(OCTOBER)
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day;
The last red leaf is whirled away,
The rooks are blown about the skies.
--_Tennyson._
THE AUTUMN WINDS AND THE ROCK MILLS OF THE SEA
Nothing looks more aimless, more unorganized, perhaps, than the long
turmoil of the waves of the sea which begins in late autumn and
continues through the winter months. If, with your nose well over the
edge of a cliff, you look straight down, you will see something like
this: With every forward leap of the surges the waters are divided and
entangled among the rocks, and division after division is beaten back
by the upright wall in front and the broken blocks of stone on this
side and on that. On-coming waves, met by those recoiling, rise into
mountainous, struggling masses of wild fury. The whole affair seems to
be as clear a case of wasted energy as a Mexican revolution.
But if you watch the waves carefully and study them a little you will
see underlying and controlling this apparent anarchy the wonderful
engineering by which the machinery of the sea works out its appointed
tasks. It is when the earth has gathered its harvests and laid down
to its winter rest that the sea begins gathering harvests of its own,
grinding up the rocks for food for the plants in its gardens, for
new clothes for its shell-fish, and new soil for earth harvests in
millenniums yet to be.
I. The Destroyer
On the face of it the case looks bad. The sea's chief business seems
to be that of eating us up, or at least the lands on which we live.
And this idea of it we find running through all literature and art. A
very large number of the pictures of the sea, probably the majority,
show it in wind and storm. And this is still more true of the famous
sea pictures of literature. Shakespere, for example, makes some three
hundred references to the sea, and nearly always, where he gives it a
character, it is that of a monster, always hungry and never satisfied,
a "wild, rude sea," a sea "raging like an angry boar"--and so back to
Homer and forward to Kipling.
That the sea is constantly eating away the land cannot be denied, and
to an extent that is delightfully alarming if, as did the little boy
listening to the tale of the giants, we "like to be made nervous." It
is said that England still rules the waves, but where she fronts the
sea on the east the coast is being cut back at the rate of two to four
yards a year, in spite of all that modern engineering skill can do. In
the course of a thousand years the losses on all fronts have amounted
to over 500 square miles. Each year carries off 1,500 acres more from
the king's domains, to add them to the Empire of the Sea, "and he calls
to us still unfed." On the east coast the blows dealt by the waves in
severe storms are such that the land trembles for a mile back from
the shore. "The earth," said Emerson,[47] speaking of the industrial
greatness of England, "shakes under the thunder of its mills." So for
ages it has shaken under the thunder of the mills of the sea.
[Footnote 47: "English Traits."]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of "The Scientific American"_
SEA-CLIFFS IN THE SCHOOLROOM
These dizzy cliffs and the wide sea beyond were made in the
schoolroom in the same way that the glacier and the iceberg were
made in Chapter II.
]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of "The Scientific American"_
BEHIND THE SCENES
]
This apparent war of the sea upon the land is a war of machinery whose
workings are curiously like the ancient war machinery of men. Without
tools the sea is almost as helpless as man himself; and, as in man's
history, its use of tools begins with the Stone Age. Where there is no
stone-strewn beach or underwater shelf extending out from a cliff, the
waves do little damage. They give only a muffled and (to the poetic
ear) a baffled roar. But a sloping shelf along a rocky shore not only
makes a kind of scaling ladder on which the waves can climb to great
heights, but these waves are pitched forward with terrific force
as they reach it from the open sea. As they come on they seize huge
stones which they hurl against the cliffs. Even amid the wild voices of
tempests one hears the boulders crashing against the walls. In storms
of sufficient energy rocks of three tons weight are driven forward like
pebbles. The action against the upper part of a cliff may be compared
to that of one of those great stone-throwing engines of the Romans,
while on the lower portion the drive suggests the battering-ram.
WHAT NEPTUNE KNOWS ABOUT WEDGES AND PNEUMATIC TOOLS
Where the waves strike into narrowing crevices in the rocks they act as
wedges, prying the walls apart. In this form of the sea's destructive
work we find also an application of a motive power which has come to
play so important a part in modern engineering; namely, compressed air.
Waves strong enough to handle big rocks not only dash them against the
cliff, while the waves themselves drive into the crevices like wedges,
but in so doing they force air into the crevices and compress it. This
air, expanding as the waves fall back, forces out great blocks of stone
which, in turn, are also used as weapons of assault.
And, as we look back in the history of the sea, we find that he long
ago--the deep-laid schemer!--planted enemies within our very walls.
Waves, even when armed with the heaviest missiles, can do comparatively
little damage to walls in which there are no crevices. But there are
few such walls. Usually even the hardest rocks have running through
them those cracks which the geologists (with a fine sense of humor)
call "joints"; or they have "bedding planes," the divisions between
the rock beds. Both of these weaknesses in our defensive walls are,
in a large degree, the handiwork of the sea; the bedding planes
because rocks are so laid in the sea mills, and the joints because the
wrinkling up and consequent cracking of the land rocks is the other
end, as we learned in Chapter I, of the down-wrinkling of the rocks
under the weight of the sea.
In the very body of the rocks also is hidden a secret enemy; the salt
left when they were made. And more salt is constantly being forced into
the surface pores as the waves strike. This salt helps to dissolve and
weaken the rock under the chemical action of the air, and the rains and
the mechanical expansion and contraction of the surface with changes of
temperature.
PLANING MILLS OF THE WINTER SEA
All the Great Powers of nature, "on land, on sea, and in the air,"
seem to be in open conspiracy against our peace. The evidence seems
especially plain in late fall and winter, when the sea, contrary to the
usual practice in war, carries on its most vigorous campaigns. Then
come the winds for the great drives; then come the frosts that change
the water wedges into expanding blocks of ice that, almost with the
force of exploding shells, tear the walls apart. In winter are formed
the great ice-fields that help in two ingenious ways to further the
destructive action of the storm waves. In bays and smaller recesses in
rocky shores, the ice has embedded in it fragments of stone which the
sea has battered down. The constant plunge of the waves breaks up these
ice-fields into sections which, with the embedded stones, become rude
planing mills. Where a headland is sloping, these planers, driven back
and forth by the waves, chisel the rock away as a planer chisels down a
piece of steel upon which it has been set to work.
HOW STONES ARE CARRIED OUT TO SEA
A no less curious feature of sea engineering is the use of ice-fields
as "conveyors." During the spring, summer, and autumn the masses of
stone which the sea brings down from the cliffs on its occasional busy
days--that is to say on days when the winds are high--pile up and so
form a kind of bulwark against further attacks. But when in winter
these stones become embedded as above described, strong offshore winds
carry the ice-fields, stones and all, out to sea. Then, on shore, wind
and wave take up their work again unchecked. All along the rocky shores
of the Atlantic, as far south as New York State, beyond which no rock
walls come down to the shore, all these interesting things may be seen
by the traveller.
Another phase of this team-work of natural forces in feeding the land
to the sea is that steady advance of the waters upon certain shores. As
if science herself had joined literature and art in giving the old sea
dog a bad name, these advances are called in the language of geology,
"transgressions of the sea." These transgressions are caused in part
by the gradual sinking of the land and in part by the rising of the
waters. It is not possible always to tell which agency is at work.
Often both may be. One thing about the rising of the waters themselves
might be looked at as particularly alarming. The rivers, which, of
course, are parts of one great water system, whose centre and prime
mover is the sea, are not only constantly wearing the land down toward
sea level but raising the sea level by the inpour of vast quantities
of ground-up land. Even as matters stand, the amount of water in the
sea bowls is so great that if all lands were at the present sea level
they would be covered everywhere to a depth of two miles. Wind-borne
dust from the surface of the land and from volcanic explosions also, in
time, amounts to a pretty sum; and, of course, helps makes the waters
of the sea rise upon the land.
WEARING DOWN THE LAND AND FILLING UP THE SEA
Already the sea has advanced a thousand feet or more upon the coasts of
Maine, to take one instance; and the whole ragged outline of Europe is
due to the same cause. Let this sort of thing go on and it is easy to
see that it will only be a question of a few millions of years when New
York, London, and other centres of busy life will be buried like the
wicked cities of the plain.
And if, to help complete this picture of desolation, we for a moment
forget what we learned about the life insurance carried by the
continents, we can imagine how they too will disappear. And the Last
Man thus:
For now I stand as one upon a rock
Environed with a wilderness of sea,
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave
Expecting ever when some envious surge,
Will, in his brinish bowels, swallow him.[48]
[Footnote 48: Shakespere: "Titus Andronicus."]
To make the thing seem doubly sure, let us reflect with Mr. Burroughs
that the world is now probably in a time of spring, following the
latest of the Ice Ages. If so, the water now locked up in snow-fields
and glaciers among the mountain peaks will, before this summer of the
centuries is over, all melt back into the sea. This alone will be good
for a rise of some thirty feet in sea level.
Then, still later, we shall no doubt have another Ice Age, and the only
thing that may save us from being frozen to death is the fact that we
have previously been drowned!
II. The Builder
But it's all a bad dream; a delusion of the mind, and of the eye. We
see these things--the destruction of the land, the invasions of the
sea--but we do not see them as they are because we do not see far
enough. Looked at broadly, and reading the story of it to the end, we
learn that the whole relation of the sea to the land and its life and
beauty is that of a builder and fatherly provider. Far from being the
savage creature he has been pictured, Father Neptune seems to have the
kindly disposition of old King Cole combined with the wisdom of King
Solomon. Everywhere is evidence not only of the highest intelligence
but of good will toward man and his brother tenants of the waters,
fields, and woods.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SEA IS THIS
To begin with you remember it was the sea that helped put the world
on the map. Of course, if we had not already learned in the story of
how the continents came up out of the sea, that there is no cause for
alarm, we might imagine that having been lifted up they might, by a
reversal of the process, be lifted down again. Indeed, I find a writer
in a popular periodical dealing in science stating that "every part of
the sea floor becomes, in its turn, the shore line and is subjected
to the wear of the waves." But, as a matter of fact, we know that
the continents have finally got their land legs; that for ages the
transgressions of the sea have been mainly confined to the continental
margins; and that unless the earth's shrunken centre should, from some
unimaginable cause, swell back to its old size, it is mechanically
impossible for the entire bottoms of the vast reservoirs of the sea to
be raised.
[Illustration: HARBOR ENGINEERING OF THE RIVERS AND THE SEA
In the mouths of certain rivers emptying into the sea the tides
come rushing up in a roaring wave like this. When the tide goes out
the water flows back again. This back-and-forth motion helps to
broaden the harbor made by the river's mouth, as in the case of New
York Harbor, which is the mouth of the Hudson. Owing to this tidal
action the water of the Hudson backs up clear to Albany.
]
[Illustration: A GOLDEN GATE FOR FRISCO
The famous Golden Gate of San Francisco (so called because of the
golden sunsets shining through), and its splendid harbor, made by
the sinking of the land. The gate was originally cut by the waters
of those two rivers that join and flow into the bay. What rivers
are they?
]
HOW THE SEA HELPS MAKE GOOD FARMS AND BIG CITIES
Moreover the rivers, in the very act of wearing down the land and with
it filling up the sea, help keep the land from being flooded, as it
would be if something were not done. For, as we learned in the story
of why the mountains border the sea the sediment poured in by the
rivers helps raise the mountains and the land along the sea border. It
is during the downward movement of the continental margins that most
sediment is spread from the inpouring rivers because the dip of the
land is greater and the swifter current not only cuts down the land
faster, but carries the sediment farther out from shore. Here the new
rock is made from old worn-out soil, and, since these new rocks when
brought to the surface will in time decay, fresh soil is thus prepared
for future generations. More immediate benefits of this sinking of
shores and advance of waters are the harbors which have made great
cities like New York and London, on or near the seacoast. These harbors
are all the results of "transgressions," combined with the digging
action of wave and tide.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood_
STONE TERRACES FOR THE GANNETS
This picture shows what the rising of the land and the
architectural engineering of the sea did for the gannets on the
coast of Canada.
]
TAKING A HINT FROM THE SEA'S SHORE ENGINEERING
But the sea builds shores as well as eats them. Its chief work in this
line is the widening of the continental shelf by building it up with
rock made of the sea's own grist from its shores, and the sediment
poured in by the rivers. This work is not "delivered," so to speak,
for millions of years, when the sinking shores begin to rise again,
but the sea, in its wave work, does shore building of another kind
that shows above the waters in the generation in which it is done. On
wide, shallow beaches, storm waves break some distance from the shore,
and, so losing their force, drop the sediment which they have stirred
up, after carrying it forward only a little way. As a result of this
repeated dumping, an embankment forms, broadening seaward in the middle
and bending shoreward at the ends. A portion of the sea itself is
finally cut out and enclosed by this embankment, thus forming a lagoon.
Finally this lagoon is filled with material, washed from the land and
by sediment brought in from the sea at high tide. Human engineers,
taking the hint, now put the sea to work on similar undertakings of
their own. An embankment is built enclosing an area of the sea; then
the tides and the land wash do the rest.
[Illustration: THE DROWNED RIVERS THAT HELPED MAKE ENGLAND GREAT
Her fine harbors have helped to make England the great commercial
nation that she is. Notice here the relation of her largest cities
to the bay-like mouths of the drowned rivers and to the drowned
valley north of the Isle of Wight.
]
[Illustration: HOW THE SEA TAUGHT SHORE ENGINEERING TO MEN
This is a salt marsh at mid-tide. How the sea itself adds such
regions to the dominion of the land, and how human engineers,
taking the hint, have put the sea to work, you will learn in this
chapter.
]
The sea also works with the busy little corals in building reefs
and islands. Corals can only live and build where the water is kept
in constant and vigorous motion by current and wave. From the air
imprisoned in the bubbles by the stirring and turmoil of the waves and
particularly from the air in the white foam of the crests these little
people get their oxygen. At the same time they absorb out of the water
the food on which they grow. The sea not only feeds these little wards
of its bounty during their busy lives, but extends their usefulness
after death, either by cementing to the reef the coral, ground up by
the waves, or in storms scattering it over wide areas, to be made
later into the finest of limestone; and still later into the best of
soils.
[Illustration: FATHER NEPTUNE FEEDING THE CORAL PEOPLE
See that line of breakers just below the horizon? That shows where
Father Neptune is serving the little coral people with food and
fresh air, as explained in the text.
]
We know also that the sea makes coal as well as stone in its rock
mills; that the pressure of the overlying rock was in large part the
source of the heat that changed the vegetation of the swamps, first
into charcoal and then into coal.
The subject of what the sea has done and is doing for us is almost
as endless as the seas themselves; and no doubt the reason the sea
is never still is because it has so much to do. Nothing in earth's
animate or inanimate nature exercises an influence to be compared in
importance to that of the sea, not only upon the land, but upon the
whole life which land and sea support; and even in what seem to be the
most aimless of its movements it in reality acts with the precision of
a machine.
III. The Artist
And in the making of the rock in its presses under the water, as
well as in the grinding which takes place along the shores, the sea
evidently has an eye to beauty as well as use. As originally formed,
the conglomerates or "pudding-stones" are always laid nearest the shore
because there the retiring waves and the rivers emptying into the sea
drop the heaviest part of their load, including the pebbles. Next is
dropped the sand which is pressed into sandstone and beyond this the
finest particles of all, the ground-up soil, which becomes slate rock.
Still beyond the zone of slate is deposited the lime from the shells
of sea creatures who can live only in this clearer water, away from
the muddy waters nearer the shore. These deposits make limestone. The
result of this natural sorting process is that all the four kinds of
sedimentary rock are always laid down in just this 1, 2, 3, 4 order and
no other: (1) pudding-stone; (2) sandstone; (3) slate; (4) limestone.
Then, as a result of the transgressions of the sea, what was once
a region of conglomerate may be later found far out under the sea
and there is thus laid down over the conglomerate beds, strata of
sandstone, slate, or limestone, depending on how far the sea advances.
So we find rocks with all sorts of neighbors above and below; limestone
above conglomerate, conglomerate above slate. These changes take place
over vast regions and from the original uniformity in the arrangement
of the rocks there necessarily results a similar uniformity in the
results of this "shuffling," and no matter what changes may be made
afterward by raising them up into shore cliff and mountain and by
other earth movements, and by the endless reshaping by weather and
wave, there still remains that underlying harmony which, with variety,
gives to rocky shores their picturesque beauty.
Harmony and variety are necessary in all forms of art--pictures,
literature, music--and the conditions governing harmony and variety are
always found hand-in-hand in the art work of the sea and its helpers.
The difference in texture in different kinds of rock, for example, and
in different parts of the same rock, cause them to yield in different
ways and degrees to the action of wave, wind and weather; so there is
sure to be great variety in the shapes they take as they are worn away.
HARMONY, VARIETY, AND THE ART WORK OF THE SEA FAMILY LIKENESS IN ROCK
FORMS
Yet, with all their differences, the shapes rocks take--sandstone
compared with granite, for example--are so characteristic that one soon
learns to tell a long way off what kind of rock a distant landscape
is made of. There is inevitably a certain type resemblance, since all
sandstone is of the same general texture and weathers in the same way.
NATURE'S BUILDING BLOCKS AND THE SEA
Then take the natural division into blocks made by joints in the rocks
to which cliffs like the famous Castle Head at Bar Harbor owes its
striking form. These blocks are so nearly true that you feel sure they
must have been cut by stone-masons, and yet they have the variety which
art demands; they have not the monotonous sameness of shape of the
bricks in a wall. This is mainly due to the differences in the strains
which cracked the original rock mass. So, from the beginning a sea-wall
built by nature is more picturesque than a sea-wall built by man. And
it goes on taking more and more picturesque shapes under the hammers of
the waves. For the force of the waves, the angles at which they strike,
the size and shape of the rock fragments with which they strike, these
vary infinitely.
ETCHING, SCULPTURE, AND LANDSCAPE GARDENING
Equally true is this of other natural forces that shape the rocks;
such as the daily and seasonal changes of temperature that chip away
the mountain peaks and the faces of the cliffs, and the character and
number of plants that grow on rocks where they can get a foothold and
dying and decaying generate acids which help to etch the rocks away.
Trees growing on rocks search out the cracks with their roots and,
pushing in and prying them apart, help to change their form. And there
is sure to be variety in the arrangement of the wild trees growing on
rocks in the mountains and by the sea, since the seeds, being carried
by the winds or by running water or by birds or four-footed creatures,
fall in an endless variety of groupings. So of the shadows cast by the
trees. These shadow masses, so different in shape, owing in part to
the irregular arrangement of the trees and in part to the differences
in shape of the trees themselves, protect portions of the rock, to a
certain extent, against changes in temperature, while the bare rocks
are fully exposed to it, so there results a corresponding variety in
the result of the sun's work upon the rock. At the same time they help
on the acid etching process, because in these shadowed spots there is
more moisture and therefore more rapid decay.
The form of whole continents follows the same law. Take, for example,
Europe. "The geological history of Europe," says Geikie,[49] "is
largely the history of its mountain chains"; and the mountain chains,
for all their picturesque variety, have also, and necessarily, a
certain uniformity, because in the wrinkling of the rocks which made
them the vast areas over which they now extend were all subjected to
the same force--a big push from one side which crumpled up the earth's
outer crust as a table-cloth is crumpled up when pushed forward against
a book lying on it.
[Footnote 49: Encyclopædia Britannica: article on Geology.]
HOW THE VERY SCENERY PLAYS MANY PARTS
The ancient history written in the rocks, in the present relative
positions of the strata, shows that four times a great mountain system
has thus been raised across the face of what is now Europe; that three
times large portions of these mountain ranges have been sunk under
the sea and new rocks deposited over them; and that the mountains of
to-day--the Alps, the Carpathians, and the rest--are the survivors of
the fourth time up. Here we have another striking example of the fact
that on the great stage of life the very scenery has its exits and its
entrances!
But remember that in all these changes of scenery--in the crumplings
and the foldings, and new rock deposits and the carving by the rivers
and the frosts and the winds and the waves of the sea--we have certain
similar materials, similarly arranged, stretching over vast areas, and
the consequence is a certain uniformity and rhythm in the ups and downs
of the landscape and in the changes worked in the walls of stone "where
time and storm have set their wild signatures upon them."
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
What would you think of seeing the leaves all out and the trees in
bloom on Christmas Day? That happens right along, and the people
who live in the lands where this occurs don't think anything of
it, because this is in the Southern Hemisphere during the vacation
season of the sea.
One peculiar thing about this spring and summer in the winter time
in Africa is that when the leaves first come out they are not
green at all. They are brown, red, and pink. Later on they turn
green--just as any well-behaved leaf is supposed to do.[50] It's as
if they got mixed in their dates and thought at first it was autumn
and then woke up and said:
"Oh, yes, to be sure, this is spring! What are we thinking about?"
[Footnote 50: Livingstone's "Expedition to the Zambesi."]
Anyhow they turn from the autumn browns and reds to the appropriate
green of spring, and the flowers come out and the birds begin to
sing in the very season when our winter winds are loudest and the
rock mills of the sea are roaring at their work.
In which Hemisphere, the Northern or the Southern, do the sea mills
have most land to work on?
In Shakespere's "Tempest" you will find a description of a storm at
sea that will take your breath away. Almost the whole of Scene 2,
Act I, is in that terrible storm. In fact, the whole play, as the
title of it indicates, is full of storm.
While you are looking for storms in Shakespere see what you can
find in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Twelfth Night," "Midsummer
Night's Dream," and "The Merchant of Venice."
Speaking of the sea still being in the Stone Age what do you know
about the kind of tools man used in the Stone Age and how he got
along?[51]
(You'll find that the story of the development of man, as dealt
with in connection with the Stone Age, is part of the strangest
story of all the strange stories of science. You will get a brief
outline of it in this story of mine, in the last chapter.)
[Footnote 51: Interesting books on this subject are: Starr's "First
Steps in Human Progress" (Chautauqua Reading Course) and Clodd's
"Childhood of the World." Osborn's "The Men of the Old Stone Age" is
the latest and most comprehensive work on the subject.]
How much more do you know about pneumatic tools than Father Neptune
does? No doubt you've used a "pneumatic" tool of a sort yourself
more than once--a tool for making a noise. Guess what. A pop-gun!
Look up _pneumatic tools_, and you will find that the same thing
that makes the pop-gun pop helps to build skyscrapers, locomotives,
and steamships, and do a lot of other wonderful things.
In connection with the water wedges made by the sea you must
remember that curious trick ice has when it freezes (page 154);
otherwise you can't understand how it could act like a wedge.
Yes, and wedges, simple as they look, are almost as wonderful as
levers; and you know what Archimedes said he could do with a lever.
The whole subject of machinery and particularly of "automatic" or
so-called self-acting machinery[52] is fascinating. Find out about
planing mills and how they work, particularly why they stop planing
just when they are told to.
[Footnote 52: As a matter of fact, the only machinery that is really
automatic is the machinery of nature, of which what we have called "the
machinery of the sea" is an example.]
In connection with how the sea sometimes helps make harbors
think of as many great harbors as you can, and then look on your
geography map and see how many you have missed.
What character in "Titus Andronicus" says that about the man
standing on a rock and watching the sea come to eat him up?
Your geography has a good deal to say about continental shelves;
and with pictures. Do you remember?
Speaking of lands sinking under the sea you'll run into a world
of interesting things if you look up the story of the Lost Island
of Atlantis; about the Egyptian priest who first described it to
Solon, the Greek lawgiver, as an earthly paradise where all the
laws and everything else were just right.
And if you're of High School age you'll enjoy reading what
Plato[53] and Homer[54] say about this ideal land.
[Footnote 53: Timæus.]
[Footnote 54: The Odyssey.]
Isn't it a striking thing how the big sea that can look so fierce
takes such tender care of the little coral people? And what
extraordinary folks these coral people are! Any good article about
them will tell you worlds of interesting things. For instance, you
will find the people of whole villages living together with only
one backbone. I mean not one backbone _apiece_ but one backbone
among them _all_!
And they have the queerest way with their stomachs, a kind of
co-operative digestion, of co-operative housekeeping. (Your
mother will be particularly interested in this because it shows
the "community kitchen" idea has been thoroughly tried out and it
works! If you don't know about "community kitchens" among human
housekeepers ask mother to tell you, and then you tell _her_ what
you found out about these strange little housekeepers of the sea.)
CHAPTER XI
(NOVEMBER)
It is a noble thing for men ... to make the face of a wall look
infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon; or even
if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the
play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many
artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will
set their wild signatures upon it.
--_Ruskin_: _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_.
THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALLS
One of the most interesting things in this whole wonderful story of the
life history of the world is how men were first able to read it at all.
For we know they didn't find it written out in plain print as we have
it now. Neither was it told in any one language so that getting hold of
the thread of the story they could unravel it all, as other learned men
did the picture writing of the Egyptians and the wedge-shaped marks on
Assyrian bricks.
We know already how they learned that rivers open their own gateways
through the mountains; how they know rocks are made over in the
fairyland of change; how they know the ancient glaciers scattered
the boulders over mountainside, valley, and field; how they know the
mountains are children of the sea.
All this and more we have been reading in the written language of the
rocks, but there are other things in this rock script that I have kept
for this last but one of our pleasant talks, so that they might serve
as a kind of summary and remembrance of all that has gone before.
[Illustration: A WALL THAT VULCAN BUILT
I've said it several times before, but I can't help saying it here
again, how much more wonderful the ways of Nature are than was ever
dreamed of even in the wonder tales of the Greeks! Take this great
iron wall, for example--a wall of the iron rock called "lava"--and
who would suppose that it was made by natural forces? It was driven
in a molten state into a crack in overlying rock. After it cooled,
the rock above and on either side of it, being of softer material,
was worn away. This wall is near Spanish Peaks, Colorado. It is 100
feet high and some 30 feet wide. Colorado boys, on their vacations
in that region, run along the top of it for miles.
]
I. The Mysteries in Marble Walls
Take a piece of marble for example, such as you see along the walls of
our great modern buildings. There's a story for you! Why, if half the
things it tells had just happened, or even just been discovered by some
enterprising reporter, we should see pages and pages about it all in
every newspaper in the land.
HOW MARBLE RETELLS THE WORLD HISTORY
In that piece of marble alone you have a pretty full review of the
earth's history; of many of the most important things we have seen and
heard about since we all started out together in Chapter I. It tells of
strange life in ancient seas; of being buried deep in the earth under
immense pressure, and where it could feel the intense heat of the rock
at the centre, and of coming up again completely changed; transformed
from the substance of a dead sea creature's shell to a crystallized
stone beautifully colored and of many patterns; of the chemistry of the
world underground and the laboratories in which its lovely coloring
were made and blended; and solid rock threaded through rock with a
skill that no worker in mosaic has ever equalled; drawn out and fixed
in mere films of white, fading into the rich dark of the marble around
them like white clouds shredded by the winds.
[Illustration: THE STRANGE STORIES THAT MARBLE TELLS]
Those broader lines bending and turning, rising and falling, tell of
the work of the giant forces that lift the mountains into place and
of the great earthquakes that accompany mountain building. When those
little quavering lines were being made, away down in the earth where
the limestone changed to marble, mountains were slowly rising into the
sky on the earth's surface far above. The quaverings in the marble are
pictures, "line drawings" of the mountain story. And beside these lines
that you can read so plainly there are others so small that you need a
magnifying glass to see them; echoes, away down in the fairyland of the
microscope, of the doings of the giants of Mountainland far above.
In following the lines of the earth's great walls of rock over a wide
extent they are found waving sharply up and down in one section, rising
and falling like ocean swells in another, in forward sloping folds in
another, and sometimes even with folds doubling over, as if the great
mountains which these folds made were trying to stand on their heads.
WHY LINES IN MARBLE REPEAT MOUNTAIN FORMS
All these rock folds which, with the help of the sculpturing of the
elements, produce the infinite variety of beauty in mountain scenery
are, speaking generally, repeated in the lines of the marble. But they
are repeated only in miniature, because the rocks deep in the earth are
under such pressure that while the rocks on the surface are free to
rise in big and comparatively simple waves those beneath are doubled up
into smaller and much more crumpled folds. Take several sheets of paper
lying free on the table and press them from the ends. They will rise
in simple arches as most mountains do. Now lay a book on these sheets
and press from the ends again. You see they crumple up a great deal
more; the larger wrinkles themselves doubling into smaller ones.
[Illustration: HOW MOTHER NATURE MAKES HER Z'S
These Z-shaped rock folds were made by the crumpling up of the
crust as the centre, cooling, shrank away. They are to be seen near
the east end of Ogden Canyon, Utah. The black lines were added to
the photograph in the offices of Uncle Sam's big department of
geology at Washington, to show clearly just where the rock runs.
]
You may often have noticed a banded effect in marble. My, what power
it took to do that! Pressure we can't realize. Pressure from above so
great that it made this marble spread; moulded it like clay in the
hands of the potter; the same kind of force that flattened out the
pebbles referred to in Chapter V. This is called "rock flow," and how
plainly the marble shows the flowing movement. I always think what the
weather people call "stratus" clouds, look as if they were made by long
strokes of a painter's brush; and this marble has the very same flowing
lines. Such cloud pictures in marble are made where deposits of other
kinds of rock have been interlaid with the deposits of limestone which
afterward changed to marble, and it is where these bands are folded or
bent that we have set down for us the story of the mountain folds.
Those gossamer effects and the little white clouds spinning out and
fading into the general mass of the marble, how delicate they are!
Yet it took a force that made the earth quake to put them there. The
more we know of the strange and fearful things that happen in times of
earthquake the more we can read between these filmy lines. They tell of
the sides of mountains tumbling down and spreading their valleys with a
chaos of broken stone; making cliffs where there were peaks and peaks
where there were cliffs; changing the course of rivers; shifting whole
forests on the mountainside and replacing them with grim walls and
bastions of barren stone--all in the twinkling of an eye!
THE EARTHQUAKES AND THE DELICATE FILMS
It is by the crushing movements that made the earthquake that rocks are
broken into confusions of cracks such as you often see in a thick glass
window that has been broken. Then into these cracks come dissolved
minerals from other rocks and harden into stone. In the marble one set
of veins often runs right through another as if they had been inlaid.
Then there may be other veins that cross both of these--no end of
criss-crossings. The different sets of veins usually differ also in
color and in grain, and even have different kinds of mineral in them.
With a good hand-glass you can see this difference in texture.
[Illustration: WHEN THE EARTHQUAKE TAKES ITS PEN IN HAND
These are, so to speak, the autographs of earthquakes--the
records earthquakes themselves make on an instrument called the
"seismograph," using a stylus, as the ancients did, as you will
see by looking up "seismograph" in the dictionary or encyclopædia.
After an earthquake starts it seems to stop for breath or for want
of the right word--just like people; for you notice portions of the
lines are almost straight. These were made when the earthquake was
comparatively quiet. Then, when it got excited again--as in the
second record from the top--the stylus fairly jumped up and down;
and there where the waves are long and close together the shocks
were particularly severe and followed each other rapidly.
]
II. How Vulcan Drove his Autograph into the Rocks
But there is another kind of handwriting on the walls that was made
with such a vigorous stroke that it also made the earth shake. Of
course we might expect Vulcan to write a rather vigorous hand--Vulcan,
forger of thunderbolts for Jove. The ancients thought volcanoes
belonged to the kingdom of Vulcan, so in scientific language everything
connected with volcanic action comes under the head of "Vulcanism."
These queer letters we are talking about are called "dikes." They are
made of lava that was driven into cracks in the rocks and afterward
cooled into rock that is as hard as iron. Lava is often largely made of
iron.
[Illustration: MR. VULCAN'S FAMOUS CASTLE ON THE HUDSON
This is a part of Mr. Vulcan's famous castle on the Hudson known
as the Palisades. Here the lava rock has formed into columns which
make the mass look all the more like some old castle of the Middle
Ages. The "windows" are where the softer spots in the rock have
decayed away. This castle--come to think of it--really belongs
to mediæval architecture, for it was built in the Middle Ages of
earth's long history.
]
[Illustration: THIS IS THE HAND OF VULCAN, TOO]
Were you ever down by the seashore in a storm? If so you remember
how the ground under your feet shook when a great wave rushed into
some narrow passage or crevice in the rocks, and was tossed high in
the air in spray. Then just imagine molten lava, which is many times
heavier than water, driven into a crack in a rock with the force of a
cannon-ball. That's how it happened. That's how those dark strokes in
the rock with their heavy shading were made.
This was done in the depths of the earth; not on the surface where you
see these rocks now. They used to have piles of other rocks above
them, but these in course of time have been weathered away. This is
known, not only from the marks of the wearing but from the fact that
these dikes, as well as the rock into which they have been driven, are
crystallized, wholly or in part. Such crystallizing, as we know, takes
place away down in the earth.
Dikes are very common. In some places you find the rocks fairly laced
with them. The picture of the dikes in the granite shores at Marblehead
also shows (in the horizontal plan) many "faults" or slips of the
rock since the dike was made, and each slip probably gave rise to an
earthquake. So you see there's the story of a terrible time written on
those quiet old residents by the sea.
[Illustration: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY
Here is a still more striking example of the formation of columns
in lava--the Giant's Causeway. Here are 40,000 columns, packed
like the cells of a honeycomb, and they slope to the pavement in
the foreground that gives the mass its name. That bees should make
their little honey-jars in such regular form is wonderful enough,
but think of lava shaping its own self into columns like that!
]
DID MR. VULCAN USE A STEAM PILE-DRIVER?
Just what power Mr. Vulcan used to drive the dikes is not known for
sure, but I'll tell you how it is supposed to have been done. Remember
that all rocks that are deep down in the earth contain water, shut up
in their pores. Then remember how hot it is down there and how this
heat would make steam right in the rocks. Then let the rock above be
cracked by the movements of the earth crust, and this crack extend down
to where these hot rocks are, the pressure, being released along that
crack, the melted rock (lava) would rush up, as it does in connection
with the eruptions of volcanoes, and the exploding steam would help
drive it.
III. Ancient Weather Records Turned to Stone
So much for the literary remains of Mr. Vulcan. Now let's see how much
we can make out of the handwriting of the waters and the winds on these
walls of time.
What does the picture at the top of page 245 look like? Rain-drops in
the dust. And so you see they are; but the rain fell so long that the
pits made in the dust have turned to stone. Think of the autograph of
a rain-drop older than the Pharaohs; older than the pyramids these
Pharaohs built to perpetuate their names.
And this is how such rain-drops immortalize themselves; this is the
interpretation of their handwriting on the walls. Along the dry shore
of an ancient sea when the tide was out, rain-drops fell on the sand
and dust. Tides often come in with a rush, in wild waves driven by
the wind, but when there is no wind and no waves rolling in from far
distant storms the tide may overspread such delicate things as the
imprint of rain-drops with a thin protecting film of mud. This was what
happened to our little rain pits. Later tides overlaid them deeper
from day to day, and in course of time both the layer containing the
rain-drop prints and the overlying layers of sediment turned to stone.
Often the heat of a summer sun will bake these rain-drop designs and
this you see helps; it holds the impression until the tide can come in
and spread its protecting film. Many imprints of rain-drops and of the
feet of reptiles are found in the sandstone underlying the coal seams
in eastern Pennsylvania, and they are always, I am told, covered with
a fine powdery material, which was once the slime and mud of the tide.
Such rain marks are often found also in slate. Wouldn't you like to
have a slate with one of these rain-drop autographs on it?
[Illustration: RAIN-DROP AUTOGRAPHS OLDER THAN THE PHARAOHS]
Here, by the way, is a very important thing these rain-drops tell. Says
Professor Shaler:
"They tell us that the ordinary machinery of the atmosphere was
operating in those days very much as it is to-day, and that the climate
was much the same."[55]
[Footnote 55: This quotation is from Doctor Shaler's "Nature and Man in
America," a book you should read, as you should all of Doctor Shaler's
books. No one has observed so many interesting things in the field of
geology and few have written about them so simply or reasoned about
them so well.]
So, he argues, the great Ice Age couldn't have been due to change of
climate, but to the other things that we read about in Chapter II. For
they even know in what ages different records of rain-drops were made
because they are found in rocks laid down in different periods; and one
of the periods in which they are found was that in which the North Pole
ice and its neighbors came down and made us those long visits.
STORY OF A STROLL IN THE RAIN
Another story found in museums is written in slate--not by a rain-drop
but by a living creature. The slate shows the track of a reptile with
feet like a bird. Evidently he was strolling along in the rain; for
there you see the marks of the rain-drops right among the marks of his
feet, and in the footprints themselves. Being a reptile who spent much
of his time in or near the water he no doubt enjoyed these little pats
of the rain-drops as he went along.
BUT THIS STROLL WAS TAKEN IN THE SUN
In another of these museum specimens we see written out just as plainly
the story of a stroll in the sun. There are the imprints of Mr.
Reptile's feet, and there are the sun-cracks in the mud showing that
the sun was shining--or at least that it had been shining for several
days or weeks, for it takes a little time to make sun-cracks in mud.
This story, we might suppose, was written so that it could be read
by the blind; the cracks, as well as the footprints, are brought out
in raised lettering. Sun-cracked mud, after a long dry "spell," will
bake so that the cracks will not be washed out by the returning tide
but instead be filled by other material, and this material will go on
building up to a certain extent; so making those ridges.
[Illustration: "THEN THERE CAME A LONG DRY SPELL"
This shows how the cracks in dried-up mud are preserved in stone.
The process is the same as in the case of the stone imprints of
rain-drops, the imprints being protected by successive deposits of
mud by quiet tides, and afterward turning to stone.
]
THE STONE AUTOGRAPHS OF GENTLE BREEZES
On still other stones you will find written the story of gentle breezes
that stirred the water and made ripples on long-buried shores. First
the breezes rippled the shallow waters near the shore. Then the waters
rippled the sand, and the sediments of the tide preserved these ripple
marks as they did the rain-drops and the footprints.
But the wind alone, without the help of water ripples, can write its
name in the sands of time. And when you get to know the handwriting
of wind and wave you will not mistake the one for the other. You are
likely to find wind ripples on any big heap of sand. Have a good look
at them and then go down to shallow water on a sandy shore and compare
the two kinds. That's the way the great men of science do; they notice
every little thing.
[Illustration:
_From Norton's "Elements of Geology."
By permission of Ginn and Company_
THE STORY OF BIG ROUND TOP AND LITTLE ROUND TOP
One story of Big Round Top and Little Round Top your history tells,
but long before the battle of Gettysburg these two mountains had
age-long battles of their own with the winds, the rains, and the
frosts, and in these battles lost their peaks and their sharp
outlines of jagged rock, and became rounded down to the forms we
see before us. Those rocks in the field were probably broken off
in these battles, as the rocks of high mountains are to-day, and
carried down by roaring torrents.
]
WEATHER RECORDS ON THE MOUNTAIN WALLS
From a scientific standpoint little things may be just as big as big
things. For example, in this matter of old weather records these
rain-drops and ripple stones are just as interesting as other weather
records written large on mountain walls; such as those which tell that
what is now the Dead Sea was once part of a much larger sea that wasn't
dead at all. You may never get to read these records on the mountain
walls of Palestine, for they are a long way off, but here in our own
country we have a similar story told on mountain walls in the region
of another dead sea--the Great Salt Lake of Utah. From Salt Lake City
you can see on the mountain surrounding the desert of the Great Basin
the marks of old shore lines; where the waves cut into the rock. These
marks show that this Basin once held two great lakes, and the one in
the eastern portion dried up into what is now Great Salt Lake.
[Illustration: WEATHER RECORDS ON THE WALLS OF TIME
What is now the Great Salt Lake used to be a much greater lake that
wasn't salt at all. That vast flight of steps up the mountainside
shows how wide it spread. As the big lake dried up, and grew
smaller and smaller and saltier and saltier, its shores were
bounded successively by those wave-cut cliffs.
]
IV. Stories Written on the Pebbles
Sometimes when a geologist picks up a pebble and looks at it a moment
he can hear the roar of mountain torrents and of lowland streams in
flood. If the pebble is round it shows that it has been carried far and
rolled about by streams. If it has pits in it this shows that its water
journeys were rough, because such pits are made by knocking against
other pebbles and sharp stones in the struggle and confusion of the
rushing waters. You see these little dots are a kind of shorthand, for
we pebbles are stenographers too!
[Illustration: THE PERCHED BOULDER IN BRONX PARK
This is one of the interesting things to be seen when you visit
Bronx Park in New York City. Of course, _you_ know how that old
boulder got there, and how he drew those straight lines in the
rock-bed beneath, but many visitors to the park do not.
]
HOW PEBBLES TELL OF THEIR TRAVELS
Other great stories in small space are told on glacial pebbles.
Scientific men can often tell from the look of a pebble whether it was
shaped by rivers, by the sea, by the sand blasts of desert winds, or
by the glaciers. Not only that, but, if it is a glaciated pebble, on
what part of the glacier it was carried; whether in the middle of its
back, or on the sides, like the passengers in an Irish jaunting-car;
or whether it rode underneath, like a tramp stealing a ride on the
bumpers. The stones in the middle of the glacier's back naturally keep
their sharp edges longer than stones on the side, ground as the side
stones are by the moving ice mass against the mountain walls. And the
stones on both top and sides would lose less of their edges than the
stones underneath the ice.
[Illustration:
_From Norton's "Elements of Geology."
By permission of Ginn and Company_
ONE PEBBLE IN ITS TIME PLAYS MANY PARTS
Here are pebbles faceted in different ways by glaciers. No. 1 has
six facets. No. 4, originally a rounded river pebble, has been
rubbed down to one flat face. Nos. 3 and 5 are battered little
travellers faceted on one side only. Notice how No. 5 got his face
scratched just as I did.
]
[Illustration: PEBBLE FACETED BY WIND-BLOWN SAND
You remember how the glaciers ground flat faces or facets on the
pebbles, don't you? Here is another example of Nature's lapidary
work, but here she has used wind and sand instead of ice.
]
V. A Greater Cæsar and His Commentaries
Well, there he is again, you see, Mr. Glacier of the Ice Age. He's
always turning up, everywhere you go in earth history. As Shakespere's
Mr. Cassius said of Mr. Julius Cæsar, "he bestrode the world." And,
like the Roman Cæsar, this Cæsar wrote the story of his own exploits;
but although a vastly greater conqueror than the famous Roman, he was
even more modest. Cæsar and his Commentaries, our High School friend
will tell you, nearly always refers to himself in the third person;
but in his commentaries on his travels and exploits the Old Man of the
Mountain didn't even use his own name. He left the editors of his
manuscript to find out who he was.
HOW THE GREAT LAKES WERE TIPPED UP
One of the most striking things he did, of which he wrote the record on
the walls, was to tip up the Great Lakes. You remember just how he made
them. Well, it seems that as he started back home he tipped them up.
Suppose you could pick up the vast stone bowls that hold these lakes
and tip them toward the north as easily as you can tip a bowl of water,
what would the water do? It would fall lower along the south shores of
the lakes and rise along the northern shores, wouldn't it? Then suppose
the lakes were kept tipped up in this way for ages, and summer wind
storms and winter tempests dashed waves against their shores, what
would happen? Stone walls rising above the shore would have terraces
cut into them, and the line of these terraces would tilt toward the
north. There are terraces just like that on rocks bordering the Great
Lakes, and the explanation of their tilt is that the lakes themselves
were tipped up, and that the Old Man of the Mountain did the tipping.
The rock crust of the round earth bends under great weight like an
arch. So when the enormous weight of the glaciers of the Ice Age was on
a portion of the arch it bent down. Then, as the glaciers retreated,
the weight of them was shifted northward all the time. Finally when
the glaciers in the region of the lakes had melted quite away the arch
slowly rose into place again and lifted the terraces above the water
line as we see them to-day.
Throughout regions the glaciers visited you find rocks polished like
mirrors; in other cases they are scratched, and in others deeply
grooved.
[Illustration: SCENE ON THE COAST OF NORWAY BY A GLACIER
You know the fiords. You've met them in your geography. This is
a fiord on the Norway coast. Notice how smooth the walls of the
mountains are. They were trimmed down by the ice, which also plowed
off their soil. We are here looking up what was once a river
valley, but the glacier cut it down below sea level, and this is
sea water. Notice in the openings of the mountains all the way up
the valley where the tributaries of the ancient river flowed in
then as now.
]
HOW THIS MR. CÆSAR IS TRANSLATED
No one scratch can be followed far. The composition is, like Cæsar's,
in short sentences, whole episodes in a word: "Veni, vidi, vici." But a
series of scratches all run in one general direction--north and south.
To get at the meaning--just as in construing Cæsar--you must take the
context; what goes before and after.
The sides of the valleys of the Alps from 1,000 to 2,000 feet above
the surface of the glaciers of our own time are scratched and furrowed
in the same way. Here we catch Mr. Glacier almost in the very act of
writing.
THE HANDWRITING OF THE TWO CÆSARS
To do this writing, our Cæsar, like the Cæsar of the High School,
used a stylus. Mr. Glacier's stylus, as we know, was made of stone
held fast in his icy grip (page 121). And here is another curious
resemblance between the manuscripts of Mr. G. Cæsar and Mr. J. Cæsar.
They both wrote in straight lines. The reason Julius Cæsar and other
Roman gentlemen wrote in letters made of straight lines was that they
scratched these letters on tablets covered with wax, using a sharpened
piece of iron or ivory. You can see it would be much easier with such
writing tools and material to form letters in straight lines than to
write in flowing, rounded and connected lines as we do so easily with a
nice flexible pen on a smooth surface.
HOW THE OLD MEN CHANGED A "V" TO A "U"
Here is something else about the story of the Old Men of the Mountain
that is a curious reminder of the Romans and their letters. The Romans
had no letter U in their alphabet and so V had to do a double duty;
it had to be a V and then when asked, had to take its place in line
and pretend to be a U. For instance, a Roman who wanted to write the
word "number" would do it in this way: "NVMERO." After a while, in the
history of the growth of our alphabet, the V that was intended for U
was rounded at the bottom.
Now, curiously enough, the writing of the Old Men of the Mountain has
gone through the same process. River valleys in mountain regions, as
elsewhere, are originally V-shaped, but where glaciers flowed down
these valleys they not only made them wider but rounded out the bottoms
so that they became U-shaped. Look at the valley in the Wind River
range in Wyoming shown in the geologies. You notice the farther your
eye goes up into the mountains the more V-shaped the valley becomes.
Back toward antiquity, you see, when they had nothing but V!
[Illustration: THE HANDWRITING OF THE GLACIERS AND THE ROMANS
Here is an interesting relic of ancient days that will enable you
to compare the chirography of the Old Men of the Mountain with that
of the Romans. These are marks left by the masons on Roman walls.
They show just what part each mason laid, so that if the wall
proved defective the authorities would know who was responsible.
]
All quite striking, isn't it, this strange kind of writing on the walls
of time? As if, among the ruins that are all there is left of the
fallen Roman Empire, we should in some heap of dust and crumbled stone
find one of the very tablets on which Cæsar wrote his commentaries and
there engraved in Cæsar's own hand:
[Illustration: THIS STYLE IS CALLED FLUTING
Looks like moulding, doesn't it? This is a piece of rock, and it
was carved in that way by the glaciers with their tools of embedded
stone. The deeper grooves were made where the rock was softer or
where the glacier's chisels were of a particularly hard quality,
such as flint or granite.
]
"Cæsar, maximis bellis confectis, in hiberna exercitum deduxit."
Can you translate that for us? (This to the High School Boy.)
"As easy as anything," says he. "Cæsar, on completion of these great
wars, led his army into winter quarters."
And that same phrase might serve in Mr. Glacier's Commentaries too.
For the glaciers of the Ice Age, after their great work was done, also
went into winter quarters; melting back to the present snow-line in our
mountains and the regions of eternal ice around the pole.
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
One of the most interesting stories of men's handwriting on the
walls and how scholars, many centuries afterward, learned to read
it, you will find in encyclopædias, histories, and other books
under such headings as _Egypt_, _Assyria_, _Rosetta Stone_, and
most of all under _Hieroglyphics_; a big word, but full of meat
when once you've cracked the shell.
Among other things, you will find that if it hadn't been for the
Egyptians and other clever people of the long ago we would not have
had our written language to read at all; on walls or anywhere else!
If you had been an Egyptian, say 4,000 years ago, how many letters
do you suppose you would have had to learn before you could have
read well? About a thousand! But it wouldn't have been so hard
as you think, for the Egyptian letters talked, so to speak. They
told their own story much as did the picture words that told so
much to the little Greeks. These Egyptian words, however--for they
were words, or several words in one, rather than letters--were
real pictures, and very good pictures, too. (See Chambers under
"Hieroglyphics" for the little pictures.)
Some of them were very simple. It wasn't hard to learn.
But now suppose you were an Egyptian and you wanted to write a
letter telling somebody how pleased you were about something--a
nice new book an uncle had sent you, for instance--the proper
picture-word to use would be a lady beating a tambourine. She is
pleased--that's why she is beating the tambourine, just as a small
boy claps his hands when he says, "Oh, goody, goody!" So this
picture-word came to be used to express "joy" or "pleasure" over
anything.
These are just some samples to show you what interesting things
even such formidable words as "hieroglyphics" are when you make
friends with them. But now, to get back to Nature's handwriting and
the nature myths connected with it, what do you know about this
Vulcan, who left so much of his manuscript in the rocks?
The ancients thought of him as a worker in metals. Don't you think
they would have, been quite sure of it if they had known about the
dikes and the palisades of the Hudson, and Fingal's cave, with
their remarkable iron-like columns of cooled lava? But he was an
artist in metals, too, and a mechanical engineer, it seems. Do you
remember about those two statues of beautiful women that he made
of pure gold, and how they walked about with him wherever he went?
And the brazen-footed bulls of Ætes, that filled the air with their
bellowings and from their nostrils blew flame and smoke?[56]
[Footnote 56: I wonder if Vulcan could have been thinking of
locomotives--what we sometimes call "iron horses"--when he made those
bulls. Do you suppose?]
The Greeks probably didn't know about such "art metal" work as
the palisades--certainly they didn't know about the Hudson River
or Fingal's Cave--but they had Vulcan (Hephæstus they called him)
doing all sorts of other art-metal things. There was the famous
shield he made for Achilles, for instance. Homer takes several
pages just to tell about the different figures on it and what they
meant.[57]
[Footnote 57: The Iliad.]
Why do you suppose a temple was erected on Mount Etna? (What kind
of a mountain is it?)
Wouldn't it be strange if we could make hard coal out of soft?
Vulcan does that sometimes with these dike strokes of his.[58]
[Footnote 58: The International Encyclopedia.]
The International will also tell you why dike rock is usually so
solid and tough, and what the crystal people have to do with making
it so.
The Britannica (28: 188) tells how, in the walls of volcanoes
Vulcan wrote out the hint for making re-enforced concrete which is
so important a feature of modern architectural engineering.
Look about on the rock-beds in the stone quarry and see if you
can't find some of the writing of that Older Cæsar with his queer
stone stylus. Probably the men in the quarry will have wondered how
these scratches came there and you can tell them.
There is one style of Mr. Glacier's hand-work that even the dogs
and the horses notice, and that is the "mirror rocks." Muir tells
about them in his "Mountains of California."
CHAPTER XII
(DECEMBER)
"A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly fish and a saurian
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty
And a face turned from the clod--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God."
--_William Herbert Carruth._
THE END OF THE WORLD
So the Ice Ages and their glaciers and the Romans and their Cæsars
melted away. We know them only by the marks they left on the walls
of time. But why this constant doing and undoing of things? We have
seen it going on from the very beginning; rock crumbling to dust, dust
changing back to rock; rocks raised up into mountains, mountains worn
down to plains; then more mountains, and on through the same cycle of
endless change; as if always starting the whole thing over again.
What is it all about? Are we getting anywhere? If so, where?
Ever since men looked out upon the world around them and began to
think, they have puzzled not only about the causes but the purpose of
this endless drama of creation and decay. Some said one thing; some
said another. The Persian poet who wrote those fine lines about the
lion and the lizard in the ruins of the palaces meant to say that's
all that everything comes to; all things, men included, return to the
elements of which they were made and that's the end of them. So, said
he, what's the use of bothering one's head about it? There's nothing to
be learned. One verse of his famous song reads like this:
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went."
But Science, as we shall now see, has a better answer.
I. Nothing Happens
In the first place you must have noticed as we came along through this
little book that nothing happens in this world of ours; everything
is under a government of laws. Not only did it turn out that there
was method in the apparent madness of the sea but we found method
everywhere. It was not chance that made our worlds, whether they were
born full-grown or grew up piece by piece. And we see the same forces
at work in small things as in the great. The force that keeps the earth
in its orbit is just as careful to catch and plant the tiny seeds of
the grasses and the pine-trees drifting forward in the wind, so keeping
the world clothed with life and verdure.
ALL NATURE UNDER A GOVERNMENT OF LAW
So with the seasons with all that they mean in the life of the world;
spring never fails to follow winter. Little things happen that make
spring "late," as we say; but spring itself never fails to come and
always in its right place in the procession of the year. All this
because the earth stays in its orbit and spins on its axis. Watches
break their mainsprings, clocks run down. These things "happen"; but
we never think of saying that the mainspring or the wheels "happened,"
or that they "happened" into their places in the watch. The worlds not
only make their appointed round as regularly as the wheels of a watch
but they never run down, and the power that keeps them going and in
their places never breaks. If it ever occurred in any other way--if we
should hear of a world flying out of its orbit and going banging around
among the other worlds, we could talk of "happening."
NATURE'S ACCIDENT INSURANCE SYSTEM
We might call these laws that make it so certain that nature's business
will go on as usual, rain or shine, the Accident Insurance of the
Universe. We have nothing quite like it in human insurance systems; for
these only make it up to you--the best they can--after some accident
has happened. Nature's insurance system, on the other hand, makes it
certain that nothing _will_ happen to change the main course of things.
The protective insurance of the universe is woven right through Nature
itself. The continents, for example, were bound, in due course, to rise
in their places, because it is the nature of cooling masses to shrink
and for the outside to cool the faster and to harden and to wrinkle up.
It doesn't matter whether the cooling mass is a little baked apple or a
big hot earth.
[Illustration: THE CLOCK OF THE AGES
By representing the great geologic periods of time in the form of
a clock-face a writer in the _Scientific American_ enables us to
form a rough conception of their duration, their distinguishing
features, and their relations to one another, according to
ideas associated with the theory of La Place, but which have
been considerably modified in the light of later reasoning and
investigation. The view now generally accepted, for example, is
that the Azoic era was longer than all subsequent time. But, taking
the picture as it stands, each "hour" represents 3,000,000 years.
For a quarter of the total period up to the very recent appearance
of man "there was darkness upon the face of the deep." Next after
the Azoic was the Laurentian Period, when "the dry land appeared."
Later came the dawn of life, and this life, like the inanimate
matter which preceded it, kept rising and continues to rise, as the
ages pass, to higher, more beautiful, and nobler forms.
]
Nor was it an accident that the continents in their original form grew
larger with the fat of the land that was added to them under the action
of the chemistry of the air. You see Nature must understand chemistry
or things wouldn't come out right in the laboratory, as they always do
if you have made no mistakes. Ever think of that, Mr. High School Boy?
II. The Strangest Thing of All That Didn't Happen
But the strangest thing of all that didn't happen in this history of
the world and its making I'm going to tell you about now.
KINSHIP OF KITTENS AND APPLE-TREES
You remember what I said of the apple-tree in Chapter V (page 93), how
nobody who didn't know it to be true would believe that little Miss
Greenleaf and old Mr. Root and rough Mr. Bark and lovely Miss Blossom
were not only born under the same roof but were as closely related as
a pussy-cat and her nest full of kittens. I didn't mention the kittens
then, but just suppose I had done so; and then had gone on to say
that kittens are relations of the apple family and that all birds are
related to all kittens, and that both are kindred of that terrible Mr.
Cetiosaurus that we met in the Bad Lands of Dakota.
Would you have believed it?
No? Well, I don't wonder. It was quite a while before the wise men of
science believed it. Now not only is this idea of the origin of all
living things--animal and vegetable--universally accepted by men of
science, but every educated person is supposed to know about it. It is
always, and as a matter of course, put into the school-books dealing
with the history of nature; just as in all histories we are sure to see
Columbus landing in 1492 and George Washington being inaugurated April
30, 1789.
Most people, including the scientists, used to think that each kind of
plant and animal was given its present form in the first place and that
this form had never changed. This was known as the "special creation"
theory; while the idea that the various kinds of plants and animals
we now know gradually developed from quite different forms is called
the theory of "evolution." Among the curious facts that finally led
educated people everywhere to believe this strangest of all the strange
fairy tales of the land of science were these:
AS WE READ THE ROCKS FROM THE BOTTOM UP
The remains and imprints of plant and animal life of long ago which we
find in the rocks show successions of related but different forms in
the rocks of different ages. At the beginning in the lowest rocks the
forms are much alike, but grow more and more unlike as we climb these
stairs of time. At first there are no animals with backbones; then
there come animals with backbones that resemble each other in general
build; and finally such wide varieties of backboned creatures as fish,
birds, horses, and men. And so with endless varieties of birds and
beasts and creeping things and the trees and the grasses of the field.
Sometimes the differences between these apparently related forms, as
we find them in the rocks, are very great; but everything goes to show
that this is because there are missing pages, so to speak, in the great
stone book. When you remember how long it takes to make one of these
layers of stone, and what they go through in cracking and twisting and
wearing down on their way back to dust and the sea, and how quickly
the remains of big animals--to say nothing of plants and insects--are
destroyed, you must agree that the wonder is that we have any records
at all. Yet so enormous has been the number of plants and animals that
have died in the course of the world's history that there have been
found hundreds and thousands of these remains and imprints between the
layers of stone. In all cases the fashions in form change from age to
age; and the longer the time, as shown by the thickness of the rock,
the greater the change.
THE RABBIT THAT TURNED INTO A HORSE
The horse, which has been such a faithful carrier for man since man and
horse arrived from the lower ranges of life, also brought with him on
the way up one of the most complete of these strange autobiographies
that our brother animals have recorded with their bones. The most of
this story of the horse was found in the rocks of our Western States,
but the first chapter of it saw the light about forty years ago in
England. When the bones were found in the rock deposits of that
country known as London Clay they looked so unhorselike that a famous
paleontologist (as the students of these ancient anatomies are called)
gave it a name which means "rabbit-like beast." But in rock of the
same age in Wyoming they afterward found the bones of an animal that
looked a little more like a horse, but plainly a close relation of
the rabbit-like beast. They went on finding different forms, through
thirteen successive stages of rock history, and with each new period
the form kept getting larger and more horselike until they came to a
horse with three toes; and finally to one with the single big toe which
we call a hoof. Instead of the other two toes there were those two
little lumps that you can feel in any horse's foot just above the hoof.
These are the ends of two small splintlike bones that are all there is
left of the other two toes.