaches and rivers push along
their beds, but _we shall not find any stones at all resembling those
of the till_."[1]
But we need not discuss any further this theory. It is now almost
universally abandoned.
We know of no way in which such waves could be formed; if they were
formed, they could not find the material to carry over the land; if
they did find it, it would not have the markings which are found in
the Drift, and it would possess marine fossils not found in the
Drift; and the waves would not and could not scratch and groove the
rock-surfaces underneath the Drift, as we know they are scratched and
grooved.
Let us then dismiss this hypothesis, and proceed to the consideration
of the next.
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 69.]
{p. 13}
CHAPTER IV.
WAS IT CAUSED BY ICEBERGS?
WE come now to a much more reasonable hypothesis, and one not without
numerous advocates even to this day, to wit: that the drift-deposits
were caused by icebergs floating down in deep water over the sunken
land, loaded with _débris_ from the Arctic shores, which they shed as
they melted in the warmer seas of the south.
This hypothesis explains the carriage of enormous blocks weighing
hundreds of tons from their original site to where they are now
found; but it is open to many unanswerable objections.
In the first place, if the Drift had been deposited under water deep
enough to float icebergs, it would present throughout unquestionable
evidences of stratification, for the reason that the larger masses of
stone would fall more rapidly than the smaller, and would be found at
the bottom of the deposit. If, for instance, you were to go to the
top of a shot-tower, filled with water, and let loose at the same
moment a quantity of cannon-balls, musket-balls, pistol-balls,
duck-shot, reed-bird shot, and fine sand, all mixed together, the
cannon-balls would reach the bottom first, and the other missiles in
the order of their size; and the deposit at the bottom would be found
to be regularly stratified, with the sand and the finest shot on top.
But nothing of this kind is found in the Drift, especially in the
"till"; clay, sand, gravel, stones,
{p. 14}
and bowlders are all found mixed together in the utmost confusion,
"higgledy-piggledy, pell-mell."
Says Geikie:
"Neither can till owe its origin to icebergs. If it had been
distributed over the sea-bottom, it would assuredly have shown some
kind of arrangement. When an iceberg drops its rubbish, it stands to
reason that the heavier blocks will reach the bottom first, then the
smaller stones, and lastly the finer ingredients. There is no such
assortment visible, however, in the normal 'till,' but large and
small stones are scattered pretty equally through the clay, which,
moreover, is quite unstratified."[1]
This fact alone disposes of the iceberg theory as an explanation of
the Drift.
Again: whenever deposits are dropped in the sea, they fall uniformly
and cover the surface below with a regular sheet, conforming to the
inequalities of the ground, no thicker in one place than another. But
in the Drift this is not the case. The deposit is thicker in the
valleys and thinner on the hills, sometimes absent altogether on the
higher elevations.
"The true bowlder-clay is spread out over the region under
consideration as a somewhat widely extended and uniform sheet, yet it
may be said to fill up all small valleys and depressions, and to be
thin or absent on ridges or rising grounds."[2]
That is to say, it fell as a snow-storm falls, driven by high winds;
or as a semi-fluid mass might be supposed to fall, draining down from
the elevations and filling up the hollows.
Again: the same difficulty presents itself which we found in the case
of "the waves of transplantation." Where did the material of the
Drift come from? On what sea-shore, in what river-beds, was this
incalculable mass of clay, gravel, and stones found?
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 72.
2. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 112.]
{p. 15}
Again: if we suppose the supply to have existed on the Arctic coasts,
the question comes,
Would the icebergs have carried it over the face of the continents?
Mr. Croll has shown very clearly[1] that the icebergs nowadays
usually sail down into the oceans without a scrap of _débris_ of any
kind upon them.
Again: how could the icebergs have made the continuous scratchings or
striæ, found under the Drift nearly all over the continents of Europe
and America? Why, say the advocates of this theory, the icebergs
press upon the bottom of the sea, and with the stones adhering to
their base they make those striæ.
But two things are necessary to this: First, that there should be a
force great enough to drive the berg over the bottom of the sea when
it has once grounded. We know of no such force. On the contrary, we
do know that wherever a berg grounds it stays until it rocks itself
to pieces or melts away. But, suppose there was such a propelling
force, then it is evident that whenever the iceberg floated clear of
the bottom it would cease to make the strive, and would resume them
only when it nearly stranded again. That is to say, when the water
was deep enough for the berg to float clear of the bottom of the sea,
there could be no striæ; when the water was too shallow, the berg
would not float at all, and there would be no striæ. The berg would
mark the rocks only where it neither floated clear nor stranded.
Hence we would find striæ only at a certain elevation, while the
rocks below or above that level would be free from them. But this is
not the case with the drift-markings. They pass over mountains and
down into the deepest valleys; they are
[1. "Climate and Time," p. 282.]
{p. 16}
universal within very large areas; they cover the face of continents
and disappear under the waves of the sea.
It is simply impossible that the Drift was caused by icebergs. I
repeat, when they floated clear of the rocks, of course they would
not mark them; when the water was too shallow to permit them to float
at all, and so move onward, of course they could not mark them. The
striations would occur only when the water was; just deep enough to
float the berg, and not deep enough to raise the berg clear of the
rocks; and but a small part of the bottom of the sea could fulfill
these conditions.
Moreover, when the waters were six thousand feet deep in New England,
and four thousand feet deep in Scotland, and over the tops of the
Rocky Mountains, where was the rest of the world, and the life it
contained?
{p. 17}
CHAPTER V.
WAS IT CAUSED BY GLACIERS?
WHAT is a glacier? It is a river of ice, crowded by the weight of
mountain-ice down into some valley, along which it descends by a
slow, almost imperceptible motion, due to a power of the ice, under
the force of gravity, to rearrange its molecules. It is fed by the
mountains and melted by the sun.
The glaciers are local in character, and comparatively few in number;
they are confined to valleys having some general slope downward. The
whole Alpine mass does not move down upon the plain. The movement
downward is limited to these glacier-rivers.
The glacier complies with some of the conditions of the problem. We
can suppose it capable of taking in its giant paw a mass of rock, and
using it as a graver to carve deep grooves in the rock below it; and
we can see in it a great agency for breaking up rocks and carrying
the _detritus_ down upon the plains. But here the resemblance ends.
That high authority upon this subject, James Geikie, says:
"But we can not fail to remark that, although scratched and polished
stones occur not infrequently in the frontal moraines of Alpine
glaciers, yet at the same time these moraines _do not at all resemble
till_. The moraine consists for the most part of a confused heap of
rough _angular_ stones and blocks, and loose sand and _débris_;
scratched
{p. 18}
stones are decidedly in the minority, and indeed _a close search will
often fail to show them_. Clearly, then, the till is not of the
nature of a terminal moraine. _Each stone_ in the 'till' gives
evidence of having been subjected to a grinding process. . . .
"We look in vain, however, among the glaciers of the Alps for such a
deposit. The scratched stones we may occasionally find, _but where is
the clay?_ . . . It is clear that the conditions for the gathering of
a stony clay like the I till' do not obtain (as far as we know) among
the Alpine glaciers. There is too much water circulating below the
ice there to allow any considerable thickness of such a deposit to
accumulate."[1]
But it is questionable whether the glaciers do press with a steady
force upon the rocks beneath so as to score them. As a rule, the base
of the glacier is full of water; rivers flow from under them. The
opposite picture, from Professor Winchell's "Sketches of Creation,"
page 223, does not represent a mass of ice, bugging the rocks,
holding in its grasp great gravers of stone with which to cut the
face of the rocks into deep grooves, and to deposit an even coating
of rounded stones and clay over the face of the earth.
On the contrary, here are only angular masses of rock, and a stream
which would certainly wash away any clay which might be formed.
Let Mr. Dawkins state the case:
"The hypothesis upon which the southern extension is founded--that
the bowlder-clays have been formed by ice melting on the land--is
open to this objection, that _no similar clays have been proved to
have been so formed_, either in the Arctic regions, where the
ice-sheet has retreated, or in the districts forsaken by the glaciers
in the Alps or Pyrenees, or in any other mountain-chain. . . .
The English bowlder-clays, as a whole, differ from
[1. "The Great Ice Age," pp. 70-72.]
{p. 19}
the _moraine profonde_ in their softness, and the large area which
they cover. Strata of bowlder-clay at all comparable to the great
clay mantle covering the lower grounds of Britain, north of the
Thames, are conspicuous by their absence from the glaciated regions
of Central Europe and the Pyrenees, which were not depressed beneath
the sea."
###
A RIVER ISSUING FROM A SWISS GLACIER.
Moreover, the Drift, especially the "till," lies in great continental
sheets of clay and gravel, of comparatively uniform thickness. The
glaciers could not form such sheets; they deposit their material in
long ridges called "terminal moraines."
Agassiz, the great advocate of the ice-origin of the Drift, says:
"All these moraines are the land-marks, so to speak, by which we
trace the height and extent, as well as the
[1. Dawkin's "Early Man in Britain," pp. 116, 117.]
{p. 20}
progress and retreat, of glaciers in former times. Suppose, for
instance, that a glacier were to disappear entirely. For ages it has
been a gigantic ice-raft, receiving all sorts of materials on its
surface as it traveled onward, and bearing them along with it; while
the hard particles of rocks set in its lower surface have been
polishing and fashioning the whole surface over which it extended. As
it now melts it drops its various burdens to the ground; bowlders are
the milestones marking the different stages of its journey; the
terminal and lateral moraines are the frame-work which it erected
around itself as it moved forward, and which define its boundaries
centuries after it has vanished."[1]
###
TERMINAL MORAINE.
And Professor Agassiz gives us, on page 307 of the same work, the
above representation of a "terminal moraine."
The reader can see at once that these semicircular
[1. "Geological Sketches," p. 308.]
{p. 21}
ridges bear no resemblance whatever to the great drift-deposits of
the world, spread out in vast and nearly uniform sheets, without
stratification, over hills and plains alike.
And here is another perplexity: It might naturally be supposed that
the smoothed, scratched, and smashed appearance of the underlying
rocks was due to the rubbing and rolling of the stones under the ice
of the glaciers; but, strange to say, we find that--
"The scratched and polished rock-surfaces are by no means confined to
till-covered districts. They are met with _everywhere_ and _at all
levels_ throughout the country, from the sea-coast up to near the
tops of some of our higher mountains. The lower hill-ranges, such as
the Sidlaws, the Ochils, the Pentlands, the Kilbarchan and Paisley
Hills, and others, exhibit polished and smoothed rock-surfaces _on
their very crest_. Similar markings streak and score the rocks up to
a great height in the deep valleys of the Highlands."[1]
We can realize, in our imagination, the glacier of the
mountain-valley crushing and marking the bed in which it moves, or
even the plain on which it discharges itself; but it is impossible to
conceive of a glacier upon the bare top of a mountain, without walls
to restrain it or direct its flow, or higher ice accumulations to
feed it.
Again:
"If glaciers descended, as they did, on both sides of the great
Alpine ranges, then we would expect to find the same results on the
plains of Northern Italy that present themselves on the low grounds
of Switzerland. But this is not the case. On the plains of Italy
there are no traces of the stony clay found in Switzerland and all
over Europe. Neither are any of the stones of the drift of Italy
scratched or striated."[2]
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 73.
2. Ibid., pp. 491, 492.]
{p. 22}
But, strange to say, while, as Geikie admits, no true "till" or Drift
is now being formed by or under the glaciers of Switzerland,
nevertheless "till" is found in that country _disassociated from the
glaciers_. Geikie says:
"In the low grounds of Switzerland we get a dark, tough clay, packed
with scratched and well-rubbed stones, and containing here and there
some admixture of sand and irregular beds and patches of earthy
gravel. This clay is quite unstratified, and the strata upon which it
rests frequently exhibit much confusion, being turned up on end and
bent over, exactly as in this country the rocks are sometimes broken
and disturbed below till. The whole deposit has experienced much
denudation, but even yet it covers considerable areas, and attains a
thickness varying from a few feet up to not less than thirty feet in
thickness."[1]
Here, then, are the objections to this theory of the glacier-origin
of the Drift:
I. The glaciers do not produce striated stones.
II. The glaciers do not produce drift-clay.
III. The glaciers could not have formed continental sheets of "till."
IV. The glaciers could not have existed upon, and consequently could
not have striated, the mountain-tops.
V. The glaciers could not have reached to the great plains of the
continents far remote from valleys, where we still find the Drift and
drift-markings.
VI. The glaciers are limited in number and confined in their
operations, and were utterly inadequate to have produced the
thousands of square miles of drift-_débris_ which we find enfolding
the world.
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 373.]
{p. 23}
CHAPTER VI.
WAS IT CAUSED BY CONTINENTAL ICE-SHEETS?
WE, come now to the theory which is at present most generally
accepted:
It being apparent that glaciers were not adequate to produce the
results which we find, the glacialists have fallen back upon an
extraordinary hypothesis--to wit, that the whole north and south
regions of the globe, extending from the poles to 35° or 40° of north
and south latitude, were, in the Drift age, covered with enormous,
continuous sheets of ice, from one mile thick at its southern margin,
to three or five miles thick at the poles. As they find
drift-scratches upon the tops of mountains in Europe three to four
thousand feet high, and in New England upon elevations six thousand
feet high, it follows, according to this hypothesis, that the
ice-sheet must have been considerably higher than these mountains,
for the ice must have been thick enough to cover their tops, and high
enough and heavy enough above their tops to press down upon and
groove and scratch the rocks. And as the _striæ_ in Northern Europe
were found to disregard the conformation of the continent and the
islands of the sea, it became necessary to suppose that this polar
ice-sheet filled up the bays and seas, so that one could have passed
dry-shod, in that period, from France to the north pole, over a
steadily ascending plane of ice.
No attempt has been made to explain where all this
{p. 24}
ice came from; or what force lifted the moisture into the air which,
afterward descending, constituted these world-cloaks of frozen water.
It is, perhaps, easy to suppose that such world-cloaks might have
existed; we can imagine the water of the seas falling on the
continents, and freezing as it fell, until, in the course of ages, it
constituted such gigantic ice-sheets; but something more than this is
needed. This does not account for these hundreds of feet of clay,
bowlders, and gravel.
But it is supposed that these were torn from the surface of the rocks
by the pressure of the ice-sheet moving southward. But what would
make it move southward? We know that some of our mountains are
covered to-day with immense sheets of ice, hundreds and thousands of
feet in thickness. Do these descend upon the flat country? No; they
lie there and melt, and are renewed, kept in equipoise by the
contending forces of heat and cold.
Why should the ice-sheet move southward? Because, say the
"glacialists," the lands of the northern parts of Europe and America
were then elevated fifteen hundred feet higher than at present, and
this gave the ice a sufficient descent. But what became of that
elevation afterward? Why, it went down again. It had accommodatingly
performed its function, and then the land resumed its old place!
But _did_ the land rise up in this extraordinary fashion? Croll says:
"The greater elevation of the land (in the Ice period) is simply
assumed as an hypothesis to account for the cold. The facts of
geology, however, are fast establishing the opposite conclusion,
viz., that when the country was covered with ice, the land stood in
relation to the sea at a lower level than at present, and that the
continental periods or times, when the land stood in relation to the
{p. 25}
sea at a higher level than now, were the warm inter-glacial periods,
when the country was free of snow and ice, And a mild and equable
condition of climate prevailed. This is the conclusion toward which
we are being led by the more recent revelations of surface-geology,
and also by certain facts connected with the geographical
distribution of plants and animals during the Glacial epoch."[1]
H. B. Norton says:
"When we come to study the cause of these phenomena, we find many
perplexing and contradictory theories in the field. A favorite one is
that of vertical elevation. But it seems impossible to admit that the
circle inclosed within the parallel of 40°--some seven thousand miles
in diameter--could have been elevated to such a height as to produce
this remarkable result. This would be a supposition hard to reconcile
with the present proportion of land and water on the surface of the
globe and with the phenomena of terrestrial contraction and
gravitation."[2]
We have seen that the surface-rocks underneath the Drift are scored
and grooved by some external force. Now we find that these markings
do not all run in the same direction; on the contrary, they cross
each other in an extraordinary manner. The cut on the following page
illustrates this.
If the direction of the motion of the ice-sheets, which caused these
markings, was,--as the glacialists allege,--always from the elevated
region in the north to the lower ground in the south, then the
markings must always have been in the same direction: given a fixed
cause, we must have always a fixed result. We shall see, as we go on
in this argument, that the deposition of the "till" was
instantaneous; and, as these markings were made before or at the same
time the "till" was laid down, how could the land
[1. "Climate and Time," p. 391.
2. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1879, p. 833.]
{p. 26}
possibly have bobbed up and down, now here, now there, so that the
elevation from which the ice-sheet descended
###
SKETCH OF GLACIER-FURROWS AND SCRATCHES AT STONY POINT, LAKE ERIE,
MICHIGAN.
_aa_, deep water-line; _bb_ border of the bank of earthy
materials; _cc_, deep parallel grooves four and a half feet
apart and twenty-five feet long, bearing north 60° east;
_d_, a set of grooves and scratches bearing north 60° west;
_e_, a natural bridge.
[Winchell's "Sketches of Creation," p. 213.]
was one moment in the northeast, and the next moment had whirled away
into the northwest? As the poet says:
". . . Will these trees,
That have outlived the eagle, page thy steps
And skip, when thou point'st out?"
{p. 27}
But if the point of elevation was whisked away from east to west, how
could an ice-sheet a mile thick instantaneously adapt itself to the
change? For all these markings took place in the interval between the
time when the external force, whatever it was, struck the rocks, and
the time when a sufficient body of "till" had been laid down to
shield the rocks and prevent further wear and tear. Neither is it
possible to suppose an ice-sheet, a mile in thickness, moving in two
diametrically opposite directions at the same time.
Again: the ice-sheet theory requires an elevation in the north and a
descent southwardly; and it is this descent southwardly which is
supposed to have given the momentum and movement by which the weight
of the superincumbent mass of ice tore up, plowed up, ground up, and
smashed up the face of the surface-rocks, and thus formed the Drift
and made the _striæ_.
But, unfortunately, when we come to apply this theory to the facts,
we find that it is the _north_ sides of the hills and mountains that
are striated, while the _south sides have gone scot-free!_ Surely, if
weight and motion made the Drift, then the groovings, caused by
weight and motion, must have been more distinct upon a declivity than
upon an ascent. The school-boy toils patiently and slowly up the hill
with his sled, but when he descends he comes down with
railroad-speed, scattering the snow before him in all directions. But
here we have a school-boy that tears and scatters things going
_up_-hill, and sneaks down-hill snail-fashion.
"Professor Hitchcock remarks, that Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire,
3,250 feet high, is scarified from top to bottom on its northern side
and western side, but not on, the southern."[1]
This state of things is universal in North America.
[1. Dana's "Manual of Geology," p. 537.]
{p. 28}
But let us look at another point:
If the vast deposits of sand, gravel, clay, and bowlders, which are
found in Europe and America, were placed there by a great continental
ice-sheet, reaching down from the north pole to latitude 35° or 40°;
if it was the ice that tore and scraped up the face of the rocks and
rolled the stones and striated them, and left them in great sheets
and heaps all over the land--then it follows, as a matter of course,
that in all the regions equally near the pole, and equally cold in
climate, the ice must have formed a similar sheet, and in like manner
have torn up the rocks and ground them into gravel and clay. This
conclusion is irresistible. If the cold of the north caused the ice,
and the ice caused the Drift, then in all the cold north-lands there
must have been ice, and consequently there ought to have been Drift.
If we can find, therefore, any extensive cold region of the earth
where the Drift is not, then we can not escape the conclusion that
the cold and the ice did not make the Drift.
Let us see: One of the coldest regions of the earth is Siberia. It is
a vast tract reaching to the Arctic Circle; it is the north part of
the Continent of Asia; it is intersected by great mountain-ranges.
Here, if anywhere, we should find the Drift; here, if anywhere, was
the ice-field, "the sea of ice." It is more elevated and more
mountainous than the interior of North America where the
drift-deposits are extensive; it is nearer the pole than New York and
Illinois, covered as these are with hundreds of feet of _débris_, and
yet _there is no Drift in Siberia!_
I quote from a high authority, and a firm believer in the theory that
glaciers or ice-sheets caused the drift; James Geikie says:
"It is remarkable that _nowhere in the great plains of Siberia do any
traces of glacial action appear to have_
{p. 29}
_been observed._ If cones and mounds of gravel and great erratics
like those that sprinkle so wide an area in Northern America and
Northern Europe had occurred, they would hardly have failed to arrest
the attention of explorers. Middendorff does, indeed, mention the
occurrence of trains of large erratics which he observed along the
banks of some of the rivers, but these, he has no doubt, were carried
down by river-ice. The general character of the 'tundras' is that of
wide, flat plains, covered for the most part with a grassy and mossy
vegetation, but here and there bare and sandy. Frequently nothing
intervenes to break the monotony of the landscape. . . . It would
appear, then, that ill Northern Asia representatives of the glacial
deposits which are met with in similar latitudes in Europe and
America _do not occur_. The northern drift of Russia and Germany; the
åsar of Sweden; the kames, eskers, and erratics of Britain; and the
iceberg-drift of Northern America have, apparently, no equivalent in
Siberia. Consequently we find the great river-deposits, with their
mammalian remains, which tell of a milder climate than now obtains in
those high latitudes, still lying _undisturbed at the surface_."[1]
Think of the significance of all this. There is no Drift in Siberia;
no "till," no "bowlder-clay," no stratified masses of gravel, sand,
and stones. There was, then, no Drift age in all Northern Asia, _up
to the Arctic Circle!_
How pregnant is this admission. It demolishes at one blow the whole
theory that the Drift came of the ice. For surely if we could expect
to find ice, during the so-called Glacial age, anywhere on the face
of our planet, it would be in Siberia. But, if there was an ice-sheet
there, it did not grind up the rocks; it did not striate them; it did
not roll the fragments into bowlders and pebbles; it rested so
quietly on the face of the land that, as Geikie tells us, the
pre-glacial deposits throughout Siberia, with their mammalian
remains, are still found "_lying undisturbed_
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 460, published in 1873.]
{p. 30}
_on the surface_"; and he even thinks that the great mammals, the
mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, "may have survived in Northern
Asia down to a comparatively recent date,"[1] ages after they were
crushed out of existence by the Drift of Europe and America.
Mr. Geikie seeks to account for this extraordinary state of things by
supposing that the climate of Siberia was, during the Glacial age,
too dry to furnish snow to make the ice-sheet. But when it is
remembered that there was moisture enough, we are told, in Northern
Europe and America at that time to form a layer of ice from _one to
three miles in thickness_, it would certainly seem that enough ought
to have blown across the eastern line of European Russia to give
Siberia a fair share of ice and Drift. The explanation is more
extraordinary than the thing it explains. One third of the water of
all the oceans must have been carried up, and was circulating around
in the air, to descend upon the earth in rain and snow, and yet none
of it fell on Northern Asia! And as the line of the continents
separating Europe and Asia had not yet been established, it can not
be supposed that the Drift ref used to enter Asia out of respect to
the geographical lines.
But not alone is the Drift absent from Siberia, and, probably, all
Asia; it does not extend even over all Europe. Louis Figuier says
that the traces of glacial action "are observed in all the north of
Europe, in Russia, Iceland, Norway, Prussia, the British Islands,
part of Germany in the north, and even in some parts of the south of
Spain."[2] M. Edouard Collomb finds only a "a shred" of the glacial
evidences in France, and thinks they were _absent from part of
Russia!_
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 461.
2. "The World before the Deluge," p. 451.]
{p. 31}
And, even in North America, the Drift is not found everywhere. There
is a remarkable region, embracing a large area in Wisconsin, Iowa,
and Minnesota, which Professor J. D. Whitney[1] calls "the driftless
region," in which no drift, no clays, no gravel, no rock strive or
furrows are found. The rock-surfaces have not been ground down and
polished. "This is the more remarkable," says Geikie, "seeing that
the regions to the north, west, east, and south are all more or less
deeply covered with drift-deposits."[2] And, in this region, as in
Siberia, the remains of the large, extinct mammalia are found
imbedded in the surface-wash, or in cracks or crevices of the
limestone.
If the Drift of North America was due to the ice-sheet, why is there
no drift-deposit in "the driftless region" of the Northwestern States
of America? Surely this region must have been as cold as Illinois,
Ohio, etc. It is now the coldest part of the Union. Why should the
ice have left this oasis, and refused to form on it? Or why, if it
did form on it, did it refuse to tear up the rock-surfaces and form
Drift?
Again, no traces of northern drift are found in California, which is
surrounded by high mountains, in some of which fragments of glaciers
are found even to this day.[3]
According to Foster, the Drift did not extend to Oregon; and, in the
opinion of some, it does not reach much beyond the western boundary
of Iowa.
Nor can it be supposed that the driftless regions of Siberia,
Northwestern America, and the Pacific coast are due to the absence of
ice upon them during the Glacial
[1. "Report of the Geological Survey of Wisconsin," vol. i, p. 114.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 465.
3. Whitney, "Proceedings of the California Academy of Natural
Sciences."]
{p. 32}
age, for in Siberia the remains of the great mammalia, the mammoth,
the woolly rhinoceros, the bison, and the horse, are found to this
day imbedded in great masses of ice, which, as we shall see, are
supposed to have been formed around them at the very coming of the
Drift age.
But there is another difficulty:
Let us suppose that on all the continents an ice-belt came down from
the north and south poles to 35° or 40° of latitude, and there stood,
massive and terrible, like the ice-sheet of Greenland, frowning over
the remnant of the world, and giving out continually fogs,
snow-storms, and tempests; what, under such circumstances, must have
been the climatic conditions of the narrow belt of land which these
ice-sheets did not cover?
Louis Figuier says:
"Such masses of ice could only have covered the earth when the
temperature of the air was lowered at least some degrees below zero.
But organic life is incompatible with such a temperature; and to this
cause must we attribute the disappearance of certain species of
animals and plants--in particular the rhinoceros and the
elephant--which, before this sudden and extraordinary cooling of the
globe, appeared to have limited themselves, in immense herds, to
Northern Europe, and chiefly to Siberia, where their remains have
been found in such prodigious quantities."[1]
But if the now temperate region of Europe and America was subject to
a degree of cold great enough to destroy these huge animals, then
there could not have been a tropical climate anywhere on the globe.
If the line of 35° or 40°, north and south, was several degrees below
zero, the equator must have been at least below the frost-point. And,
if so, how can we account for the survival,
[1. "The World before the Deluge," p. 462.]
{p. 33}
to our own time, of innumerable tropical plants that can not stand
for one instant the breath of frost, and whose fossilized remains are
found in the rocks prior to the Drift? As they lived through the
Glacial age, it could not have been a period of great and intense
cold. And this conclusion is in accordance with the results of the
latest researches of the scientists:--
"In his valuable studies upon the diluvial flora, Count Gaston de
Saporta concludes that the climate in this period was marked rather
by extreme moisture than extreme cold."
Again: where did the clay, which is deposited in such gigantic
masses, hundreds of feet thick, over the continents, come from? We
have seen (p. 18, _ante_) that, according to Mr. Dawkins, "no such
clay has been proved to have been formed, _either in the Arctic
regions, whence the ice-sheet has retreated_, or in the districts
forsaken by the glaciers."
If the Arctic ice-sheet does not create such a clay now, why did it
create it centuries ago on the plains of England or Illinois?
The other day I traveled from Minnesota to Cape May, on the shore of
the Atlantic, a distance of about fifteen hundred miles. At scarcely
any point was I out of sight of the red clay and gravel of the Drift:
it loomed up amid the beach-sands of New Jersey; it was laid bare by
railroad-cuts in the plains of New York and Pennsylvania; it covered
the highest tops of the Alleghanies at Altoona; the farmers of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin were raising crops upon it; it was
everywhere. If one had laid down a handful of the Wisconsin Drift
alongside of a handful of the New Jersey deposit, he could scarcely
have perceived any difference between them.
{p. 34}
Here, then, is a geological formation, almost identical in character,
fifteen hundred miles long from east to west, and reaching through
the whole length of North and South America, from the Arctic Circle
to Patagonia.
Did ice grind this out of the granite?
Where did it get the granite? The granite reaches the surface only in
limited areas; as a rule, it is buried many miles in depth under the
sedimentary rocks.
How did the ice pick out its materials so as to grind _nothing but
granite_?
This deposit overlies limestone and sandstone. The ice-sheet rested
upon them. Why were _they_ not ground up with the granite? Did the
ice intelligently pick out a particular kind of rock, and that the
hardest of them all?
But here is another marvel--this clay is red. The red is due to the
grinding up of mica and hornblende. Granite is composed of quartz,
feldspar, and mica. In syenitic granite the materials are quartz,
feldspar, and hornblende. Mica and hornblende contain considerable
oxide of iron, while feldspar has none. When mica and hornblende are
ground up, the result is blue or red clays, as the oxidation of the
iron turns the clay red; while the clay made of feldspar is light
yellow or white.
Now, then, not only did the ice-sheet select for grinding the granite
rocks, and refuse to touch the others, but it put the granite itself
through some mysterious process by which it separated the feldspar
from the mica and hornblende, and manufactured a white or yellow clay
out of the one, which it deposited in great sheets by itself, as west
of the Mississippi; while it ground up the mica and hornblende and
made blue or red clays, which it laid down elsewhere, as the red
clays are spread over that great stretch of fifteen hundred miles to
which I have referred.
{p. 35}
Can any one suppose that ice could so discriminate?
And if it by any means effected this separation of the particles of
granite, indissolubly knit together, how could it perpetuate that
separation while moving over the land, crushing all beneath and
before it, and leave it on the face of the earth free from commixture
with the surface rocks?
Again: the ice-sheets which now exist in the remote north do not move
with a constant and regular motion southward, grinding up the rocks
as they go. A recent writer, describing the appearance of things in
Greenland, says:
"The coasts are deeply indented with numerous bays and fiords or
firths, which, when traced inland, are almost invariably found to
terminate against glaciers. Thick ice frequently appears, too,
crowning the exposed sea-cliffs, from the edges of which _it droops
in thick, tongue-like, and stalactitic projections_, until its own
weight forces it to break away and topple down the precipices into
the sea."[1]
This does not represent an ice-sheet moving down continuously from
the high grounds and tearing up the rocks. It rather breaks off like
great icicles from the caves of a house.
Again: the ice-sheets to-day do not striate or groove the rocks over
which they move.
Mr. Campbell, author of two works in defense of the iceberg
theory--"Fire and Frost," and "A Short American Tramp"--went, in
1864, to the coasts of Labrador, the Strait of Belle Isle, and the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, for the express purpose of witnessing the
effects of icebergs, and testing the theory he had formed. On the
coast of Labrador he reports that at Hanly Harbor, where
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1874, p. 646.]
{p. 36}
the whole strait is blocked up with ice each winter, and the great
mass swung bodily up and down, "grating along the bottom at all
depths," he "found the rocks ground smooth, but _not striated_."[1]
At Cape Charles and Battle Harbor, he reports, "the rocks at the
water-line are _not striated_."[2] At St. Francis Harbor, "the
water-line is much rubbed smooth, but _not striated_."[3] At Sea
Islands, he says, "No striæ are to be seen at the land-wash in these
sounds or on open sea-coasts near the present waterline."[4]
Again: if these drift-deposits, these vast accumulations of sand,
clay, gravel, and bowlders, were caused by a great continental
ice-sheet scraping and tearing the rocks on which it rested, and
constantly moving toward the sun, then not only would we find, as I
have suggested in the case of glaciers, the accumulated masses of
rubbish piled up in great windrows or ridges along the lines where
the face of the ice-sheet melted, but we would naturally expect that
the farther north we went the less we would find of these materials;
in other words, that the ice, advancing southwardly, would sweep the
north clear of _débris_ to pile it up in the more southern regions.
But this is far from being the case. On the contrary, the great
masses of the Drift extend as far north as the land itself. In the
remote, barren grounds of North America, we are told by various
travelers who have visited those regions, "sand-hills and erratics
appear to be as common as in the countries farther south."[5] Captain
Bach tells us[6] that he saw great chains of sand-hills, stretching
[1. "A Short American Tramp," pp. 68, 107.
2. Ibid., p. 68.
3. Ibid., p. 72.
4. Ibid., p. 76.
5. "The Great Ice Age," p. 391.
6. "Narrative of Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great
Fish River," pp. 140, 346.]
{p. 37}
away from each side of the valley of the Great Fish River, in north
latitude 66°, of great height, and crowned with gigantic bowlders.
Why did not the advancing ice-sheet drive these deposits southward
over the plains of the United States? Can we conceive of a force that
was powerful enough to grind up the solid rocks, and yet was not able
to remove its own _débris_?
But there is still another reason which ought to satisfy us, once for
all, that the drift-deposits were not due to the pressure of a great
continental ice-sheet. It is this:
If the presence of the Drift proves that the country in which it is
found was once covered with a body of ice thick and heavy enough by
its pressure and weight to grind up the surface-rocks into clay,
sand, gravel, and bowlders, then the tropical regions of the world
must have been covered with such a great ice-sheet, upon the very
equator; for Agassiz found in Brazil a vast sheet of "ferruginous
clay with pebbles," which covers the whole country, "a sheet of
drift," says Agassiz, "consisting of the same homogeneous,
unstratified paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and
sizes," deep red in color, and distributed, as in the north, in
uneven hills, while sometimes it is reduced to a thin deposit. It is
recent in time, although overlying rocks ancient geologically.
Agassiz had no doubt whatever that it was of glacial origin.
Professor Hartt, who accompanied Professor Agassiz in his South
American travels, and published a valuable work called "The Geology
of Brazil," describes drift-deposits as covering the province of
Pará, Brazil, upon the equator itself. The whole valley of the Amazon
is covered with stratified and unstratified and unfossiliferous
{p. 38}
Drift,[1] and also with a peculiar drift-clay (_argile plastique
bigarrée_), plastic and streaked.
Professor Hartt gives a cut from which I copy the following
representation of drift-clay and pebbles overlying a gneiss hillock
of the Serra do Mar, Brazil:
###
DRIFT-DEPOSITS IN THE TROPICS.
_a_, drift-clay; _f f_, angular fragments of quartz; _c_.
sheet of pebbles; _d d_, gneiss in situ; _g g_, quartz and
granite veins traversing the gneiss.
But here is the dilemma to which the glacialists are reduced: If an
ice-sheet a mile in thickness, or even one hundred feet in thickness,
was necessary to produce the Drift, and if it covered the equatorial
regions of Brazil, then there is no reason why the same climatic
conditions should not have produced the same results in Africa and
Asia; and the result would be that the entire globe, from pole to
pole, must have rolled for days, years, or centuries, wrapped in a
continuous easing, mantle, or shroud of ice, under which all
vegetable and animal life must have utterly perished.
[1. "Geology of Brazil," p. 488.]
{p. 39}
And we are not without evidences that the drift-deposits are found in
Africa. We know that they extend in Europe to the Mediterranean. The
"Journal of the Geographical Society" (British) has a paper by George
Man, F. G. S., on the geology of Morocco, in which he says:
"Glacial moraines may be seen on this range nearly eight thousand
feet above the sea, forming gigantic ridges and mounds of porphyritic
blocks, in some places damming up the ravines, and at the foot of
Atlas are enormous mounds of bowlders."
These mounds oftentimes rise two thousand feet above the level of the
plain, and, according to Mr. Man, were produced by glaciers.
We shall see, hereafter, that the sands bordering Egypt belong to the
Drift age. The diamond-bearing gravels of South Africa extend to
within twenty-two degrees of the equator.
It is even a question whether that great desolate land, the Desert of
Sahara, covering a third of the Continent of Africa, is not the
direct result of this signal catastrophe. Henry W. Haynes tells us
that drift-deposits are found in the Desert of Sahara, and that--
"In the _bottoms_ of the dry ravines, or wadys, which pierce the
hills that bound the valley of the Nile, I have found numerous
specimens of flint axes of the type of St. Acheul, which have been
adjudged to be true palæolithic implements by some of the most
eminent cultivators of prehistoric science."[1]
The sand and gravel of Sahara are underlaid by a deposit of clay.
Bayard Taylor describes in the center of Africa
[1. "The Palæolithic Implements of the Valley of the Delaware,"
Cambridge, 1881.]
{p. 40}
great plains of coarse gravel, dotted with gray granite bowlders.[1]
In the United States Professor Winchell shows that the drift-deposits
_extend to the Gulf of Mexico_. At Jackson, in Southern Alabama, be
found deposits of pebbles one hundred feet in thickness.[2]
If there are no drift-deposits except where the great ice-sheet
ground them out of the rocks, then a shroud of death once wrapped the
entire globe, and _all life ceased_.
But we know that all life,--vegetable, animal, and human,--is derived
from pre-glacial sources; therefore animal, vegetable, and human life
did not perish in the Drift age; therefore an ice-sheet did not wrap
the world in its death-pall; therefore the drift-deposits of the
tropics were not due to an ice-sheet; therefore the drift-deposits of
the rest of the world were not due to ice-sheets: therefore we must
look elsewhere for their origin.
There is no escaping these conclusions. Agassiz himself says,
describing the Glacial age:
"All the springs were dried up; the rivers ceased to flow. To the
movements of a numerous and animated creation _succeeded the silence
of death_."
If the verdure was covered with ice a mile in thickness, all animals
that lived on vegetation of any kind must have perished;
consequently, all carnivores which lived on these must have ceased to
exist; and man himself, without animal or vegetable food, must have
disappeared for ever.
A writer, describing Greenland wrapped in such an ice-sheet, says
[1. "Travels in Africa," p. 188.
2. "Sketches of Creation," pp. 222, 223.]
{p. 41}
"The whole interior seems to be buried beneath a great depth of snow
and ice, which loads up the valleys and wraps over the hills. The
scene opening to view in the interior is desolate in the
extreme--nothing but one dead, dreary expanse of white, so far as the
eye can reach--_no living creature frequents this wilderness--neither
bird, beast, nor insect_. The silence, deep as death, is broken only
when the roaring storm arises to sweep before it the pitiless,
blinding snow."[1]
And yet the glacialists would have us believe that Brazil and Africa,
and the whole globe, were once wrapped in such a shroud of death!
Here, then, in conclusion, are the evidences that the deposits of the
Drift are not due to continental ice-sheets:
I. The present ice-sheets of the remote north create no such deposits
and make no such markings.
II. A vast continental elevation of land-surfaces at the north was
necessary for the ice to slide down, and this did not exist.
III. The ice-sheet, if it made the Drift markings, must have scored
the rocks going up-hill, while it did not score them going down-hill.
IV. If the cold formed the ice and the ice formed the Drift, why is
there no Drift in the coldest regions of the earth, where there must
have been ice?
V. Continental ice-belts, reaching to 40° of latitude, would have
exterminated all tropical vegetation. It was not exterminated,
therefore such ice-sheets could not have existed.
VI. The Drift is found in the equatorial regions of the world. If it
was produced by an ice-sheet in those regions, all pre-glacial forms
of life must have perished; but they did not perish; therefore the
ice-sheet could not
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," April, 1874, p. 646.]
{p. 42}
have covered these regions, and could not have produced the
drift-deposits there found.
In brief, the Drift is _not_ found where ice must have been, and _is_
found where ice could not have been; the conclusion, therefore, is
irresistible that the Drift is not due to ice.
{p. 43}
CHAPTER VII.
THE DRIFT A GIGANTIC CATASTROPHE.
IN the first place, the Drift fell upon a fair and lovely world, a
world far better adapted to give happiness to its inhabitants than
this storm-tossed planet on which we now live, with its endless
battle between heat and cold, between sun and ice.
The pre-glacial world was a garden, a paradise; not excessively warm
at the equator, and yet with so mild and equable a climate that the
plants we now call tropical flourished within the present Arctic
Circle. If some future daring navigator reaches the north pole and
finds solid land there, he will probably discover in the rocks at his
feet the fossil remains of the oranges and bananas of the pre-glacial
age.
That the reader may not think this an extravagant statement, let me
cite a few authorities.
A recent writer says:
"This was, indeed, for America, _the golden age_ of animals and
plants, and in all respects but one--the absence of man--the country
was more interesting and picturesque than now. We must imagine,
therefore, that the hills and valleys about the present site of New
York were covered with noble trees, and a dense undergrowth of
species, for the most part different from those now living there; and
that these were the homes and feeding-grounds of many kinds of
quadrupeds and birds, which have long since become extinct. The broad
plain which sloped gently seaward from the highlands must have been
{p. 44}
covered with a sub-tropical forest of-giant trees and tangled vines
teeming with animal life. This state of things doubtless continued
through many thousands of years, but ultimately a change came over
the fair face of Nature more complete and terrible than we have
language to describe."[1]
Another says:
"At the close of the Tertiary age, which ends the long series of
geological epochs previous to the Quaternary, the landscape of Europe
had, in the main, assumed its modern appearance. The middle era of
this age--the Miocene--was characterized by tropical plants, a varied
and imposing fauna, and a genial climate, so extended as to nourish
forests of beeches, maples, _walnuts_, poplars, and _magnolias in
Greenland and Spitzbergen_, while an exotic vegetation hid the
exuberant valleys of England."[2]
Dr. Dawson says:
"This delightful climate was not confined to the present temperate or
tropical regions. It extended to the very shores of the Arctic Sea.
In _North_ Greenland, at Atane-Kerdluk, in latitude 70° north, at an
elevation of more than a thousand feet above the sea, were found the
remains of beeches, oaks, pines, poplars, maples, _walnuts,
magnolias, limes_, and _vines_. The remains of similar plants were
found in Spitzbergen, in latitude 78° 56'."[3]
Dr. Dawson continues:
"Was the Miocene period on the whole a better age of the world than
that in which we live? In some respects it was. Obviously, there was
in the northern hemisphere a vast surface of land under a mild and
equable climate, and clothed with a rich and varied vegetation. Had
we lived in the Miocene we might have sat under our own vine and
fig-tree equally in Greenland and Spitzbergen and in those more
southern climes to which this
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1878, p. 648.
2. L. P. Gratacap, in "American Antiquarian," July, 1881, p. 280.
3. Dawson, "Earth and Man," p. 261.]
{p. 45}
privilege is now restricted. . . . Some reasons have been adduced for
the belief that in the Miocene and Eocene there were intervals of
cold climate; but the evidence of this may be merely local and
exceptional, and does not interfere with the broad characteristics of
the age."[1]
Sir Edward Belcher brought away from the dreary shores of Wellington
Channel (latitude 75° 32' north) portions of a tree which there can
be no doubt whatever had actually grown where be found it. The roots
were in place, in a frozen mass of earth, the stump standing upright
where it was probably overtaken by the great winter.[2] Trees have
been found, _in situ_, on Prince Patrick's Island, in latitude 76°
12' north, _four feet in circumference_. They were so old that the
wood had lost its combustible quality, and refused to burn. Mr.
Geikie thinks that it is possible these trees were pre-glacial, and
belonged to the Miocene age. They may have been the remnants of the
great forests which clothed that far northern region when the
so-called glacial age came on and brought the Drift.
We shall see hereafter that man, possibly civilized man, dwelt in
this fair and glorious world--this world that knew no frost, no cold,
no ice, no snow; that he had dwelt in it for thousands of years; that
he witnessed the appalling and sudden calamity which fell upon it;
and that he has preserved the memory of this catastrophe to the
present day, in a multitude of myths and legends scattered all over
the face of the habitable earth.
But was it sudden? Was it a catastrophe?
Again I call the witnesses to the stand, for I ask you, good reader,
to accept nothing that is not _proved_.
In the first place, was it sudden?
[1. "Earth and Man," p. 264.
2. "The Last of the Arctic Voyages," vol. i, p. 380.]
{p. 46}
One writer says:
"The glacial action, in the opinion of the land-glacialists, was
limited to a _definite period_, and operated _simultaneously_ over a
vast area."[1]
And again:
"The drift was accumulated where it is by some violent action."[2]
Louis Figuier says:
"The two cataclysms of which we have spoken surprised Europe at the
moment of the development of an important creation. The whole scope
of animated nature, the evolution of animals, was _suddenly arrested_
in that part of our hemisphere over which these gigantic convulsions
spread, followed by the brief but sudden submersion of entire
continents. Organic life had scarcely recovered from the violent
shock, when a second, and perhaps severer blow assailed it. The
northern and central parts of Europe, the vast countries which extend
from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and the Danube, were visited by
a period of sudden and severe cold; the temperature of the polar
regions seized them. The plains of Europe, but now ornamented by the
luxurious vegetation developed by the heat of a burning climate, the
boundless pastures on which herds of great elephants, the active
horse, the robust hippopotamus, and great carnivorous animals grazed
and roamed, became covered with a mantle of ice and snow."[3]
M. Ch. Martins says:
"The most violent convulsions of the solid and liquid elements appear
to have been themselves only the effects due to a cause much more
powerful than the mere expansion of the pyrosphere; and it is
necessary to recur, in order to explain them, to some new and bolder
hypothesis than has Yet been hazarded. Some philosophers have belief
[1. American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 114.
2. Ibid., vol. vi, p. 111.
3. "The World before the Deluge," p. 435.]
{p. 47}
in an astronomical revolution which may have overtaken our globe in
the first age of its formation, and have modified its position in
relation to the sun. They admit _that the poles have not always been
as they are now_, and that _some terrible shock displaced them_,
changing at the same time the inclination of the axis of the rotation
of the earth."[1]
Louis Figuier says:
"We can not doubt, after such testimony, of the existence, in the
frozen north, of the almost entire remains of the mammoth. The
animals seem to have _perished suddenly; enveloped in ice at the
moment of their death_, their bodies have been preserved from
decomposition by the continual action of the cold."[2]
Cuvier says, speaking of the bodies of the quadrupeds which the ice
had seized, and which have been preserved, with their hair, flesh,
and skin, down to our own times:
"If they had not been frozen as soon as killed, putrefaction would
have decomposed them; and, on the other hand, this eternal frost
could not have previously prevailed in the place where they died, for
they could not have lived in such a temperature. It was, therefore,
_at the same instant when these animals perished that the country
they inhabited was rendered glacial_. These events must have been
_sudden, instantaneous, and without any gradation_."[3]
There is abundant evidence that the Drift fell upon a land covered
with forests, and that the trunks of the trees were swept into the
mass of clay and gravel, where they are preserved to this day.
Mr. Whittlesey gives an account of a log found _forty feet below the
surface_, in a bed of blue clay, resting
[1. "The World before the Deluge," p. 463.
2. Ibid., p. 396.
3. "Ossements fossiles, Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe."]
{p. 48}
upon the "hard-pan" or "till," in a well dug at Columbia, Ohio.[1]
At Bloomington, Illinois, pieces of wood were found _one hundred and
twenty-three feet below the surface_, in sinking a shaft.[2]
And it is a very remarkable fact that none of these Illinois clays
_contain any fossils_.[3]
The inference, therefore, is irresistible that the clay, thus
unfossiliferous, fell upon and inclosed the trees while they were yet
growing.
These facts alone would dispose of the theory that the Drift was
deposited upon lands already covered with water. It is evident, on
the contrary, that it was dry land, inhabited land, land embowered in
forests.
On top of the Norwich crag, in England, are found the remains of an
ancient forest, "showing stumps of trees standing erect with their
roots penetrating an ancient soil."[4] In this soil occur the remains
of many extinct species of animals, together with those of others
still living; among these may be mentioned the hippopotamus, three
species of elephant, the mammoths, rhinoceros, bear, horse, Irish
elk, etc.
In Ireland remains of trees have been found in sand-beds below the
till.[5]
Dr. Dawson found a hardened peaty bed under the bowlder-clay, in
Canada, which "contained many small roots and branches, apparently of
coniferous trees allied to the spruces."[6] Mr. C. Whittlesey refers
to decayed
[1. "Smithsonian Contributions," vol. xv.
2. "Geology of Illinois," vol. iv, p. 179.
3. "The Great Ice Age," p. 387.
4. Ibid., p. 340. "Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science," vol. vi, p.
249.
5. "Acadian Geology," p. 63.]
{p. 49}
leaves and remains of the elephant and mastodon found below and in
the drift in America.[1]
"The remains of the mastodon, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and elephant
are found in the pre-glacial beds of Italy."[2]
These animals were slaughtered outright, and so suddenly that few
escaped:
Admiral Wrangel tells us that the remains of elephants, rhinoceroses,
etc., are heaped up in such quantities in certain parts of Siberia
that "he and his men climbed over ridges and mounds composed entirely
of their bones."[3]
We have seen that the Drift itself has all the appearance of having
been the product of some sudden catastrophe:
"Stones and bowlders alike are scattered higgledy-piggledy,
pell-mell, through the clay, so as to give it a _highly confused and
tumultuous appearance_."
Another writer says:
"In the mass of the 'till' itself fossils sometimes, but very rarely,
occur. Tusks of the mammoth, reindeer-antlers, and _fragments of
wood_ have from time to time been discovered. They almost invariably
afford marks of having been subjected to the same action as the
stones and bowlders by which they are surrounded."[4]
Another says:
"Logs and fragments of wood are often got at great depths in the
buried gorges."[5]
[1. "Smithsonian Contributions," vol. xv.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 492.
3. Agassiz, "Geological Sketches," p. 209.
4. "The Great Ice Age," p. 150.
5. "Illustrations of Surface Geology," "Smithsonian Contributions."]
{p. 50}
Mr. Geikie says:
"Below a deposit of till, at Woodhill Quarry, near Kilmaurs, in
Ayrshire (Scotland), the remains of mammoths and reindeer and certain
marine shells have several times been detected during the quarrying
operations. . . . Two elephant-tasks were got at a depth of seventeen
and a half feet from the surface. . . . The mammalian remains,
obtained from this quarry, occurred in a peaty layer between two thin
beds of sand and gravel which lay beneath a mass of 'till,' and
_rested directly on the sandstone rock_."[1]
And again:
"Remains of the mammoth have been met with at Chapelhall, near
Airdrie, where they occurred in a bed of laminated sand, _underlying_
'till.' Reindeer-antlers have also been discovered in other
localities, as in the valley of the Endrick, about four miles from
Loch Lomond, where an antler was found associated with marine shells,
near the bottom of a bed of blue clay, and _close to the underlying
rock_--the blue clay being covered with twelve feet of tough, stony
clay."[2]
Professor Winchell says
"Buried tree-trunks are often exhumed from the glacial drift at a
depth of from twenty to _sixty feet from the surface_. Dr. Locke has
published an account of a mass of buried drift-wood at Salem, Ohio,
_forty-three feet below the surface_, imbedded in ancient mud. The
museum of the University of Michigan contains several fragments of
well-preserved tree-trunks exhumed from wells in the vicinity of Ann
Arbor. Such occurrences are by no means uncommon. The encroachments
of the waves upon the shores of the Great Lakes reveal whole forests
of the buried trunks of the white cedar."[3]
These citations place it beyond question that the Drift came suddenly
upon the world, slaughtering the animals,
[1. The Great Ice Age," p. 149.
2. Ibid., p. 150.
3. Winchell, "Sketches of Creation," p. 259.]
{p. 51}
breaking up the forests, and overwhelming the trunks and branches of
the trees in its masses of _débris_.
Let us turn to the next question: Was it an extraordinary event, a
world-shaking cataclysm?
The answer to this question is plain: The Drift marks probably the
most awful convulsion and catastrophe that has ever fallen upon the
globe. The deposit of these continental masses of clay, sand, and
gravel was but one of the features of the apalling event. In addition
to this the earth at the same time was cleft with great cracks or
fissures, which reached down through many miles of the planet's crust
to the central fires and released the boiling rocks imprisoned in its
bosom, and these poured to the surface, as igneous, intrusive, or
trap-rocks. Where the great breaks were not deep enough to reach the
central fires, they left mighty fissures in the surface, which, in
the Scandinavian regions, are known as _fiords_, and which constitute
a striking feature of the scenery of these northern lands; they are
great canals--hewn, as it were, in the rock--with high walls
penetrating from the sea far into the interior of the land. They are
found in Great Britain, Maine, Nova Scotia, Labrador, Greenland, and
on the Western coast of North America.
David Dale Owen tells us that the outburst of trap-rock at the Dalles
of the St. Croix came up _through open fissures_, breaking the
continuity of strata, without tilting them into inclined planes."[1]
It would appear as if the earth, in the first place, cracked into
deep clefts, and the igneous matter within took advantage of these
breaks to rise to the surface. It caught masses of the sandstone in
its midst and hardened around them.
These great clefts seem to be, as Owen says, "lines
[1. "Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota," p. 142.]
{p. 52}
radiating southwestwardly from Lake Superior, as if that was the seat
of the disturbance which caused them."[1]
Moreover, when we come to examine the face of the rocks on which the
Drift came, we do not find them merely smoothed and ground down, as
we might suppose a great, heavy mass of ice moving slowly over them
would leave them. There was something more than this. There was
something, (whatever it was,) that fell upon them with awful force
and literally _smashed_ them, pounding, beating, pulverizing them,
and turning one layer of mighty rock over upon another, and
scattering them in the wildest confusion. We can not conceive of
anything terrestrial that, let loose upon the bare rocks to-day,
would or could produce such results.
Geikie says:
"When the 'till' is removed from the underlying rocks, these almost
invariably show either a well-smoothed, polished, and striated
surface, or else a _highly confused, broken, and smashed_
appearance."[2]
Gratacap says:
"'_Crushed ledges_' designate those plicated, overthrown, or curved
exposures where parallel rocks, as talcose schist, usually vertical,
are bent and fractured, _as if by a maul like force, battering them
from above_. The strata are oftentimes tumbled over upon a cliff-side
like a row of books, and rest upon heaps of fragments broken away by
the strain upon the bottom layers, or _crushed_ off from their
exposed layers."[3]
The Rev. O. Fisher, F. G. S., says he
"Finds the covering beds to consist of two members--a lower one,
entirely destitute of organic remains, and
[1. "Geological Survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota," p. 147.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 73.
3. "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1878, p. 326.]
{p. 53}
generally unstratified, which has often been _forcibly_ INDENTED
_into the bed beneath it_, sometimes exhibiting slickensides at the
junction. There is evidence of this lower member having been pushed
or dragged over the surface, from higher to lower levels, _in a
plastic condition_; on which account he has named it 'The Trail'."[1]
Now, all these details are incompatible with the idea of ice-action.
What condition of ice can be imagined that would _smash_ rocks, that
would beat them like a maul, that would _indent_ them?
And when we pass from the underlying rocks to the "till" itself, we
find the evidences of tremendous force exerted in the wildest and
most tumultuous manner.
When the clay and stones were being deposited on those crushed and
pounded rocks, they seem to have picked up the _detritus_ of the
earth in great masses, and whirled it wildly in among their own
material, and deposited it in what are called "the intercalated
beds." It would seem as if cyclonic winds had been at work among the
mass. While the "till" itself is devoid of fossils, "the intercalated
beds" often contain them. Whatever was in or on the soil was seized
upon, carried up into the air, then cast down, and mingled among the
"till."
James Geikie says, speaking of these intercalated beds:
"They are twisted, bent, crumpled, and confused _often in the wildest
manner_. Layers of clay, sand, and gravel, which were probably
deposited in a nearly horizontal plane, are puckered into folds and
sharply curved into vertical positions. I have seen whole beds of
sand and clay which had all the appearance of having been pushed
forward bodily for some distance the bedding assuming _the most
fantastic appearance_. . . . The intercalated beds are everywhere cut
through by the overlying 'till,' and
[1. "Journal of the Geological Society and Geological Magazine."]
{p. 54}
large portions have been carried away. . . . They form but a small
fraction of the drift-deposits."[1]
In the accompanying cut we have one of these sand (_s_) and clay
(_c_) patches, embosomed in the "till," _t_1 and _t_2.
###
STRATIFIED BEDS IN TILL, LEITHEN WATER, PEEBLESSHIRE, SCOTLAND.
And again, the same writer says:
"The intercalated beds are remarkable for having yielded an imperfect
skull of the great extinct ox (_Bos primigenius_), and remains of the
Irish elk or deer, and the horse, together with layers of peaty
matter."[2]
Several of our foremost scientists see in the phenomena of the Drift
the evidences of a cataclysm of some sort.
Sir John Lubbock[3] gives the following representation of a section
of the Drift at Joinville, France, containing
###
SECTION AT JOINVILLE.
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 149.
2. Ibid., p. 149.
3. "Prehistoric Times," p. 370.]
{p. 55}
an immense sandstone block, eight feet six inches in length, with a
width of two feet eight inches, and a thickness of three feet four
inches.
Discussing the subject, Mr. Lubbock says:
"We must feel that a body of water, with power to move such masses as
these, must have been very different from any floods now occurring in
those valleys, and might well deserve the name of a _cataclysm_. . .
. But a flood which could bring down so great a mass would certainly
have swept away the comparatively light and movable gravel below. We
can not, therefore, account for the phenomena by aqueous action,
because a flood which would deposit the sandstone blocks would remove
the underlying gravel, and a flood which would deposit the gravel
would not remove the blocks. The _Deus ex machinâ_ has not only been
called in most unnecessarily, but when examined turns out to be but
an idol, after all."
Sir John thinks that floating ice might have dropped these blocks;
but then, on the other hand, M. C. d'Orbigny observes that all the
fossils found in these beds belong to fresh-water or land animals.
The sea has had nothing to do with them. And D'Orbigny thinks the
Drift came from cataclysms.
M. Boucher de Perthes, the first and most exhaustive investigator of
these deposits, has always been of opinion that the drift-gravels of
France were deposited by _violent cataclysms_.[1]
This view seems to be confirmed by the fact that the gravel-beds in
which these remains of man and extinct animals are found lie at an
elevation of from eighty to _two hundred feet above the present
water-levels of the valleys_.
Sir John Lubbock says:
"Our second difficulty still remains--namely, the height at which the
upper-level gravels stand above the
[1. "Mém. Soc. d'Em. l'Abbeville," 1861, p. 475.]
{p. 56}
present water-line. We can not wonder that these beds have generally
been attributed to violent cataclysms."[1]
In America, in Britain, and in Europe, the glacial deposits made
clean work of nearly all animal life. The great mammalia, too large
to find shelter in caverns, were some of them utterly swept away,
while others never afterward returned to those regions. In like
manner palæolithic man, man of the rude and unpolished flint
implements, the contemporary of the great mammalia, the mammoth, the
hippopotamus, and the rhinoceros, was also stamped out, and the
cave-deposits of Europe show that there was a long interval before be
reappeared in those regions. The same forces, whatever they were,
which "smashed" and "pounded" and "contorted" the surface of the
earth, crushed man and his gigantic associates out of existence.[2]
But in Siberia, where, as we have seen, some of the large mammalia
were caught and entombed in ice, and preserved even to our own day,
there was no "smashing" and "crushing" of the earth, and many escaped
the snow-sheets, and their posterity survived in that region for long
ages after the Glacial period, and are supposed only to have
disappeared in quite recent times. In fact, within the last two or
three years a Russian exile declared that he had seen a group of
living mammoths in a wild valley in a remote portion of that
wilderness.
These, then, good reader, to recapitulate, are points that seem to be
established:
I. The Drift marked a world-convulsing catastrophe. It was a gigantic
and terrible event. It was something quite out of the ordinary course
of Nature's operations.
II. It was sudden and overwhelming.
[1. "Prehistoric Times," p. 372.
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 466.]
{p. 57}
III. It fell upon land areas, much like our own in geographical
conformation; a forest-covered, inhabited land; a glorious land,
basking in perpetual summer, in the midst of a golden age.
Let us go a step further.
{p. 58}
CHAPTER VIII.
GREAT HEAT A PREREQUISITE.
Now, it will be observed that the principal theories assigned for the
Drift go upon the hypothesis that it was produced by extraordinary
masses of ice--ice as icebergs, ice as glaciers, or ice in
continental sheets. The scientists admit that immediately preceding
this Glacial age the climate was mild and equable, and these great
formations of ice did not exist. But none of them pretend to say how
the ice came or what caused it. Even Agassiz, the great apostle of
the ice-origin of Drift, is forced to confess:
"We have, as yet, no clew to the source of this great and _sudden_
change of climate. Various suggestions have been made--among others,
that formerly the inclination of the earth's axis was greater, or
that a submersion of the continents under water might have produced a
decided increase of cold; but none of these explanations are
satisfactory, and science has yet to find any cause which accounts
for all the phenomena connected with it."[1]
Some have imagined that a change in the position of the earth's axis
of rotation, due to the elevation of extensive mountain-tracts
between the poles and the equator, might have caused a degree of cold
sufficient to produce the phenomena of the Drift; but Geikie says--
"It has been demonstrated that the protuberance of the earth at the
equator so vastly exceeds that of any
[1. "Geological Sketches," p. 210.]
{p. 59}
possible elevation of mountain-masses between the equator and the
poles, that any slight changes which may have resulted from such
geological causes could have had only an infinitesimal effect upon
the. general climate of the globe."[1]
Let us reason together:--
The ice, say the glacialists, caused the Drift. What caused the ice?
Great rains and snows, they say, falling on the face of the land.
Granted. What is rain in the first instance? Vapor, clouds. Whence
are the clouds derived? From the waters of the earth, principally
from the oceans. How is the water in the clouds transferred to the
clouds from the seas? By evaporation. What is necessary to
evaporation? _Heat_.
Here, then, is the sequence:
If there is no heat, there is no evaporation; no evaporation, no
clouds; no clouds, no rain; no rain, no ice; no ice, no Drift.
But, as the Glacial age meant ice on a stupendous scale, then it must
have been preceded by heat on a stupendous scale.
Professor Tyndall asserts that the ancient glaciers indicate the
action of heat as much as cold. He says:
"Cold will not produce glaciers. You may have the bitterest northeast
winds here in London throughout the winter without a single flake of
snow. Cold must have the fitting object to operate upon, and this
object--the aqueous vapor of the air--is the direct product of heat.
Let us put this glacier question in another form: the latent heat of
aqueous vapor, at the temperature of its production in the tropics,
is about 1,000° Fahr., for the latent heat augments as the
temperature of evaporation descends.
A pound of water thus vaporized at the equator has absorbed one
thousand times the quantity of heat which
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 98.]
{p. 60}
would raise a pound of the liquid one degree in temperature. . . . It
is perfectly manifest that by weakening the sun's action, either
through a defect of emission or by the steeping of the entire solar
system in space of a low temperature, _we should be cutting off the
glaciers at their source_."[1]
Mr. Croll says:
"Heat, to produce _evaporation_, is just as essential to the
accumulation of snow and ice as cold to produce condensation."[2]
Sir John Lubbock says:
"Paradoxical as it may appear, the primary cause of the Glacial epoch
may be, after all, _an elevation of the temperature in the tropics_,
causing a greater amount of evaporation in the equatorial regions,
and consequently a greater supply of the raw material of snow in the
temperate regions during the winter months."[3]
So necessary did it appear that heat must have come from some source
to vaporize all this vast quantity of water, that one gentleman,
Professor Frankland,[4] suggested that the ocean must have been
rendered hot by the internal fires of the earth, and thus the water
was sent up in clouds to fall in ice and snow; but Sir John Lubbock
disposes of this theory by showing that the fauna of the seas during
the Glacial period possessed an Arctic character. We can not conceive
of Greenland shells and fish and animals thriving in an ocean nearly
at the boiling-point.
A writer in "The Popular Science Monthly"[5] says:
"These evidences of vast accumulations of ice and snow on the borders
of the Atlantic have led some theorists
[1. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion," p. 192.
2. "Climate and Time," p. 74.
3. "Prehistoric Times," p. 401.
4. "Philosophical Magazine," 1864, p. 328.
5. July, 1876, p. 288.]
{p. 61}
to suppose that the Ice period was attended, if not in part caused,
by a far more abundant evaporation from the surface of the Atlantic
than takes place at present; and it has even been conjectured that
submarine volcanoes in the tropics might have loaded the atmosphere
with an unusual amount of moisture. This speculation seems to me,
however, both improbable and superfluous; improbable, because no
traces of any such cataclysm have been discovered, and it is more
than doubtful whether the generation of steam in the tropics, however
large the quantity, would produce glaciation of the polar regions.
The ascent of steam and heated air loaded with vapor to the altitude
of refrigeration would, as it seems to me, result in the rapid
radiation of the heat into space, and the local precipitation of
unusual quantities of rain; and the effect of such a catastrophe
would be slowly propagated and feebly felt in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions.
When we consider the magnitude of the ice-sheets which, it is claimed
by the glacialists, covered the continents during the Drift age, it
becomes evident that a vast proportion of the waters of the ocean
must have been evaporated and carried into the air, and thence cast
down as snow and rain. Mr. Thomas Belt, in a recent number of the
"Quarterly Journal of Science," argues that the formation of
ice-sheets at the poles _must have lowered the level of the oceans of
the world two thousand-feet!_
The mathematician can figure it out for himself: Take the area of the
continents down to, say, latitude 40°, on both sides of the equator;
suppose this area to be covered by an ice-sheet averaging, say, two
miles in thickness; reduce this mass of ice to cubic feet of water,
and estimate what proportion of the ocean would be required to be
vaporized to create it. Calculated upon any basis, and it follows
that the level of the ocean must have been greatly lowered.
What a vast, inconceivable accession of _heat_ to our
{p. 62}
atmosphere was necessary to lift this gigantic layer of ocean-water
out of its bed and into the clouds!
The ice, then, was not the cause of the cataclysm; it was simply one
of the secondary consequences.
We must look, then, behind the ice-age for some cause that would
prodigiously increase the _heat_ of our atmosphere, and, when we have
found _that_, we shall have discovered the cause of the
drift-deposits as well as of the ice.
The solution of the whole stupendous problem is, therefore, heat, not
cold.
{p. 63}
PART II.
The Comet.
CHAPTER I.
A COMET CAUSED THE DRIFT.
Now, good reader, we have reasoned together up to this point. To be
sure, I have done most of the talking, while you have indulged in
what the Rev. Sydney Smith called, speaking of Lord Macaulay,
"brilliant flashes of silence."
But I trust we agree thus far that neither water nor ice caused the
Drift. Water and ice were doubtless associated with it, but neither
produced it.
What, now, are the elements of the problem to be solved?
First, we are to find something that instantaneously increased to a
vast extent the heat of our planet, vaporized the seas, and furnished
material for deluges of rain, and great storms of snow, and
accumulations of ice north and south of the equator and in the high
mountains.
Secondly, we are to find something that, _coming from above_,
smashed, pounded, and crushed "as with a maul," and rooted up as with
a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered them for
hundreds of miles from their original location.
{p. 64}
Thirdly, we are to find something which brought to the planet vast,
incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain any of
the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth,
Look not like th' inhabitants of earth,
And yet are on it; "
which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere else
on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been discovered
on the planet.
Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic
convulsions upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature
furnish us no parallel.
Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it would
crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its surface
with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior boiled
up to the light.
Would a comet meet all these prerequisites?
I think it would.
Let us proceed in regular order.
{p. 65}
CHAPTER II.
WHAT IS A COMET?
IN the first place, are comets composed of solid, liquid, or gaseous
substances? Are they something, or the next thing to nothing?
It has been supposed by some that they are made of the most
attenuated gases, so imponderable that if the earth were to pass
through one of them we would be unconscious of the contact. Others
have imagined them to be mere smoke-wreaths, faint mists, so rarefied
that the substance of one a hundred million miles long could, like
the genie in the Arabian story, be inclosed in one of Solomon's brass
bottles.
But the results of recent researches contradict these views:
Padre Secchi, of Rome, observed, in Donati's comet, of 1858, from the
15th to the 22d of October, that the nucleus threw out intermittingly
from itself appendages having the form of brilliant, coma-shaped
masses of incandescent substance twisted violently backward. He
accounts for these very remarkable changes of configuration by the
influence first of the sun's heat upon the comet's substance as it
approached toward perihelion, and afterward by the production in the
luminous emanations thus generated of enormous tides and perturbation
derangements. Some of the most conspicuous of these luminous
developments occurred on October 11th, when the comet was at its
nearest approach to the earth, and on
{p. 66}
October 17th, when it was nearest to the planet Venus. He has no
doubt that the close neighborhood of the earth and Venus at those
times was the effective cause of the sudden changes of aspect, and
that those changes of aspect may be accepted _as proof that the
comet's substance consists of "really ponderable material."_
Mr. Lockyer used the spectroscope to analyze the light of Coggia's
comet, and he established beyond question that--
"Some of the rays of the comet were sent either from _solid
particles_, or from vapor in a state of _very high condensation_, and
also that beyond doubt other portions of the comet's light issue from
the vapor _shining by its own inherent light_. The light coming from
the more dense constituents, and therefore giving a continuous
colored spectrum, was, however, deficient in blue rays, and was most
probably emitted _by material substance at the low red and yellow
stages of incandescence_."
Padre Secchi, at Rome, believed he saw in the comet "carbon, or an
oxide of carbon, as the source of the bright luminous bands," and the
Abbé Moigno asks whether this comet may not be, after all, "_un
gigantesque diamant volatilisé_."
"Whatever may be the answer hereafter given to that question, the
verdict of the spectroscope is clearly to the effect that the comet
is made up of a _commingling of thin vapor and of denser particles_,
either compressed into the _condition of solidification_, or into
some physical state approaching to that condition, and is therefore
entirely in accordance with the notion formed on other grounds that
the nucleus of the comet is a _cluster of solid nodules or granules_,
and that the luminous coma and tail are jets and jackets of vapor,
associated with the more dense ingredients, and _swaying and
streaming about them as heat and gravity, acting antagonistic ways,
determine_."[1]
[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 210.]
{p. 67}
If the comet shines by reflected light, it is pretty good evidence
that there must be some material substance there to reflect the light.
"A considerable portion of the light of the comet is, nevertheless,
borrowed from the sun, for it has one property belonging to it that
only reflected light can manifest. It is capable of being polarized
by prisms of double-refracting spar. Polarization of this character
is _only possible_ when the light that is operated upon has already
been reflected _from an imperfectly transparent medium_."[1]
There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether the bead of
the comet is solid matter or inflammable gas.
"There is nearly always a point of superior brilliancy perceptible in
the comet's head, which is termed its nucleus, and it is necessarily
a matter of pressing interest to determine what this bright nucleus
is; whether it is really a kernel of hard, solid substance, or merely
a whiff of somewhat more condensed vapor. Newton, from the first,
maintained that the comet is _made partly of solid substance_, and
_partly of an investment of thin, elastic vapors_. If this is the
case, it is manifest that the central nodule of dense substance
should be capable of intercepting light when it passes in front of a
more distant luminary, such as a fixed star. Comets, on this account,
have been watched very narrowly whenever they have been making such a
passage. On August 18, 1774, the astronomer Messier believed that he
saw a second bright star _burst into sight from behind the nucleus of
a comet which had concealed it the instant before_. Another observer,
Wartmann, in the year 1828, noticed that the light of an
eighth-magnitude star was _temporarily quenched as the nucleus of
Encke's comet passed over it_."[2]
Others, again, have held that stars have been seen through the
comet's nucleus.
[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 207.
2. Ibid., p. 206.]
{p. 68}
Amédée Guillemin says:
"Comets have been observed whose heads, instead of being nebulous,
have presented the appearance of stars, with which, indeed, they have
been confounded."[1]
When Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Urania, he thought it
was a comet.
Mr. Richard A. Proctor says:
"The spectroscopic observations made by Mr. Huggins on the light of
three comets show that a certain portion, at least, of the light of
these objects _is inherent_. . . . The nucleus gave in each case
three bands of light, indicating that the substances of the nuclei
consisted of glowing vapor."[2]
In one case, the comet-head seemed, as in the case of the, comet
examined by Padre Secchi, to consist of pure carbon.
In the great work of Dr. H. Schellen, of Cologne, annotated by
Professor Huggins, we read:
"That the nucleus of a comet can not be in itself a dark and solid
body, such as the planets are, is proved by its great transparency;
but this does not preclude the possibility of its consisting of
_innumerable solid particles_ separated from one another, which, when
illuminated by the sun, give, by the reflection of the solar light,
the impression of a homogeneous mass. It has, therefore, been
concluded that comets are either composed of a substance which, like
gas in a state of extreme rarefaction, is perfectly transparent, or
of _small solid particles_ individually separated by intervening
spaces through which the light of a star can pass without
obstruction, and which, held together by mutual attraction, as well
as by gravitation toward a denser central conglomeration, moves
through space _like a cloud of dust_. In any case the connection
lately noticed by Schiaparelli, between comets and meteoric
[1. "The Heavens," p. 239.
2. Note to Guillemin's "Heavens," p. 261.]
{p. 69}
showers, seems to necessitate the supposition that in many comets a
similar aggregation of particles seems to exist."[1]
I can not better sum up the latest results of research than by giving
Dr. Schellen's words in the work just cited:
"By collating these various phenomena, the conviction can scarcely be
resisted that the nuclei of comets not only emit their own light,
which is that of a glowing gas, but also, together with the coma and
the tail, reflect the light of the sun. There seems nothing,
therefore, to contradict the theory that the mass of a comet may be
composed of _minute solid bodies_, kept apart one from another in the
same way as the infinitesimal particles forming a cloud of dust or
smoke are held loosely together, and that, as the comet approaches
the sun, the most easily fusible constituents of these small bodies
become wholly or partially vaporized, and in a condition of _white
heat_ overtake the remaining solid particles, and surround the
nucleus in a self-luminous cloud of glowing vapor."[2]
Here, then, we have the comet:
First, a more or less solid nucleus, on fire, blazing, glowing.
Second, vast masses of gas heated to a white heat and enveloping the
nucleus, and constituting the luminous head, which was in one case
fifty times as large as the moon.
Third, solid materials, constituting the tail (possibly the nucleus
also), which are ponderable, which reflect the sun's light, and are
carried along under the influence of the nucleus of the comet.
Fourth, possibly in the rear of all these, attenuated volumes of gas,
prolonging the tail for great distances.
What are these solid materials?
[1. "Spectrum Analysis," 1872.
2. Ibid., p. 402.]
{p. 70}
Stones, and sand, the finely comminuted particles of stones ground
off by ceaseless attrition.
What is the proof of this?
Simply this: that it is now conceded that meteoric showers are shreds
and patches of cometic matter, dropped from the tail; _and meteoric
showers are stones_.
"Schiaparelli considers meteors to be dispersed portions of the
comet's original substance; that is, of the substance with which the
comet entered the solar domain. Thus comets would come to be regarded
as consisting of _a multitude of relatively minute masses_."[1]
Now, what is the genesis of a comet? How did it come to be? How was
it born?
In the first place, there are many things which would connect them
with our planets.
They belong to the solar system; they revolve around the sun.
Says Amédée Guillemin:
"Comets form a part of our solar system. Like the. planets, they
revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities
extremely elongated orbits."[2]
We shall see reason to believe that they contain the same kinds of
substances of which the planets are composed.
Their orbits seem to be reminiscences of former planetary conditions:
"All the comets, having a period not exceeding seven years, travel in
the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among comets with
periods less than eighty years long, five sixths travel in the same
direction as the planets."[3]
[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. v, p. 141.
2. "The Heavens," p. 239.
3. American Cyclopedia," vol. v, p. 141.]
{p. 71}
It is agreed that this globe of ours was at first a gaseous mass; as
it cooled it condensed like cooling steam into a liquid mass; it
became in time a molten globe of red-hot matter. As it cooled still
further, a crust or shell formed around it, like the shell formed on
an egg, and on this crust we dwell.
While the crust is still plastic it shrinks as the mass within grows
smaller by further cooling, and the wrinkles so formed in the crust
are the depths of the ocean and the elevations of the mountain-chains.
But as ages go on and the process of cooling progresses, the crust
reaches a density when it supports itself, like a couple of great
arches; it no longer wrinkles; it no longer follows downward the
receding molten mass within; mountains cease to be formed; and at
length we have a red-hot ball revolving in a shell or crust, with a
space between the two, like the space between the dried and shrunken
kernel of the nut and the nut itself.
Volcanoes are always found on sea-shores or on islands. Why? Through
breaks in the earth the sea-water finds its way occasionally down
upon the breast of the molten mass; it is at once converted into gas,
steam; and as it expands it blows itself out through the escape-pipe
of the volcano; precisely as the gas formed by the gunpowder coming
in contact with the fire of the percussion-cap, drives the ball out
before it through the same passage by which it had entered. Hence,
some one has said, "No water, no volcano."
While the amount of water which so enters is small because of the
smallness of the cavity between the shell of the earth and the molten
globe within, this process is carried on upon a comparatively small
scale, and is a safe one for the earth. But suppose the process of
cooling to go on uninterruptedly until a vast space exists between the
{p. 72}
crust and the core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion of
the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean rushes
in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of steam is
formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which it entered,
an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is blown into a
million fragments.
The great molten ball within remains intact, though sorely torn; in
its center is still the force we call gravity; the fragments of the
crust can not fly off into space; they are constrained to follow the
master-power lodged in the ball, which now becomes the nucleus of a
comet, still blazing and burning, and vomiting flames, and wearing
itself away. The catastrophe has disarranged its course, but it still
revolves in a prolonged orbit around the sun, carrying its broken
_débris_ in a long trail behind it.
This _débris_ arranges itself in a regular order: the largest
fragments are on or nearest the head; the smaller are farther away,
diminishing in regular gradation, until the farthest extremity, the
tail, consists of sand, dust, and gases. There is a continual
movement of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the
attraction and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash
against each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that
its longest diameter coincides with the direction of the motion of
the comet; hence, as they scrape against each other they mark each
other with lines or _striæ_, lengthwise of their longest diameter.
The fine dust ground out by these perpetual collisions does not go
off into space, or pack around the stones, but, still governed by the
attraction of the head, it falls to the rear and takes its place,
like the small men of a regiment, in the farther part of the tail.
Now, all this agrees with what science tells us of the constitution
of clay.
{p. 73}
"It is a finely levigated silico-aluminous earth--formed by the
disintegration of feldspathic or granite rocks."[1]
The particles ground out of feldspar are finer than those derived
from mica and hornblende, and we can readily understand how the great
forces of gravity, acting upon the dust of the comet's tail, might
separate one from the other; or how magnetic waves passing through
the comet might arrange all the particles containing iron by
themselves, and thus produce that marvelous separation of the
constituents of the granite which we have found to exist in the Drift
clays. If the destroyed world possessed no sedimentary rocks, then
the entire material of the comet would consist of granitic stones and
dust such as constitutes clays.
The stones are reduced to a small size by the constant attrition:
"The stones of the 'till' are not of the largest; indeed, bowlders
above four feet in diameter are comparatively seldom met with in the
till."[2]
And this theory is corroborated by the fact that the eminent German
geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire series of
organic remains in meteoric stones, of the class called _chrondites_,
and which he identifies as belonging to classes of sponges, corals,
and crinoids. Dr. Weinland, another distinguished German,
corroborates these discoveries; and he has also found fragments in
these stones very much like the youngest marine chalk in the Gulf of
Mexico; and he thinks he sees, under the microscope, traces of
vegetable growth. Francis Birgham says:
[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."
2. "The Great Ice Age," p. 10.]
{p. 74}
"This entire ex-terrestrial fauna hitherto discovered, which already
comprises about fifty different species, and which originates from
different meteoric falls, even from some during the last century,
conveys the impression that it doubtlessly once formed part of _a
single ex-terrestrial-celestial body_ with a unique creation, which
in by-gone ages seems to have been overtaken by a grand catastrophe,
during which it was broken up into fragments."[1]
When we remember that meteors are now generally believed to be the
droppings of comets, we come very near to proof of the supposition
that comets are the _débris_ of exploded planets; for only on planets
can we suppose that life existed, for there was required, for the
growth of these sponges, corals, and crinoids, rocks, earth, water,
seas or lakes, atmosphere, sunshine, and a range of temperature
between the degree of cold where life is frozen up and the degree of
heat in which it is burned up: hence, these meteors must be fragments
of bodies possessing earth-like conditions.
We know that the heavenly bodies are formed of the same materials as
our globe.
Dana says:
"Meteoric stones exemplify the same chemical and crystallographic
laws as the rocks of the earth, and have afforded no new element or
principle of any kind."[2]
It may be presumed, therefore, that the granite crust of the exploded
globe from which some comet was created was the source of the finely
triturated material which we know as clay.
But the clays are of different colors--white, yellow, red, and blue.
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," November, 1881, p. 86.
2. "Manual of Geology," p. 3.]
{p. 75}
"The aluminous minerals contained in granite rocks are feldspar,
mica, and hornblende. . . . Mica and hornblende generally contain
considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar usually yields only a
trace or none. Therefore clays which are derived from feldspar are
light-colored or white, while those partially made up of decomposed
mica or hornblende are dark, either bluish or red."[1]
The tail of the comet seems to be perpetually in motion. It is, says
one writer, "continually _changing and fluctuating_ as vaporous
masses of cloud-like structure might be conceived to do, and in some
instances there has been a strong appearance even of an _undulating
movement_."[2]
The great comet of 1858, Donati's comet, which many now living will
well remember, and which was of such size that when its head was near
our horizon the extremity of the tail reached nearly to the zenith,
illustrated this continual movement of the material of the tail; that
appendage shrank and enlarged millions of miles in length.
Mr. Lockyer believed that he saw in Coggia's comet the evidences of a
_whirling_ motion--
"In which the regions of greatest brightness were caused by the
different coils _cutting_, or appearing to cut, each other, and so in
these parts leading to compression or condensation, and _frequent
collision of the luminous particles_."
Olbers saw in a comet's tail--
"A sudden flash and pulsation of light which vibrated for several
seconds through it, and the tail appeared during the continuance of
the pulsations of light to be lengthened by several degrees and then
again contracted."[1]
[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."
2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208,
3, "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 143.]
{p. 76}
Now, in this perpetual motion, this conflict, these great thrills of
movement, we are to find the source of the clays which cover a large
part of our globe to a depth of hundreds of feet. Where are those
exposures of granite on the face of the earth from which ice or water
could have ground them? Granite, I repeat, comes to the surface only
in limited areas. And it must be remembered that clay is the product
exclusively of granite ground to powder. The clays are composed
exclusively of the products of disintegrated granite. They contain
but a trace of lime or magnesia or organic matters, and these can be
supposed to have been infiltrated into them after their arrival on
the face of the earth.[1] Other kinds of rock, ground up, form sand.
Moreover, we have seen that neither glaciers nor ice-sheets now
produce such clays.
We shall see, as we proceed, that the legends of mankind, in
describing the comet that struck the earth, represent it as
party-colored; it is "speckled" in one legend; spotted like a tiger
in another; sometimes it is a _white_ boar in the heavens; sometimes
a _blue_ snake; sometimes it is _red_ with the blood of the millions
that are to perish. Doubtless these separate formations, ground out
of the granite, from the mica, hornblende, or feldspar, respectively,
may, as I have said, under great laws, acted upon by magnetism or
electricity, have arranged themselves in separate lines or sheets, in
the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region
are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue.
Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as
"winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely
as the telescopes show us the comets do to-day.
[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. iv, p. 650.]
{p. 77}
The very fact that these waves of motion run through the tail of the
comet, and that it is capable of expanding and contracting on an
immense scale, is conclusive proof that it is composed of small,
adjustable particles. The writer from whom I have already quoted,
speaking of the extraordinary comet of 1843, says:
"As the comet moves past the great luminary, it sweeps round its tail
as a sword may be conceived to be held out at arm's-length, and then
waved round the head, from one side to the opposite. But a sword with
a blade one hundred and fifty millions of miles long must be a
somewhat awkward weapon to brandish round after this fashion. Its
point would have to sweep through a curve stretching out more than
six hundred millions of miles; and, even with an allowance of two
hours for the accomplishment of the movement, the flash of the weapon
would be of such terrific velocity that it is not an easy task to
conceive how any blade of _connected material substance_ could bear
the strain of the stroke. Even with a blade that possessed the
coherence and tenacity of iron or steel, the case would be one that
it would be difficult for molecular cohesion to deal with. But that
difficulty is almost infinitely increased when it is a substance of
much lower cohesive tenacity than either iron or steel that has to be
subjected to the strain.
"There would be, at least, some mitigation of this difficulty if it
were lawful to assume that the substance which is subjected to this
strain was not amenable to the laws of ponderable existence; if there
were room for the notion that comets and their tails, which have to
be brandished in such a stupendous fashion, were sky-spectres,
immaterial phantoms, unreal visions of that negative shadow-kind
which has been alluded to. This, however, unfortunately, is not a
permissible alternative in the circumstances of the case. The great
underlying and indispensable fact that the comet comes rushing up
toward the sun out of space, and then shoots round that great center
of attraction by the force of its own acquired and ever-increasing
impetuosity; the fact that it is obedient
{p. 78}
through this course to the law of elliptical, or, to speak more
exactly, of conic-section, movement, _permits of no doubt as to the
condition of materiality_. The comet is obviously drawn by the
influence of the sun's mass, and is subservient to that all-pervading
law of sympathetic gravitation that is the sustaining bond of the
material universe. _It is ponderable substance beyond all question_,
and held by that chain of physical connection which it was the glory
of Newton to discover. If the comet were not a material and
ponderable substance it would not gravitate round the sun, and it
would not move with increasing velocity as it neared the mighty mass
until it had gathered the energy for its own escape in the enhanced
and quickened momentum. In the first instance, the ready obedience to
the attraction, and then the overshooting of the spot from which it
is exerted, combine to establish the comet's right to stand ranked at
least among the ponderable bodies of space."[1]
And it is to the comet we must look for the source of a great part of
those vast deposits of gravel which go to constitute the Drift.
"They have been usually attributed to the action of waves; but the
mechanical work of the ocean is mostly confined to its shores and
soundings, where alone material exists in quantity within reach of
the waves and currents.[2] . . . The eroding action is greatest for a
short distance above the height of half-tide, and, except in violent
storms, it is almost null below low-tide."[3]
But if any one will examine a sea-beach he will see, not a vast mass
of pebbles perpetually rolling and grinding each other, but an
expanse of sand. And this is to be expected; for as soon as a part of
the pebbles is, by the attrition of the waves, reduced to sand, the
sand packs around the stones and arrests their further waste. To form
such a mass of gravel as is found in the Drift we
[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 202.
2. Dana's "Text Book," p. 286.
3. Ibid., p. 287.]
{p. 79}
must conceive of some way whereby, as soon as the sand is formed, it
is removed from the stones while the work of attrition goes on. This
process we can conceive of in a comet, if the finer _detritus_ is
constantly carried back and arranged in the order of the size of its
particles.
To illustrate my meaning: let one place any hard substance,
consisting of large fragments, in a mortar, and proceed to reduce it
with a pestle to a fine powder. The work proceeds rapidly at first,
until a portion of the material is triturated; you then find that the
pulverized part has packed around and protected the larger fragments,
and the work is brought to a stand-still. You have to remove the
finer material if you would crush the pieces that remain.
The sea does not separate the sand from the gravel; it places all
together at elevations where the waves can not reach them:
"Waves or shallow soundings have some transporting power; and, as
they always move toward the land, their action is landward. They thus
beat back, little by little, any _detritus_ in the waters, preventing
that loss to continents or islands which would take place if it were
carried out to sea."[1]
The pebbles and gravel are soon driven by the waves up the shore, and
beyond the reach of further wear;[2] and "_the rivers carry only silt
to the ocean_."[3]
The brooks and rivers produce much more gravel than the sea-shore:
"The _detritus_ brought down by rivers is vastly greater in quantity
than the stones, sand, or clay produced by the wear of the coasts."[4]
[1. Dana's "Text Book," p. 288.
2. Ibid., p. 291.
3. Ibid., p. 302.
4. Ibid., p. 290.]
{p. 80}
But it would be absurd to suppose that the beds of rivers could have
furnished the immeasurable volumes of gravel found over a great part
of the world in the drift-deposits.
And the drift-gravel is different from the gravel of the sea or
rivers.
Geikie says, speaking of the "till":
"There is something very peculiar about the shape of the stones. They
are neither round and oval, like the pebbles in river-gravel, or the
shingle of the sea-shore, nor are they sharply angular like
newly-fallen _débris_ at the base of a cliff, although they more
closely resemble the latter than the former. They are, indeed,
angular in shape, but the sharp corners and edges have _invariably
been smoothed away_. . . . Their shape, as will be seen, is by no
means their most striking peculiarity. Each is smoothed, polished,
and covered with striæ or scratches, some of which are delicate as
the lines traced by an etching-needle, others deep and harsh as the
scores made by the plow upon a rock. And, what is worthy of note,
most of the scratches, coarse and fine together, seem to run parallel
to the longer diameter of the stones, which, however, are scratched
in many other directions as well."[1]
Let me again summarize:
I. Comets consist of a blazing nucleus and a mass of ponderable,
separated matter, such as stones, gravel, clay-dust, and gas.
II. The nucleus gives out great heat and masses of burning gas.
III. Luminous gases surround the nucleus.
IV. The drift-clays are the result of the grinding up of granitic
rocks.
V. No such deposits, of anything like equal magnitude, could have
been formed on the earth.
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 13.]
{p. 81}
VI. No such clays are now being formed under glaciers or Arctic
ice-sheets.
VII. These clays were ground out of the substance of the comet by the
endless changes of position of the material of which it is composed
as it flew through space, during its incalculable journeys in the
long reaches of time.
VIII. The earth-supplies of gravel are inadequate to account for the
gravel of the drift-deposits.
IX. Neither sea-beach nor rivers produce stones like those found in
the Drift.
I pass now to the next question.
{p. 82}
CHAPTER III.
COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH?
READER, the evidence I am about to present will satisfy you, not only
that a comet might have struck the earth in the remote past, but,
that the marvel is that the earth escapes collision for a single
century, I had almost said for a single year.
How many comets do you suppose there are within the limits of the
solar system (and remember that the solar system occupies but an
insignificant portion of universal space)?
Half a dozen-fifty-a hundred-you will answer.
Let us put the astronomers on the witness-stand:
Kepler affirmed that "COMETS ARE SCATTERED THROUGH THE HEAVENS WITH
AS MUCH PROFUSION AS FISHES IN THE OCEAN."
Think of that!
"Three or four telescopic comets are now entered upon astronomical
records every year. Lalande had a list of seven hundred comets that
had been observed in his time."
Arago estimated that the comets belonging to the solar system, within
the orbit of Neptune, numbered _seventeen million five hundred
thousand!_
Lambert regards _five hundred millions_ as a very moderate
estimate![1]
[1. Guillemin, "The Heavens," p. 251.]
{p. 83}
And this does not include the monstrous fiery wanderers who may come
to visit us, bringing their relations
###
ORBITS OF THE PERIODIC COMETS.
along, from outside the solar system--a sort of celestial immigrants
whom no anti-Chinese legislation can keep away.
Says Guillemin:
"Leaving mere re-appearances out of the question, _new comets are
constantly found to arrive from the depths of space_, describing
around the sun orbits which testify to the attractive power of that
radiant body; and, for the
{p. 84}
most part, going away for centuries, to return again from afar after
their immense revolutions."[1]
But do these comets come anywhere near the orbit of the earth?
Look at the map on the preceding page, from Amédée Guillemin's great
work, "The Heavens," page 244, and you can answer the question for
yourself.
Here you see the orbit of the earth overwhelmed in a complication of
comet-orbits. The earth, here, is like a lost child in the midst of a
forest full of wild beasts.
And this diagram represents the orbits of only six comets out of
those seventeen millions or five hundred millions!
It is a celestial game of ten-pins, with the solar system for a
bowling-alley, and the earth waiting for a ten-strike.
In 1832 the earth and Biela's comet, as I will show more particularly
hereafter, were both making for the same spot, moving with celestial
rapidity, but the comet reached the point of junction one month
before the earth did; and, as the comet was not polite enough to wait
for us to come up, this generation missed a revelation.
"In the year 1779 Lexell's comet approached so near to the earth that
it would have increased the length of the sidereal year by three
hours if its mass had been equal to the earth's."[2]
And this same comet did strike our fellow-planet, Jupiter.
[1. "The Heavens," p. 251.
2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]
{p. 85}
In the years 1767 and 1779 Lexell's comet passed though the midst of
Jupiter's satellites, and became entangled temporarily among them.
But not one of the satellites altered its movements to the extent of
a hair's breadth, or of a tenth of an instant."[1]
But it must be remembered that we had no glasses then, and have none
now, that could tell us what were the effects of this visitation upon
the surface of Jupiter or its moons. The comet might have covered
Jupiter one hundred feet--yes, one hundred miles--thick with gravel
and clay, and formed clouds of its seas five miles in thickness,
without our knowing anything about it. Even our best telescopes can
only perceive on the moon's surface--which is, comparatively
speaking, but a few miles distant from us--objects of very great
size, while Jupiter is sixteen hundred times farther away from us
than the moon.
But it is known that Lexell's comet was very much demoralized by
Jupiter. It first came within the influence of that planet in 1767;
it lost its original orbit, and went bobbing around Jupiter until
1779, when it became entangled with Jupiter's moons, and then it lost
its orbit again, and was whisked off into infinite space, never more,
perhaps, to be seen by human eyes. Is it not reasonable to suppose
that an event which thus demoralized the comet may have caused it to
cast down a considerable part of its material on the face of Jupiter?
Encke's comet revolves around the sun in the short period of twelve
hundred and five days, and, strange to say--
"The period of its revolution is _constantly diminishing_; so that,
if this progressive diminution always follows the same rate, _the
time when the comet_, continually
[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]
{p. 86}
describing a spiral, _will be plunged into the incandescent mass of
the sun can be calculated_."[1]
The comet of 1874, first seen by Coggia, at Marseilles, and called by
his name, came between the earth and the sun, and _approached within
sixty thousand miles of the flaming surface of the sun_. It traveled
through this fierce blaze at the rate of _three hundred and sixty-six
miles per second!_ Three hundred and sixty-six miles _per second!_
When a railroad-train moves at the rate of a mile per minute, we
regard it as extraordinary speed; but three hundred and sixty-six
miles _per second!_ The mind fails to grasp it.
When this comet was seen by Sir John Herschel, after it had made its
grand sweep around the sun, it was not more than _six times the
breadth of the sun's face away from the sun_. And it had come
careering through infinite space with awful velocity to this close
approximation to our great luminary.
And remember that these comets are no animalculæ. They are monsters
that would reach from the sun to the earth. And when we say that they
come so close to the sun as in the above instances, it means peril to
the earth by direct contact; to say nothing of the results to our
planet by the increased combustion of the run, and the increased heat
on earth should one of them fall upon the sun. We have seen, in the
last chapter, that the great comet of 1843 possessed a tail one
hundred and fifty million miles long; that is, it would reach from
the sun to the earth, and have over fifty million miles of tail to
spare; and it swept this gigantic appendage around in two hours,
describing the are of a circle _six hundred million miles long!_
[1. Guillemin, "The Heavens," p. 247.]
{p. 87}
The mind fails to grasp these figures. Solar space is hardly large
enough for such gyrations.
And it must be remembered that this enormous creature actually
_grazed the surface of the sun_.
And it is supposed that this monster of 1843, which was first seen in
1668, returned, and was seen in the southern hemisphere in 1880--that
is to say, it came back in thirty-seven years instead of one hundred
and seventy-five years. Whereupon Mr. Proctor remarked:
"If already the comet experiences such resistance in passing through
the corona when at its nearest to the sun that its period undergoes a
marked diminution, the effect must of necessity be increased at each
return, and after only a few, possibly one or two, circuits, the
comet will be absorbed by the sun."
On October 10, 1880, Lewis Swift, of Rochester, New York, discovered
a comet which has proved to be of peculiar interest. From its first
discovery it has presented no brilliancy of appearance, for, during
its period of visibility, a telescope of considerable power was
necessary to observe it. Since this comet, when in close proximity to
the earth, was very faint indeed, its dimensions must be quite
moderate.
The illustration on page 88 gives the orbit of the earth and the
orbit of this comet, and shows how closely they approached each
other; when at its nearest, the comet was only distant from the earth
0.13 of the distance of the earth from the sun.
It comes back in eleven years, or in 1891.
On the 22d of June, 1881, a comet of great brilliancy flashed
suddenly into view. It was unexpected, and advanced with tremendous
rapidity. The illustration on page 89 will show how its flight
intersected the orbit of the earth. At its nearest point, June 19th,
it was distant
{p. 88}
from the earth only 0.28 of the distance of the sun from the earth.
Now, it is to be remembered that great attention has been paid during
the past few years to searching for comets, and some of the results
are here given. As many as five were discovered during the year 1881.
But not
###
ORBIT OF EARTH AND COMET
a few of the greatest of these strange orbs require thousands of
years to complete their orbits. The period of the comet of July,
1844, has been estimated at not less than one hundred thousand years!
Some of those that have flashed into sight recently have been
comparatively small, and their contact with
{p. 89}
###
THE EARTH'S ORBIT
the earth might produce but trifling results. Others, again, are
constructed on an extraordinary scale; but even the largest of these
may be but children compared with the monsters that wander through
space on orbits
{p. 90}
that penetrate the remotest regions of the solar system, and even
beyond it.
When we consider the millions of comets around us, and when we
remember how near some of these have come to us during the last few
years, who will undertake to say that during the last thirty
thousand, fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand years, one of these
erratic luminaries, with blazing front and train of _débris_, may not
have come in collision with the earth?
{p. 91}
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH.
IN this chapter I shall try to show what effect the contact of a
comet must have had upon the earth and its inhabitants.
I shall ask the reader to follow the argument closely first, that he
may see whether any part of the theory is inconsistent with the
well-established principles of natural philosophy; and, secondly,
that he may bear the several steps in his memory, as he will find, as
we proceed, that _every detail of the mighty catastrophe has been
preserved in the legends of mankind_, and precisely in the order in
which reason tells us they must have occurred.
In the first place, it is, of course, impossible at this time to say
precisely how the contact took place; whether the head of the comet
fell into or approached close to the sun, like the comet of 1843, and
then swung its mighty tail, hundreds of millions of miles in length,
moving at a rate almost equal to the velocity of light, around
through a great are, and swept past the earth;--the earth, as it
were, going through the midst of the tail, which would extend for a
vast distance beyond and around it. In this movement, the side of the
earth, facing the advance of the tail, would receive and intercept
the mass of material--stones, gravel, and the finely-ground-up-dust
which, compacted by water, is now clay--which came in contact with
it, while the comet would sail off into space,
{p. 92}
demoralized, perhaps, in its orbit, like Lexell's comet when it
became entangled with Jupiter's moons, but shorn of a comparatively
small portion of its substance.
The following engraving will illustrate my meaning. I can not give,
even approximately, the proportions of the
###
THE COMET SWEEPING PAST THE EARTH.
objects represented, and thus show the immensity of the sun as
compared with our insignificant little orb. In a picture showing the
true proportions of the sun and earth, the sun would have to be so
large that it would take up the entire page, while the earth would be
but as a
{p. 93}
###
THE SIDE OF THE EARTH STRUCK BY THE COMET {left}
THE SIDE NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET {right}
{p. 94}
pin-head. And I have not drawn the comet on a scale large enough as
compared with the earth.
If the reader will examine the map on page 93, he will see that the
distribution of the Drift accords with this theory. If we suppose the
side of the earth shown in the left-hand figure was presented to the
comet, we will see why the Drift is supposed to be confined to
Europe, Africa, and parts of America; while the right-hand figure
will show the half of the world that escaped.
"The breadth of the tail of the great comet of 1811, at its widest
part, was nearly fourteen million miles, the length one hundred and
sixteen million miles, and that of the second comet of the same year,
one hundred and forty million miles."[1]
On page 95 is a representation of this monster.
Imagine such a creature as that, with a head _fifty times as large as
the moon_, and a tail one hundred and sixteen million miles long,
rushing past this poor little earth of ours, with its diameter of
only seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles! The earth,
seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles wide, would simply
make a bullet-hole through that tail, fourteen million miles broad,
where it passed through it!--a mere eyelet-hole--a pin-hole--closed
up at once by the constant movements which take place in the tail of
the comet. And yet in that moment of contact the side of the earth
facing the comet might be covered with hundreds of feet of _débris_.
Or, on the other hand, the comet may, as described in some of the
legends, have struck the earth, head on, amid-ships, and the shock
may have changed the angle of inclination of the earth's axis, and
thus have modified
[1. Schellen, "Spectrum Analysis," p. 392.]
{p. 95}
permanently the climate of our globe; and to this cause we might look
also for the great cracks and breaks in the earth's surface, which
constitute the fiords of the sea-coast and the trap-extrusions of the
continents; and here, too,
###
THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.
might be the cause of those mighty excavations, hundreds of feet
deep, in which are now the Great Lakes of America, and from which, as
we have seen, great cracks radiate out in all directions, like the
fractures in a pane of glass where a stone has struck it.
The cavities in which rest the Great Lakes have been attributed to
the ice-sheet, but it is difficult to comprehend how an ice-sheet
could dig out and root out a hole, as in the case of Lake Superior,
_nine hundred feet deep!_
{p. 96}
And, if it did this, why were not similar holes excavated wherever
there were ice-sheets--to wit, all over the northern and southern
portions of the globe? Why should a general cause produce only local
results?
Sir Charles Lyell shows[1] that glaciers do not cut out holes like
the depressions in which the Great Lakes lie; he also shows that
these lakes are not due to a sinking down of the crust of the earth,
because the strata are continuous and unbroken beneath them. He also
calls attention to the fact that there is a continuous belt of such
lakes, reaching from the northwestern part of the United States,
through the Hudson Bay Territory, Canada, and Maine, to Finland, and
that this belt does not reach below 50° north latitude in Europe and
40° in America. Do these lie in the track of the great collision? The
comet, as the striæ indicate, came from the north.
The mass of Donati's comet was estimated by MM. Faye and Roche at
about the seven-hundredth part of the bulk of the earth. M. Faye says:
"That is the weight of a sea of forty thousand square miles one
hundred and nine yards deep; and it must be owned that a like mass,
animated with considerable velocity, might well produce, by its shock
with the earth, very perceptible results."[2]
We have but to suppose, (a not unreasonable supposition,) that the
comet which struck the earth was much larger than Donati's comet, and
we have the means of accounting for results as prodigious as those
referred to.
We have seen that it is difficult to suppose that ice produced the
drift-deposits, because they are not found where ice certainly was,
and they are found where ice certainly was not. But, if the reader
will turn to the
[1. "Elements of Geology," pp. 168,171, _et seq_.
2. "The Heavens," p. 260.]
{p. 97}
illustration which constitutes the frontispiece of this volume, and
the foregoing engraving on page 93, he will see that the Drift is
deposited on the earth, as it might have been if it had suddenly
fallen from the heavens; that is, it is on one side of the globe--to
wit, the side that faced the comet as it came on. I think this map is
substantially accurate. There is, however, an absence of authorities
as to the details of the drift-distribution. But, if my theory is
correct, the Drift probably fell at once. If it had been twenty-four
hours in falling, the diurnal revolution would, in turn, have
presented all sides of the earth to it, and the Drift would be found
everywhere. And this is in accordance with what we know of the rapid
movements of comets. They travel, as I have shown, at the rate of
three hundred and sixty-six miles per second; this is equal to
twenty-one thousand six hundred miles per minute, and one million two
hundred and ninety-six thousand miles per hour!
And this accords with what we know of the deposition of the Drift. It
came with terrific force. It smashed the rocks; it tore them up; it
rolled them over on one another; it drove its material _into_ the
underlying rocks; "it _indented it_ into them," says one authority,
already quoted.
It was accompanied by inconceivable winds--the hurricanes and
cyclones spoken of in many of the legends. Hence we find the loose
material of the original surface gathered up and carried into the
drift-material proper; hence the Drift is whirled about in the
wildest confusion. Hence it fell on the earth like a great snow-storm
driven by the wind. It drifted into all hollows; it was not so thick
on, or it was entirely absent from, the tops of hills; it formed
tails, precisely as snow does, on the leeward side of all
obstructions. Glacier-ice is slow and plastic,
{p. 98}
and folds around such impediments, and wears them away; the wind does
not. Compare the following representation of a well-known feature of
the Drift, called
###
CRAG AND TAIL.--_c_, crag; _t_, till.
"crag and tail," taken from Geikie's work,[1] with the drifts formed
by snow on the leeward side of fences or houses.
The material runs in streaks, just as if blown by violent winds:
"When cut through by rivers, or denuded by the action of the sea,
_ridges_ of bowlders are often seen to be inclosed within it.
Although destitute of stratification, horizontal lines are found,
indicating differences in texture and color."[2]
Geikie, describing the bowlder-clay, says:
"It seems to have come from regions whence it is bard to see how they
could have been borne by glaciers. As a rule it is quite
unstratified, but traces of bedding are not uncommon."
"Sometimes it contains worn fossils, and fragments of shells, broken,
crushed, and striated; sometimes it contains bands of stones arranged
in lines."
In short, it appears as if it were gusts and great whirls of the same
material as the "till," lifted up by the cyclones and mingled with
blocks, rocks, bones, sands, fossils, earth, peat, and other matters,
picked up with terrible
[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 18.
2. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 112.]
{p. 99}
force from the face of the earth and poured down pell-mell on top of
the first deposit of true "till."
In England ninety-four per cent of these stones found in this
bowlder-clay are "stranger" stones; that is to say, they do not
belong to the drainage area in which they are found, but must have
been carried there from great distances.
But how about the markings, the _striæ_, on the face of the
surface-rocks below the Drift? The answer is plain. _Débris_, moving
at the rate of a million miles an hour, would produce just such
markings.
Dana says:
"The sands carried by the winds when passing over rocks sometimes
_wear them smooth_, or cover them with _scratches and furrows_, as
observed by W. P. Blake on granite rocks at the Pass of San
Bernardino, in California. Even quartz was polished and garnets were
left projecting upon pedicels of feldspar. Limestone was so much worn
as to look as if the surface had been removed by solution. Similar
effects have been observed by Winchell in the Grand Traverse region,
Michigan. Glass in the windows of houses on Cape Cod sometimes has
holes worn through it by the same means. The hint from nature has led
to the use of sand, driven by a blast, with or without steam, for
cutting and engraving glass, and even for cutting and carving granite
and other hard rocks."[1]
Gratacap describes the rock underneath the "till" as polished and
oftentimes lustrous."[2]
But, it may be said, if it be true that _débris_, driven by a
terrible force, could have scratched and dented the rocks, could it
have made long, continuous lines and grooves upon them? But the fact
is, the _striæ_ on the face of the rocks covered by the Drift are
_not_ continuous;
[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 275.
2. "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1878, p. 320.]
{p. 100}
they do not indicate a steady and constant pressure, such as would
result where a mountainous mass of ice had caught a rock and held it,
as it were, in its mighty hand, and, thus holding it steadily, had
scored the rocks with it as it moved forward.
"The groove is of irregular depth, its floor rising and falling, as
though hitches had occurred when it was first planed, the great
chisel meeting resistance, or being thrown up at points along its
path."[1]
What other results would follow at once from contact with the comet?
We have seen that, to produce the phenomena of the Glacial age, it
was absolutely necessary that it must have been preceded by a period
of heat, great enough to vaporize all the streams and lakes and a
large part of the ocean. And we have seen that no mere ice-hypothesis
gives us any clew to the cause of this.
Would the comet furnish us with such heat? Let me call another
witness to the stand:
In the great work of Amédée Guillemin, already cited, we read:
"On the other hand, it seems proved that the light of the comets is,
in part, at least, borrowed from the sun. But may they not also
possess a light of their own? And, on this last hypothesis, is this
brightness owing to a kind of phosphorescence, or to the state of
incandescence of the nucleus? Truly, if the nuclei of comets be
incandescent, the smallness of their mass would eliminate from the
danger of their contact with the earth only one element of
destruction: _the temperature of the terrestrial atmosphere would be
raised to an elevation inimical to the existence of organized
beings_; and we should only escape the danger of a mechanical shock,
to run into a not less frightful
[1. Gratacap, "The Ice Age," in "Popular Science Monthly," January,
1818, p. 321.]
{p. 101}
one of being _calcined in a many days passage through an immense
furnace_."[1]
Here we have a good deal more heat than is necessary to account for
that vaporization of the seas of the globe which seems to have taken
place during the Drift Age.
But similar effects might be produced, in another way, even though
the heat of the comet itself was inconsiderable.
Suppose the comet, or a large part of it, to have fallen into the
sun. The arrested motion would be converted into heat. The material
would feed the combustion of the sun. Some have theorized that the
sun is maintained by the fall of cometic matter into it. What would
be the result?
Mr. Proctor notes that in 1866 a star, in the constellation Northern
Cross, suddenly shone with _eight hundred times its former luster_,
afterward rapidly diminishing in luster. In 1876 a new star in the
constellation Cygnus became visible, subsequently fading again so as
to be only perceptible by means of a telescope; the luster of this
star must have increased from five hundred to _many_ thousand times.
Mr. Proctor claims that should our sun similarly increase in luster
even one hundred-fold, the glowing heat would destroy all vegetable
and animal life on earth.
There is no difficulty in seeing our way to heat enough, if we
concede that a comet really struck the earth or fell into the sun.
The trouble is in the other direction--we would have too much heat.
We shall see, hereafter, that there is evidence in our rocks that in
two different ages of the world, millions of years before the Drift
period, the whole surface of the
[1. "The Heavens," p. 260.]
{p. 102}
earth was actually fused and melted, probably by cometic contact.
This earth of ours is really a great powder-magazine there is enough
inflammable and explosive material about it to blow it into shreds at
any moment.
Sir Charles Lyell quotes, approvingly, the thought of Pliny: "It is
an amazement that our world, so full of combustible elements, stands
a moment unexploded."
It needs but an infinitesimal increase in the quantity of oxygen in
the air to produce a combustion which would melt all things. In pure
oxygen, steel burns like a candle-wick. Nay, it is not necessary to
increase the amount of oxygen in the air to produce terrible results.
It has been shown[1] that, of our forty-five miles of atmosphere, one
fifth, or a stratum of nine miles in thickness, is oxygen. A shock,
or an electrical or other convulsion, which would even partially
disarrange or decompose this combination, and send an increased
quantity of oxygen, the heavier gas, to the earth, would wrap
everything in flames. Or the same effects might follow from any great
change in the constitution of the water of the world. Water is
composed of eight parts of oxygen and one part of hydrogen. "The
intensest heat by far ever yet produced by the blow-pipe is by the
combustion of these two gases." And Dr. Robert Hare, of Philadelphia,
found that the combination which produced the intensest heat was that
in which the two gases were in the _precise proportions found in
water_.[2]
We may suppose that this vast heat, whether it came from the comet,
or the increased action of the sun, preceded the fall of the _débris_
of the comet by a few minutes or a few hours. We have seen the
surface-rocks
[1. "Science and Genesis," p. 125.
2. Ibid., p. 127.]
{p. 103}
described as lustrous. The heat may not have been great enough to
melt them--it may merely have softened them; but when the mixture of
clay, gravel, striated rocks, and earth-sweepings fell and rested on
them, they were at once hardened and almost baked; and thus we can
account for the fact that the "till," which lies next to the rocks,
is so hard and tough, compared with the rest of the Drift, that it is
impossible to blast it, and exceedingly difficult even to pick it to
pieces; it is more feared by workmen and contractors than any of the
true rocks.
Professor Hartt shows that there is evidence that some cause, prior
to but closely connected with the Drift, did decompose the
surface-rocks underneath the Drift to great depths, changing their
chemical composition and appearance. Professor Hartt says:
"In Brazil, and in the United States in the vicinity of New York
city, the surface-rocks, under the Drift, are decomposed from a depth
of a few inches to that of a hundred feet. The feldspar has _been
converted into slate_, and the mica _has parted with its iron_."[1]
Professor Hartt tries to account for this metamorphosis by supposing
it to have been produced by warm rains! But why should there be warm
rains at this particular period? And why, if warm rains occurred in
all ages, were not all the earlier rocks similarly changed while they
were at the surface?
Heusser and Clarez suppose this decomposition of the rocks to be due
to nitric acid. But where did the nitric acid come from?
In short, here is the proof of the presence on the earth, just before
the Drift struck it, of that conflagration which we shall find
described in so many legends.
[1. "The Geology of Brazil," p. 25.]
{p. 104}
And certainly the presence of ice could not decompose rocks a hundred
feet deep, and change their chemical constitution. Nothing but heat
could do it.
But we have seen that the comet is self-luminous--that is, it is in
process of combustion; it emits great gushes and spouts of luminous
gases; its nucleus is enveloped in a cloak of gases. What effect
would these gases have upon our atmosphere?
First, they would be destructive to animal life. But it does not
follow that they would cover the whole earth. If they did, all life
must have ceased. They may have fallen in places here and there, in
great sheets or patches, and have caused, until they burned
themselves out, the conflagrations which the traditions tell us
accompanied the great disaster.
Secondly, by adding increased proportions to some of the elements of
our atmosphere they may have helped to produce the marked difference
between the pre-glacial and our present climate.
What did these gases consist of?
Here that great discovery, the spectroscope, comes to our aid. By it
we are able to tell the elements that are being consumed in remote
stars; by it we have learned that comets are in part self-luminous,
and in part shine by the reflected light of the sun; by it we are
even able to identify the very gases that are in a state of
combustion in comets.
In Schellen's great work[1] I find a cut (see next page) comparing
the spectra of carbon with the light emitted by two comets observed
in 1868--Winnecke's comet and Brorsen's comet.
Here we see that the self-luminous parts of these comets
[1. "Spectrum Analysis," p. 396.]
{p. 105}
burned with substantially the same spectrum as that emitted by
burning carbon. The inference is irresistible that these comets were
wrapped in great masses of carbon in a state of combustion. This is
the conclusion reached by Dr. Schellen.
###
SOLAR SPECTRUM
Padre Secchi, the great Roman astronomer, examined Dr. Winnecke's
comet on the 21st of June, 1868, and concluded that the light from
the self-luminous part was produced by carbureted hydrogen.
We shall see that the legends of the different races speak of the
poison that accompanied the comet, and by which great multitudes were
slain; the very waters that
{p. 106}
first flowed through the Drift, we are told, were poisonous. We have
but to remember that carbureted hydrogen is the deadly fire-damp of
the miners to realize what effect great gusts of it must have had on
animal life.
We are told[1] that it burns with a _yellow_ flame when subjected to
great heat, and some of the legends, we will see hereafter, speak of
the "yellow hair" of the comet that struck the earth.
And we are further told that, "when it, carbureted hydrogen, is mixed
in due proportion with oxygen or atmospheric air, a compound is
produced which explodes with the electric spark or the approach of
flame." Another form of carbureted hydrogen, olefiant gas, is deadly
to life, burns with a white light, and when mixed with three or four
volumes of oxygen, or ten or twelve of air, it explodes with terrific
violence.
We shall see, hereafter, that many of the legends tell us that, as
the comet approached the earth, that is, as it entered our atmosphere
and combined with it, it gave forth world-appalling noises, thunders
beyond all earthly thunders, roarings, howlings, and hissings, that
shook the globe. If a comet did come, surrounded by volumes of
carbureted hydrogen, or carbon combined with hydrogen, the moment it
reached far enough into our atmosphere to supply it with the
requisite amount of oxygen or atmospheric air, precisely such
dreadful explosions would occur, accompanied by noises similar to
those described in the legends.
Let us go a step further:
Let us try to conceive the effects of the fall of the material of the
comet upon the earth.
We have seen terrible rain-storms, hail-storms, snow-storms;
[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. iii, p. 776.]
{p. 107}
but fancy a storm of stones and gravel and clay-dust!--not a mere
shower either, but falling in black masses, darkening the heavens,
vast enough to cover the world in many places hundreds of feet in
thickness; leveling valleys, tearing away and grinding down hills,
changing the whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and above
it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; through
the drifts of _débris_ glimpses are caught of the glaring and burning
monster; while through all and over all is an unearthly heat, under
which rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, disappear as if by magic.
Now, reader, try to grasp the meaning of all this description. Do not
merely read the words. To read aright, upon any subject, you must
read below the words, above the words, and take in all the relations
that surround the words. So read this record.
Look out at the scene around you. Here are trees fifty feet high.
Imagine an instantaneous descent of granite-sand and gravel
sufficient to smash and crush these trees to the ground, to bury
their trunks, and to cover the earth one hundred to five hundred feet
higher than the elevation to which their tops now reach! And this not
alone here in your garden, or over your farm, or over your township,
or over your county, or over your State; but over the whole continent
in which you dwell--in short, over the greater part of the habitable
world!
Are there any words that can draw, even faintly, such a picture--its
terror, its immensity, its horrors, its destructiveness, its
surpassal of all earthly experience and imagination? And this human
ant-hill, the world, how insignificant would it be in the grasp of
such a catastrophe! Its laws, its temples, its libraries, its
religions, its armies, its mighty nations, would be but as the veriest
{p. 108}
stubble--dried grass, leaves, rubbish-crushed, smashed, buried, under
this heaven-rain of horrors.
But, lo! through the darkness, the wretches not beaten down and
whelmed in the _débris_, but scurrying to mountain-caves for refuge,
have a new terror: the cry passes from lip to lip, "The world is on
fire!"
The head of the comet sheds down fire. Its gases have fallen in great
volumes on the earth; they ignite; amid the whirling and rushing of
the _débris_, caught in cyclones, rises the glare of a Titanic
conflagration. The winds beat the rocks against the rocks; they pick
up sand-heaps, peat-beds, and bowlders, and whirl them madly in the
air. The heat increases. The rivers, the lakes, the ocean itself,
evaporate.
And poor humanity! Burned, bruised, wild, crazed, stumbling, blown
about like feathers in the hurricanes, smitten by mighty rocks, they
perish by the million; a few only reach the shelter of the caverns;
and thence, glaring backward, look out over the ruins of a destroyed
world.
And not humanity alone has fled to these hiding-places: the terrified
denizens of the forest, the domestic animals of the fields, with the
instinct which in great tempests has driven them into the houses of
men, follow the refugees into the caverns. We shall see all this
depicted in the legends.
The first effect of the great heat is the vaporization of the waters
of the earth; but this is arrested long before it has completed its
work.
Still the heat is intense--how long it lasts, who shall tell? An
Arabian legend indicates years.
The stones having ceased to fall, the few who have escaped--and they
are few indeed, for many are shut up for ever by the clay-dust and
gravel in their hiding-places,
{p. 109}
and on many others the convulsions of the earth have shaken down the
rocky roofs of the caves--the few survivors come out, or dig their
way out, to look upon a changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the
sky, no rivers or lakes are on the earth; only the deep springs of
the caverns are left; the sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze
heavens. It is to this period that the Norse legend of Mimer's well,
where Odin gave an eye for a drink of water, refers.
But gradually the heat begins to dissipate. This is a signal for
tremendous electrical action. Condensation commences. Never has the
air held such incalculable masses of moisture; never has heaven's
artillery so rattled and roared since earth began! Condensation means
clouds. We will find hereafter a whole body of legends about "the
stealing of the clouds" and their restoration. The veil thickens. The
sun's rays are shut out. It grows colder; more condensation follows.
The heavens darken. Louder and louder bellows the thunder. We shall
see the lightnings represented, in myth after myth, as the arrows of
the rescuing demi-god who saves the world. The heat has carried up
perhaps one fourth of all the water of the world into the air. Now it
is condensed into cloud. We know how an ordinary storm darkens the
heavens. In this case it is black night. A pall of dense cloud, many
miles in thickness, enfolds the earth. No sun, no moon, no stars, can
be seen. "Darkness is on the face of the deep." Day has ceased to be.
Men stumble against each other. All this we shall find depicted in
the legends. The overloaded atmosphere begins to discharge itself.
The great work of restoring the waters of the ocean to the ocean
begins. It grows colder--colder--colder. The pouring rain turns into
snow, and settles on all the uplands and north countries; snow falls
on
{p. 110}
snow; gigantic snow-beds are formed, which gradually solidify into
ice. While no mile-thick ice-sheet descends to the Mediterranean or
the Gulf of Mexico, glaciers intrude into all the valleys, and the
flora and fauna of the temperate regions become arctic; that is to
say, only those varieties of plants and animals survive in those
regions that are able to stand the cold, and these we now call arctic.
In the midst of this darkness and cold and snow, the remnants of poor
humanity wander over the face of the desolated world; stumbling,
awe-struck, but filled with an insatiable hunger which drives them
on; living upon the bark of the few trees that have escaped, or on
the bodies of the animals that have perished, and even upon one
another.
All this we shall find plainly depicted in the legends of mankind, as
we proceed.
Steadily, steadily, steadily--for days, weeks, months, years--the
rains and snows fall; and, as the clouds are drained, they become
thinner and thinner, and the light increases.
It has now grown so light that the wanderers can mark the difference
between night and day. "And the evening and the morning were the
first day."
Day by day it grows lighter and warmer; the piled-up snows begin to
melt. It is an age of tremendous floods. All the low-lying parts of
the continents are covered with water. Brooks become mighty rivers,
and rivers are floods; the Drift _débris_ is cut into by the waters,
re-arranged, piled up in what is called the stratified, secondary, or
Champlain drift. Enormous river-valleys are cut out of the gravel and
clay.
The seeds and roots of trees and grasses, uncovered by the rushing
torrents, and catching the increasing
{p. 111}
warmth, begin to put forth green leaves. The sad and parti-colored
earth, covered with white, red, or blue clays and gravels, once more,
wears a fringe of green.
The light increases. The warmth lifts up part of the water already
cast down, and the outflow of the steaming ice-fields, and pours it
down again in prodigious floods. It is an age of storms.
The people who have escaped gather together. _They know the sun is
coming back_. They know this desolation is to pass away. They build
great fires and make human sacrifices to bring back the sun. They
point and guess where he will appear; for they have lost all
knowledge of the cardinal points. And all this is told in the legends.
At last the great, the godlike, the resplendent luminary breaks
through the clouds and looks again upon the wrecked earth.
Oh, what joy, beyond all words, comes upon those who see him! They
fall upon their faces. They worship him whom the dread events have
taught to recognize as the great god of life and light. They burn or
cast down their animal gods of the pre-glacial time, and then begins
that world-wide worship of the sun which has continued down to our
own times.
And all this, too, we shall find told in the legends.
And from that day to this we live under the influence of the effects
produced by the comet. The mild, eternal summer of the Tertiary age
is gone. The battle between the sun and the ice-sheets continues.
Every north wind brings us the breath of the snow; every south wind
is part of the sun's contribution to undo the comet's work. A
continual amelioration of climate has been going on since the Glacial
age; and, if no new catastrophe falls on the earth, our remote
posterity will yet see the last snow-bank
{p. 112}
of Greenland melted, and the climate of the Eocene reestablished in
Spitzbergen.
"It has been suggested that the warmth of the Tertiary climate was
simply the effect of the residual heat of a globe cooling from
incandescence, but many facts disprove this. For example, the fossil
plants found in our Lower Cretaceous rocks in Central North America
indicate a temperate climate in latitude 35° to 40° in the Cretaceous
age. The coal-flora, too, and the beds of coal, indicate a moist,
equable, and warm but not hot climate in the Carboniferous age,
millions of years before the Tertiary, and three thousand miles
farther south than localities where magnolias, tulip-trees, and
deciduous cypresses, grew in the latter age. Some learned and
cautious geologists even assert that there have been several Ice
periods, one as far back as the Devonian."[1]
The ice-fields and wild climate of the poles, and the cold which
descends annually over Europe and North America, represent the
residuum of the refrigeration caused by the evaporation due to the
comet's heat, and the long absence of the sun during the age of
darkness. Every visitation of a comet would, therefore, necessarily
eventuate in a glacial age, which in time would entirely pass away.
And our storms are bred of the conflict between the heat and cold of
the different latitudes. Hence, it may be, that the Tertiary climate
represented the true climate of the earth, undisturbed by comet
catastrophes; a climate equable, mild, warm, stormless. Think what a
world this would be without tempests, cyclones, ice, snow, or cold!
Let us turn now to the evidences that man dwelt on the earth during
the Drift, and that he has preserved recollections of the comet to
this day in his myths and legends.
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," July, 1876, p. 283.]
{p. 113}
PART III
The Legends
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURE OF MYTHS.
IN a primitive people the mind of one generation precisely repeats
the minds of all former generations; the construction of the
intellectual nature varies no more, from age to age, than the form of
the body or the color of the skin; the generations feel the same
emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use the same expressions.
And this is to be expected, for the brain is as much a part of the
inheritable, material organization as the color of the eyes or the
shape of the nose.
The minds of men move automatically: no man thinks because he intends
to think; he thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a great primal
necessity; his thoughts come out from the inner depths of his being
as the flower is developed by forces rising through the roots of the
plant.
The female bird says to herself, "The time is propitious, and now, of
my own free will, and under the operation of my individual judgment,
I will lay a nestful of eggs and batch a brood of children." But it
is unconscious that it is moved by a physical necessity, which has
constrained all its ancestors from the beginning of time,
{p. 114}
and which will constrain all its posterity to the end of time; that
its will is nothing more than an expression of age, development,
sunlight, food, and "the skyey influences." If it were otherwise it
would be in the power of a generation to arrest the life of a race.
All great thoughts are inspirations of God. They are part of the
mechanism by which he advances the race; they are new varieties
created out of old genera.
There come bursts of creative force in history, when great thoughts
are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes to sleep
for ages.
But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor, or the
philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own thoughts
than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the growth of the
ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which forces her to
incubation.
The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this involuntary
operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he said:
"Our poesy is a gum which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished."
It came as the Arabian tree distilled its "medicinal gum"; it was the
mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his control as
the production of the gum was beyond the control of the tree.
But in primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If a
tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small,
indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-fire, however ingenious,
will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest.
There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the
thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying
{p. 115}
the tale, to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of
hearers, the narrative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all
the rest. The doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority
rules.
When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation--to the
little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths--they
naturally ask, "_Where_ did all this occur?" The narrator must
satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top,"
or "In yonder cave."
The story has come down without its geography, and a new geography is
given it.
Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the
language in which the story is told different from that which it
possessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old
fact and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced,
gradually, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty
occurs at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation
comes at last to be generally accepted, and the ancient myth remains
dressed in a new suit of linguistic clothes.
But, as a rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent.
One hundred years ago the highest faith was placed in written
history, while the utmost contempt was felt for all legends. Whatever
had been written down was regarded as certainly true; whatever had
not been written down was necessarily false.
We are reminded of that intellectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson,
trampling poor Macpherson under foot, like an enraged elephant, for
daring to say that he had collected from the mountaineers of wild
Scotland the poems of Ossian, and that they had been transmitted,
from mouth to mouth, through ages. But the great epic of the son of
Fingal will survive, part of the widening
{p. 116}
heritage of humanity, while Johnson is remembered only as a
coarse-souled, ill-mannered incident in the development of the great
English people.
But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history
was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the
passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and
venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of
antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely
to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals.
And then grave and able men,--philosophers, scientists,--were seen
with note-books and pencils, going out into Hindoo villages, into
German cottages, into Highland huts, into Indian _tepees_, in short,
into all lands, taking down with the utmost care, accuracy, and
respect, the fairy-stories, myths, and legends of the people;--as
repeated by old peasant-women, "the knitters in the sun," or by
"gray-haired warriors, famousèd for fights."
And, when they came to put these narratives in due form, and, as it
were, in parallel columns, it became apparent that they threw great
floods of light upon the history of the world, and especially upon
the question of the unity of the race. They proved that all the
nations were repeating the same stories, in some cases in almost
identical words, just as their ancestors had heard them, in some most
ancient land, in "the dark background and abysm of time," when the
progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, Greek, Roman, Hindoo, Persian,
Egyptian, Arabian, and the red-people of America, dwelt together
under the same roof-tree and used the same language.
But, above all, these legends prove the absolute fidelity of the
memory of the races.
We are told that the bridge-piles driven by the Romans, two thousand
years ago, in the rivers of Europe,
{p. 117}
from which the surrounding waters have excluded the decaying
atmosphere, have remained altogether unchanged in their condition. If
this has been the case for two thousand years, why would they not
remain unchanged for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years? If
the ice in which that Siberian mammoth was incased had preserved it
intact for a hundred years, or a thousand years, why might it not
have preserved it for ten thousand, for a hundred thousand years?
Place a universal legend in the minds of a race, let them repeat it
from generation to generation, and time ceases to be an element in
the problem.
Legend has one great foe to its perpetuation--civilization.
Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can
not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men
no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject;
they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it
up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade
of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed
for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if
it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in
Tennyson--a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces.
Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians adhering
quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that survive
at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in garbled
forms, and. only among the peasantry of remote districts.
In the future more and more attention will be given to the myths of
primitive races; they will be accounted as more reliable, and as
reaching farther back in time than many things which we call history.
Thoughtful men will
{p. 118}
analyze them, despising nothing; like a chemist who resolves some
compound object into its original elements--the very combination
constituting a history of the object.
H. H. Bancroft describes myths as--
"A mass of fragmentary truth and fiction, not open to rationalistic
criticism; a partition wall of allegories, built of dead facts
cemented with wild fancies; it looms ever between the immeasurable
and the measurable past."
But he adds:
"Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the
character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything
appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at
present."
"It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious
belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd,
can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as
true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
An universal myth points to two conclusions:
First, that it is based on some fact.
Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when
the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated.
A myth should be analyzed carefully; the fungi that have attached
themselves to it should be brushed off; the core of fact should be
separated from the decorations and errors of tradition.
But above all, it must be remembered that we can not depend upon
either the geography or the chronology of a myth. As I have shown,
there is a universal tendency to give the old story a new habitat,
and hence we have Ararats and Olympuses all over the world. In the
same
[1. "The Native Races of America," vol. iii, p. 14.]
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way the myth is always brought down and attached to more recent
events:
"All over Europe-in Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, England,
Scotland, Ireland--the exploits of the oldest mythological heroes,
figuring in the Sagas, Eddas, and Nibelungen Lied, have been
ascribed, in the folk-lore and ballads of the people, to Barbarossa,
Charlemagne, Boabdil, Charles V, William Tell, Arthur, Robin Hood,
Wallace, and St. Patrick."[1]
In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind
to invent an entirely new fact.
What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which did not
consist of events that had already transpired somewhere on earth? He
might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or amplify
them; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from
jealousy,--like Othello; have committed murders,--like Macbeth; have
yielded to the sway of morbid minds,--like Hamlet; have stolen, lied,
and debauched,--like Falstaff;--there are Oliver Twists, Bill
Sykeses, and Nancies; Micawbers, Pickwicks, and Pecksniffs in every
great city.
There is nothing in the mind of man that has not preexisted in
nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an
elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was
thought at one time that man had made the flying-dragon out of his
own imagination; but we now know that the image of the _pterodactyl_
had simply descended from generation to generation. Sindbad's great
bird, the _roc_, was considered a flight of the Oriental fancy, until
science revealed the bones of the _dinornis_. All the winged beasts
breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet.
In fact, even with the patterns of nature before it, the
[1. Bancroft, "Native Races," note, vol. iii, p. 17.]
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human mind has not greatly exaggerated them: it has never drawn a
bird larger than the _dinornis_ or a beast greater than the mammoth.
It is utterly impossible that the races of the whole world, of all
the continents and islands, could have preserved traditions from the
most remote ages, of a comet having struck the earth, of the great
heat, the conflagration, the cave-life, the age of darkness, and the
return of the sun, and yet these things have had no basis of fact. It
was not possible for the primitive mind to have imagined these things
if they had never occurred.
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