Great range composed of boulder clay.
Daraily.
Lost on the savannahs.
Jamaily.
A deer-hunter's family.
Totagalpa.
Walls covered with cement, and whitewashed.
Ocotal.
The valley of Depilto.
Hawks and small birds.
Depilto.
Silver mine.
Geology of the valley.
Glacial drift.
The glacial period in Central America.
Evidence that the ice extended to the tropics.
Scarcity of gold in the valley gravels.
Difference of the Mollusca on the east and west coast
of the Isthmus of Darien.
The refuge of the tropical American animals and plants
during the glacial period.
The lowering of the sea-level.
The land shells of the West Indian Islands.
The Malay Archipelago.
Easter Island.
Atlantis.
Traditions of the deluge.
BIDDING adieu to our hosts, we mounted our mules and descended the
ridge on which their hut is built. The range was very steep, and
fully 1200 feet high, composed entirely of boulder clay. This clay
was of a brown colour, and full of angular and subangular blocks of
stone of all sizes up to nine feet in diameter. The hill on the
slope that we descended was covered with a forest resembling that
around Santo Domingo, though the trees were not so large; but
tree-ferns, palms, lianas, and broad-leaved Heliconiae and
Melastomae were again abundant. In these forests, I was told, the
"Quesal," the royal bird of the Aztecs (Trogon resplendens), is
sometimes found.
After descending about 1000 feet, we issued from the forest and
passed over well-grassed savannahs surrounded by high ranges, on
the eastern slopes of which were forests of pine-trees. The ground
was entirely composed of boulder clay, and not until we had
travelled about five miles did we see any rock in situ. This
boulder clay had extended all the way from San Rafael, and ranges
of hills appeared to be composed entirely of it. The angular and
subangular stones that it contained were an irregular mixture of
different varieties of trap, conglomerate, and schistose rocks. In
the northern states of America such appearances would be
unhesitatingly ascribed to the action of ice, but I was at the time
unprepared to believe that the glacial period could have left such
a memorial of its existence within the tropics, at no greater
elevation above the sea than 3000 feet.
Riding on without stopping, we passed through Yales, a small
village of scattered huts, and reached a river flowing north
through a fine alluvial plain almost uninhabited. After crossing
the river three times, we turned off to the north-west, and passed
over low grassy ranges with scattered pine-trees, and in the
hollows a few clearings for growing maize, wheat, and beans. At
noon we halted for an hour to let our mules feed on a small
alluvial flat, for they had had nothing to eat the night before on
the bleak mountain summit.
Continuing our journey, we arrived at Daraily, where was a fine
large clearing, with stone walls and a sugar-mill. The house was
about half a mile from the road, at the foot of a hill covered with
scattered pine-trees, forming a fine background to the scene. The
farm was well cultivated, and kept clean from weeds. Altogether the
scene was a most unusual one for the central provinces of
Nicaragua, and reflected great credit on the proprietor, Don
Estevan Espinosa. Had Nicaragua many such sons they would soon
change the face of the country, and turn many a wilderness into a
fruitful garden.
Passing over a stony range, we descended by a steep pass into the
valley of the Estely, and followed it down to the westward across
low dry hills with prickly bushes and scrub. About five o'clock we
reached an extensive plain, covered with prickly trees and shrubs,
and pressed on to get to the village of Palacaguina, where we
proposed to pass the night. There were many paths leading across
the plain, and there was no person to be seen to direct us which to
take; whilst the scrubby trees interrupted our view in every
direction. Rito had once before been in the neighbourhood, and
thought he knew the way, so we submitted ourselves to his guidance;
but, as it proved, he took a path which led us past, instead of to,
the town. Night set in as we were pushing across dry weed-covered
hills, destitute of grass or water, every minute expecting to meet
some one who could tell us about the road. Rito was still confident
that he was right, although both Velasquez and myself had concluded
we must have got on the wrong road. The only animal we met with was
a black and white skunk, with a young one following it. The mother
ran too fast up a rocky slope for the young one, which was left
behind, and came towards us. It was very pretty, with its
snow-white bushy tail laid over its black back. We were, however,
afraid to touch it, fearing that, young as it was, it might have a
supply of that foetid fluid that its kind discharge with too sure
an aim at any assailant. The skunks move slowly about, and their
large white tails render them very conspicuous. Their formidable
means of defence makes for them the obscure colouration of other
dusk-roaming mammals unnecessary, as they do not need concealment.
Hour after hour passed, and we reached no house, nor met any one on
the road; and at last, about nine o'clock, we determined to stop at
a spot where there was a little grass, but no water, as the poor
jaded mules had been ridden since daylight, excepting for an hour
at midday. We spread our waterproof sheet from the branch of a
tree, and lay down dinnerless and supperless, having had nothing
but a little sweet bread and native cheese all day; we were now too
thirsty to eat even that. Hearing some frogs croaking in the
distance, Velasquez went away in the direction from whence the
sound came, hoping to find some water: but there was none, the
frogs being in damp cracks in the ground. About eleven we heard the
noise of men talking; and holloaing to them, our shouts were
returned. We ran across the plain, through the bushes, and found
two Indians, who were returning from some plantations of maize to
their home, several miles distant. Both were nearly naked, the
youngest having only a loin-cloth on. When talking to us, they
shouted as if we were many yards distant; and as soon as one began
to answer a question, the other went on repeating, in a higher key,
what the first said.
They told us that we had come two leagues past Palacaguina, and
were on the road to a small town called Pueblo Nuevo, and directed
us how we should find the right track in the morning for continuing
our journey to Ocotal. They were highly amused at our misadventure,
and laughed and talked to each other about it. Rito also laughed
much at the mistake he had made, and though disposed to be angry at
his obstinacy in bringing us several miles out of our course, we
knew that he had done his best. All the native servants, when they
make a mistake, or do any damage accidentally, treat it as a joke;
and it is best, under such circumstances, to be good-humoured with
them, as, if reproved, they are very likely to turn sulky, and do
some more damage. They are independent, and care nothing about
being discharged, as any one can live in Nicaragua without working
much. Rito was an active, merry fellow, and might every now and
then be observed laughing to himself; if asked what it was about,
he was sure to answer that he was thinking about some little
accident that had occurred. I once, when trying to loop up the side
of my hammock, fell out of it, and next day Rito could not control
himself, but was continually exploding in a burst of laughter; and
for days afterwards any allusion to it would set him into
convulsions. When we returned to Santo Domingo, it was one of his
stock stories. He used to say he wanted very much to come to my
assistance, but could not for laughing.
Next morning we started at daylight, and soon found the path the
Indians had told us about, which took us to a place called Jamaily
(pronounced Hamerlee), where was an extensive indigo plantation.
About 100 men were employed weeding and clearing the ground. No
fences are required for indigo growing, as neither horses nor
cattle will eat the plant. A mile beyond Jamaily we saw, amongst
some bushes, a poor-looking, grass-thatched hut, with the sides
made of an open work of branches and leaves. We went up to it to
try to buy something to eat, but found only three children in it;
the oldest, a very dirty little girl of about five years of age,
with a piece of cloth worn like a shawl, her only clothing, and the
two younger quite naked. A little boy, about three years old, was
very talkative, and prattled away all the time we were there. He
said that some people living near had four cows, but that they had
none; that his father shot deer and sold their skins, and that two
days before he fired at a rock, thinking it was a deer.
We heated some water and made tea, and with some sweet bread and
native cheese managed to allay our hunger, the little boy amusing
us all the time with his prattle. Pointing to a mangy dog lying on
the floor covered with some old rags, he said it had fever, and
that at night it threw off the rags, and the fleas got at it, but
that during the day he kept it well covered up. I was amused with
the little fellow, who in that squalid hut, without a scrap of
clothing, and fed with the coarsest food, was as happy as, if not
happier than, any child I had seen. By and by an elder girl came
along from some other hut, and told us that the man was away
hunting for deer, and that his wife had gone to her mother's, about
a mile distant. She also informed us that the hunter had not a gun
of his own, but gave half the meat of the deer he killed for the
loan of one. He had a trained ox, which, as soon as it saw a deer,
commenced eating, and walking gradually towards it; whilst the man
followed, concealed, and thus got within distance to shoot it. He
generally got two when he went out, and sold the hides for twenty
cents per pound, the skins averaging five pounds' weight each. It
is astonishing that deer should be so little afraid of man as they
are, after having been objects of chase for probably thousands of
years. Sometimes when one is encountered in the forest it will
stand within twenty yards stupidly gazing at a man, or perhaps
striking the ground impatiently with its forefoot, and often
waiting long enough for an unloaded gun to be charged. The woman of
the house came in before we left and we paid her for the use of her
fire. She did not know how old her children were, and Velasquez
told me that very few of the lower classes in Nicaragua knew either
their own age or that of their children.
The soil about here, for many leagues, was full of small angular
fragments of white quartz. They had attracted my attention the day
before, and I now found they were derived from thick beds of
conglomerate, the decomposition of which released the fragments of
quartz, of which it was mainly composed. Many of these beds of
conglomerate were inclined at high angles. I noticed also some
contorted, highly inclined talcose schists, full of small quartz
veins, generally running between the laminae of the schists.
Probably the conglomerates had been produced by the wearing down of
these schists.
We passed through two Indian towns--the first Yalaguina, the second
Totagalpa. At the last the church looked very clean and pretty, and
was ornamented with a single square tower, built of rough stones,
and covered with white cement that glistened like marble at a short
distance. The peculiar shining appearance of the cement is due to
the admixture of a fine black sand in the whitewash used. The
cement itself is strong and durable, and its manufacture was known
to the Indians long before the advent of the Spaniards. Bernal Diaz
de Castillo, one of the followers of Cortez, often speaks, in his
history, of the houses built of stone and lime, and covered with
cement. On their march to Mexico, when they arrived at Cempoal, he
says, "Our advanced guard having gone to the great square, the
buildings of which had been recently plastered and whitewashed, in
which art the people are very expert, one of our horsemen was so
struck with the splendour of their appearance in the sun that he
came back in full speed to Cortez to tell him that the walls of the
houses were of silver." We also learn from the same historian that
the city of Cholula "had at that time above 100 lofty white towers,
which were the temples of their idols."
Between Yalaguina and Totagalpa there was much of the conglomerate
rock that I have already mentioned. Over this the soil was dry and
stony, and filled with small quartz pebbles. The vegetation was
scanty, principally thorny shrubs and trees. Amongst the former the
Pinuela, a plant closely allied to the pine-apple, and used to make
fences, was the most abundant. In the alluvial flats were many fine
patches of maize looking extremely well, for in Segovia the crops
had not been injured by drought. The low hills were very sandy and
dry, and the beds of the brooks waterless, but a little beyond
Totagalpa we found a small running stream, and stopped an hour to
refresh our mules and to eat some provisions we had bought at
Yalaguina.
All through Segovia the country is divided into townships,
embracing an area of from twenty to twenty-five square leagues.
Over each of these there is an alcalde, living in the small central
town, and elected by the inhabitants of the townships. The
boundaries are marked by heaps of stones surmounted by wooden
crosses, set up on the roads leading from one town to another.
After riding a few more leagues over rocky hills with scanty
vegetation, we came in sight, from the top of one of the ranges, of
the town of Ocotal, the capital of Segovia, with its white walls
and red-tiled roofs. Descending a long rocky slope we forded one of
the affluents of the Rio Wanks, and half a mile further on arrived
at the town, situated on a dry plain. A heavy thunderstorm broke
over us as we entered the town, and the rain came down in torrents
whilst we were searching for a house to put up at. In answer to our
inquiries we were directed to the best house in the town. It was
situated at the corner of the plaza, had lofty well-built walls,
large doors and gateway, clean tiled floors, and in the courtyard
behind a pretty flower garden, with a tank to hold rain water. We
were received by two elderly ladies, the sisters of the owner Don
Pedro, who made us welcome in a stately sort of way, and got some
dinner prepared, consisting of beans, tortillas, avocados, and
coffee.
We learnt that the present town was about seventy years old and not
very flourishing, as the land around was dry and sterile. The old
capital of Segovia was situated five leagues further down the
river, where the land around was fertile. But the buccaneers came
up the river in their boats and sacked the town, and the site was
deserted for one more difficult of access, the river being much
shallower and obstructed by rapids higher up. At the site of the
old town the church still stands, but only a few poor Negroes live
there now. Two branches of the river unite a little below the
present town, and following it down for about four days' journey a
place named Cocos is reached, which is the furthest settlement of
the Spaniards towards the Atlantic. To this point large bungos come
up the river, and Don Pedro had been very wishful to get it opened
out above for navigation, but had not succeeded.
There were very few men to be hired at Ocotal, and we determined to
go on to Depilto, a small mining town near the Honduras boundary,
where we were assured there were plenty to be obtained. We had only
engaged the mules to come as far as Ocotal, and had great
difficulty in getting others to go on with. I think the people at
first were afraid that we might cross the boundary and never
return. We afterwards learnt that robberies of mules often took
place; some rogues making a business of stealing mules out of
Honduras, bringing them into Nicaragua, selling them, and stealing
others to return with. There were, however, some people in Ocotal
who had worked at the mines and knew us, and when this information
spread we had the offer of several animals. If we had known the
cause of the reluctance of the people to let us have mules at
first, we should easily have got over the difficulty by leaving the
value of the animals in the hands of some responsible person, but
the owners had made all sorts of excuses for not lending them, and
we had not suspected the true cause. We had been travelling
continually for nine days, and looked more like brigands than
honest travellers, and the good easy-going people of Ocotal had
their suspicions about us.
As I have said, when satisfied of our good faith, the mule owners
soon offered us the use of their beasts, and next morning Velasquez
and I started at seven o'clock on two fine fresh mules and rode
merrily up the valley of the Depilto. The river rises in the high
ranges that form the boundary between Honduras and Nicaragua, and
running down past Depilto joins the Ocotal river a little below the
capital. Our road lay up the valley close to the river, which we
crossed and recrossed several times. The vegetation was scanty, but
the morning was a lovely one after the thunderstorm of the night
before, and we greatly enjoyed our ride. We did not see many birds,
a pretty hawk that I shot being the most noticeable. Hawks of
various kinds are very abundant in the tropics, and if the small
birds had to personify death, they would certainly represent him as
one, for this is the form in which he must generally appear to
them. Towards evening the hawk glides noiselessly along and alights
on a bough, near where he hears the small birds twittering amongst
the bushes. Perhaps they see him and are quiet for a little, but he
sits motionless as the sphinx, and they soon get over their fear
and resume their play or feeding. Then suddenly a dark mass swoops
down and rises again. It is the hawk, with a small bird grasped in
his strong talons, gasping out its last breath. Its comrades are
terror-struck for a moment and dash madly into the thickets, but
soon forget their fear. They chirp to each other, the scattered
birds reunite; there is a fluttering and twittering, a rearranging
of mates, then again songs, feeding, love, jealousy, and
bickerings.
The banks of the river were sandy and sterile, and the soil
contained much small quartz. The bed rock was a talcose schist near
to Ocotal, but higher up the river it changed to gneissoid and
quartz rocks, the latter in hard and massive beds. As we ascended
the valley, the ranges bounding it got higher and steeper, the soil
more sandy and barren, with scattered pine trees growing amongst
the rocks. Great, bare, rounded masses of hard quartzite protruded
through the scanty soil, and in the river were enormous boulders of
granite-like gneiss.
Depilto is only nine miles from Ocotal, but we took three hours to
reach it, as I made many stoppages to examine the rocks and to
catch fleet-limbed speckled tiger-beetles on the sandy roads. The
little town was not half populated, the silver-mines had been
closed for some time, most of the houses were empty, and the people
still clinging about the place seemed to have nothing to do, for
the land is too barren for cultivation. We made known our
requirements for labourers, and were assured that plenty would be
glad to go to Santo Domingo. They would not, however, bind
themselves there, but preferred to go down untrammelled with any
conditions about pay or work, and I may anticipate here by saying
that the result of our visit was very satisfactory, numbers of
workmen having been obtained for the mines.
After getting some breakfast at a house that seemed to be the hotel
of Depilto, we set out to visit a silver-mine named "El Coquimba."
We had to ascend a high range opposite the town, and found riding
over the steep bare exposures of quartz rock so difficult and
dangerous that about half way up we tied our mules to some young
pine trees and proceeded on foot. The mine was abandoned, and the
shafts and levels were closed by falls of rock. Some of the ore,
sulphide of silver, was lying at the mouth of one of the old
shafts. Our guide told us that the lode was two feet wide. Both it
and the containing rock was very hard, and the miners had also
water to contend against. I do not think from what I saw that the
mine could be made to pay on a large scale, though next the surface
small remunerative deposits of ore had been found. In depth the
hardness of the rocks would make the sinking of shafts and driving
of levels, the "dead work" of the miners, very costly.
We started on our return down the valley at three o'clock, and took
particular note of the succession of the rocks, as I had become
much interested in finding these quartz and gneissoid beds, which I
had no doubt were the same Laurentian rocks that I had seen in
Canada and Brazil--the very backbone of the continent, ribbing
America from Patagonia to the Canadas--the fundamental gneiss which
is covered, in other parts of Central America that I had visited,
by strata of much more recent origin. Going down the valley of the
Depilto the massive beds of quartz and gneiss are soon succeeded by
overlying, highly inclined, and contorted schists, and as far as
where the road from Ocotal to Totagalpa crosses the river, the
exposures of bed rock were invariably these contorted schists, with
many small veins of quartz running between the laminae of the rock.
On the banks of the river, from about a mile below Depilto,
unstratified beds of gravel are exposed in numerous natural
sections. These beds deepen as the river is descended, until at
Ocotal they reach a thickness of between two and three hundred
feet, and the undulating plain on which Ocotal is built is seen in
sections near the river to be composed entirely of them. These
unstratified deposits consist mostly of quartz sand with numerous
angular and subangular blocks of quartz and talcose schist. Many of
the boulders are very large, and in some parts great numbers have
been accumulated in the bed of the river by the washing away of the
smaller stones and sand. Some of these huge boulders were fifteen
feet across, the largest of them lying in the bed of the river two
miles below Depilto. Most of them were of the Depilto quartz rock
and gneiss, and I saw many in the unstratified gravel near Ocotal
fully eight miles from their parent rock. Near Ocotal this
unstratified formation is nearly level, excepting where worn into
deep gulches by the existing streams. The river has cut through it
to a depth of over two hundred feet, and there are high precipices
of it on both sides, similar to those near streams in the North of
England that cut through thick beds of boulder clay.
(PLATE 22. GEOLOGICAL SECTION NEAR OCOTAL.
Section of Strata between Depilto and the hill three miles
south-west of Ocotal.
Gravel with boulders of trap and conglomerate.
Gravel with boulders of gneiss and quartz rock.
Contorted schists.
Quartz rock and gneiss.)
The evidences of glacial action between Depilto and Ocotal were,
with one exception, as clear as in any Welsh or Highland valley.
There were the same rounded and smoothed rock surfaces, the same
moraine-like accumulations of unstratified sand and gravel, the
same transported boulders that could be traced to their parent
rocks several miles distant. The single exception was, I am
convinced, one of observation and not one of fact, namely, I saw no
glacial scratches on the rocks; but geologists know how rare these
are on natural exposures in some districts that have certainly been
glaciated, and will not be surprised that in a hurried visit of
only a few hours I should not have discovered any. Glacial
scratches are seldom preserved on rock surfaces exposed to the
action of the elements. Even in Nova Scotia, where scratches and
grooves are met with wherever the rock surface has been recently
laid bare, I do not remember having ever seen any on natural
exposures. It is only where protected by a covering of clay or
gravel from the action of the elements, that they have been
preserved through the ages that have passed since the glacial
epoch, and as I did not see any rock surfaces near Depilto that had
been recently bared, it is not surprising that, notwithstanding the
other proofs of glacial action, I should not have seen any ice
scratches or grooves.
I could no longer withstand the evidence that had been gradually
accumulating of the presence of large glaciers in Central America
during the glacial period, and these, once admitted, afforded me a
solution of many phenomena that had before been inexplicable. The
immense ridges of boulder clay between San Rafael and Yales, the
long hog-backed hills near Tablason, the great transported boulders
two leagues beyond Libertad on the Juigalpa road, and the scarcity
of alluvial gold in the valleys of Santo Domingo, could all be
easily explained on the supposition that the ice of the glacial
period was not confined to extra-tropical lands, but in Central
America covered all the higher ranges, and descended in great
glaciers to at least as low as the line of country now standing at
two thousand feet above the sea.
In my description of the mines of Santo Domingo I have only briefly
alluded to the scarcity of alluvial gold in the valleys. It may be
correlated with a similar scarcity in the glaciated valleys of Nova
Scotia and North Wales, in the neighbourhood of auriferous quartz
veins, and is probably due to the same cause. Glacier ice scoops
out all the contents of the valleys, and in deepening them does not
sort the materials like running water or the action of the waves
upon the sea coast. I have in another place* (* "The Glacial Period
in North America" by Thomas Belt. Published in "Transactions of the
Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science" 1866 page 91.) shown
that in Nova Scotia, in the neighbourhood of rich auriferous quartz
veins that have been greatly denuded, grain gold is only sparingly
disseminated throughout the drifts of the valleys, whilst in
Australia every auriferous quartz vein has been the source of an
alluvial deposit of grain gold, produced by the denudation and
sorting action of running water. When the denuding agent was water,
the rocks were worn away, and the heavier gold left behind at the
bottom of the alluvial deposits; but when the denuding agent was
glacier ice the stony masses and their metallic contents were
carried away, or mingled together in the unassorted moraines.
That the transportation of boulders in Nicaragua was due to
glaciers, and not to floating icebergs, may be argued on zoological
grounds. The transported boulders, near Ocotal, are about three
thousand feet above the sea, those near Libertad about two thousand
feet. The low pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans,
through the valley of the San Juan and the Lake of Nicaragua, is
less than two hundred feet above the sea,* (* See ante, Chapter 4.)
and to allow for the flotation of icebergs at the lower of the two
places named, a channel of more than eighteen hundred feet in depth
would have connected the two oceans. This supposition is negatived
by the fact that the mollusca on the two coasts, separated by the
narrow Isthmus of Darien, are almost entirely distinct, whilst we
know that since the glacial period there has been little change in
the molluscan fauna, nearly, if not all, the shells found in
glacial deposits still existing in neighbouring seas. In the
Caribbean province, which includes the Gulf of Mexico, the West
Indian Islands, and the eastern coast of South America as far as
Rio de Janeiro, the number of marine shells is estimated by
Professor C.B. Adams at not less than 1500 species. From the
Panamic province, which, on the western coast of America, extends
from the Gulf of California to Payta in Peru, there has been
catalogued 1341 distinct species of marine molluscs. Out of this
immense number of species, less than fifty occur on both sides of
the narrow Isthmus of Darien. So remarkably distinct are the two
marine faunas, that most zoologists consider that there has been no
communication in the tropics between the two seas since the close
of the miocene period, whilst the connection that is supposed to
have existed at that remote epoch, and to account for the
distribution of corals, whilst advocated by Professor Duncan and
other eminent men, is disputed by others equally eminent. No
zoologist of note believes that there has been a submergence of the
land lying between the Pacific and the Atlantic since the pliocene
period, and icebergs could not have floated without such
submergence, so that, in the cases I have mentioned, the boulders,
if ice-borne, have been carried by glaciers and not by floating
ice.
Whilst I thus found evidence of the ice of the glacial period
reaching, in the northern hemisphere, to within the tropics; in the
southern hemisphere Professor Hartt has found glacial drift
extending from Patagonia, all through Brazil to Pernambuco, and
Agassiz has even announced the discovery of glacial moraines up to
the equator. I have myself seen, near Pernambuco, and in the
province of Maranham, in Brazil, a great drift deposit that I
believe to be of glacial origin; and I think it highly probable
that the evidence that is accumulating will force geologists to the
conclusion that the ice of the glacial period was not only more
extensive than has been generally supposed, but that it existed at
the same time in the northern and southern hemispheres, leaving, at
least, on the American continent, only the lower lands of the
tropics free from the icy covering.
I shall not enter upon the question of the cause of the cold of the
glacial period. It is probably closely connected with the cause of
an exactly opposite state of things, the heat of the miocene
period, when the beech, the hazel, and the plane lived and
flourished in Spitzbergen, as far north as latitude 78 degrees,
and, according to Heer, firs and poplars reached to the North Pole,
if there was then land there for them to grow upon. I consider that
the great extension of the ice in the glacial period supports the
conclusion of Professor Heer, founded on the northern extension of
the miocene flora, that these enormous changes of climate cannot be
explained by any rearrangement of the relative positions of land
and water, and that "we are face to face with a problem whose
solution must be attempted and doubtless completed by the
astronomer."* (* I have since discussed this question in the
"Quarterly Journal of Science" for October 1874.)
There is another branch of the subject that I cannot so easily
leave. It is the answer to the question, What became of the many
peculiar tropical American genera of animals and plants, when a
great part of the tropics was covered with ice, and the climate of
the lower lands much colder than now? For instance, the Heliconii
and Morphos are a group of butterflies peculiar to tropical
America, containing many distinct genera which, on any theory of
descent from a common progenitor, must have originated ages before
the glacial period. How is it that such peculiarly tropical groups
were not exterminated by the cold of the glacial period, or if able
to stand the cold, that they did not spread into temperate regions
on the retreat of the ice? I believe the answer is, that there was
much extermination during the glacial period, that many species and
some genera, as, for instance, the American horse, did not survive
it, and that some of the great gaps that now exist in natural
history were then made; but that a refuge was found for many
species, on lands now below the ocean, that were uncovered by the
lowering of the sea caused by the immense quantity of water that
was locked up in frozen masses on the land.
Mr. Alfred Tylor considers that the ice cap of the glacial period
was the cause of a great reduction of the level of the sea,
amounting to at least 600 feet.* (* "Geological Magazine" volume 9
page 392.) But if we admit that the ice existed in both hemispheres
at the same time, we shall have to speculate on a lowering of the
level of the sea to at least 1000 feet. We have many facts tending
to prove that during the extreme extent of the glacial period the
land stood much higher relatively to the sea than it now does.
Professor Hartt believes that during the time of the drift, Brazil
stood at a much higher level than at present,* (* "Geology and
Physical Geography of Brazil" by Ch. Fred. Hartt page 573.) and we
can, on the supposition of a general lowering of the sea all over
the world, account for the distribution of animal life over islands
now separated by shallow seas. Thus Mr. Bland, in a paper read
before the American Philosophical Society, on "The Geology and
Physical Geography of the West Indies, with reference to the
distribution of Mollusca," states his opinion that Porto Rico, the
Virgins, the Anguilla group, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Hayti, once
formed continuous dry land that obtained its land molluscs from
Central America and Mexico. The land molluscs of the islands to the
south, on the contrary, from Barbuda and St. Kitt's down to
Trinidad, are of two types, one Venezuelan, the other Guianian; the
western side of the supposed continuous land, namely, Trinidad,
Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia,
belonging to the first type; the eastern side, from Barbados to
Antigua, to the second.* (* Quoted in "At Last" by Charles Kingsley
page 305.)
Commenting on Mr. Bland's valuable communication, Mr. Kingsley
justly says: "If this be so, a glance at the map will show the vast
destruction of tropic land during almost the very latest geological
epoch; and show, too, how little, in the present imperfect state of
our knowledge, we ought to dare any speculations as to the absence
of man, as well as of other creatures, on those great lands
destroyed. For, to supply the dry land which Mr. Bland's theory
needs, we shall have to conceive a junction, reaching over at least
five degrees of latitude, between the north of British Guiana and
Barbados; and may freely indulge in the dream that the waters of
the Orinoco, when they ran over the lowlands of Trinidad, passed
east of Tobago, then northward between Barbados and St. Lucia,
afterwards turning westward between the latter island and
Martinique, and that the mighty estuary--for a great part at least
of that line--formed the original barrier which kept the land
shells of Venezuela apart from those of Guiana."* (* Loc cit page
306.)
A very similar theory has been propounded by Mr. Wallace to account
for the distribution of the faunas of the Malay Archipelago, in his
admirable work on the natural history of that region.* (* "The
Malay Archipelago" volume 1 page 11.) Java, Sumatra, and Borneo are
separated from each other, and from the continent of Asia, by a
shallow sea less than six hundred feet in depth, and must at one
time have been connected by continuous land to allow of the
elephant and tapir of Sumatra and Borneo, the rhinoceros of Sumatra
and Java, and the wild cattle of Borneo and Java, to spread from
the continent to these now sea-surrounded lands, as none of these
large animals could have passed over the arms of the sea that now
separate them. The smaller mammals, the birds, and insects, all
illustrate this view, almost all the genera found in any of the
islands occurring also on the Asiatic continent, and the species
being often identical. On the other hand, the fauna of islands to
the eastward are more closely connected with Australia, and must at
one time have been joined to it by nearly continuous land.
Honeysuckers and lories take the place of the woodpeckers, barbets,
trogons, and fruit thrushes of the western islands, and the many
mammals belonging to Asiatic genera are no more seen.
Mr. Wallace ascribes the present isolation of the islands, and
their separation from the adjoining continents, to the submergence
of the channels between them caused by the abstraction of matter
thrown out by the numerous volcanoes. Looking, however, at the fact
that at the time when these islands were probably connected with
the continents of Asia on the one side and Australasia on the
other, namely, at the close of the pliocene period, England was
connected with the continent; Malta, as shown by its fossil
elephants, with Africa; the West Indies with Yucatan and Venezuela;
it seems to me more probable that the cause was not a local one,
but a general lowering of the waters of the ocean all over the
world to at least one thousand feet, produced by the prodigious
quantity of water locked up in the frozen masses that covered a
great part of both hemispheres.
The wide diffusion of the Malayan dialects over the Pacific,
reaching as far as the Sandwich Islands, shows the great extension
of that race in former times. On numerous islands in Polynesia
there are cyclopean ruins utterly out of keeping with their present
size and population. Who can look at the pictures of little Easter
Island, with its gigantic images standing up in unworshipped
solitude, without feeling that that insignificant islet could never
have supported the race that reared the monuments. But if that and
other islands were once hills overlooking peopled lowlands, the
sense of incongruity vanishes. We see the images, not gazing
gloomily over the ocean that narrowly circles them in, but proudly
looking across wide plains peopled by their worshippers, who from
their villages and fields behold the gods they adore, and implore
their protection and support.
Was the fabled Atlantis really a myth, or was it that great
continent in the Atlantic laid bare by the lowering of the ocean,
on which the present West Indian Islands were mountains, rising
high above the level and fertile plains that are now covered by the
sea? Obscurely the accounts of it have come down to us from the dim
past, but there is a remarkable coincidence between the traditions
that have been handed down on the two sides of the Atlantic.
In a fragment of the works of Theopompus, who lived in the fourth
century before the Christian era, is an account of a conversation
between Silenus and Midas, the king of Phrygia, in which the former
tells the king that Europe, Asia, and Africa were surrounded by the
sea, but that beyond them was an island of immense size, in which
were many great cities, and nations with laws and customs very
different from theirs. Plato, in his "Timaeus and Critias," relates
that Solon was told by a priest of Sais, from the sacred
inscriptions in the temple, how Solon's country "once opposed a
power which with great arrogance pushed its way into Europe and
Asia from the Atlantic Ocean. Beyond the entrance which you call
the Pillars of Hercules there was an island larger than Libya and
Asia together. From it navigation passed to the other islands, and
from them to the opposite continent which surrounded that ocean. On
this great Atlantic island there was a powerful and singular
kingdom, whose dominion extended not only over the whole island,
but over many others, and parts of the continent. It ruled also
over Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tyrrhenia.
This kingdom with the whole of its forces united tried to subjugate
in one campaign your country and ours, and all the country within
the strait. At that time, O Solon, your nation shone out from all
others by bravery and power. It was placed in great danger, but it
defeated the attacking army, and erected triumphal monuments. But
when at a later period earthquakes and great floods took place, the
whole of your united army was swallowed up during one evil day and
one evil night, and at the same time the island of Atlantis sank
into the sea." Crantor, quoted by Proclus, corroborates the account
by Plato, and says that he found this same story retained by the
priests of Sais, three hundred years after the period of Solon, and
that he was shown the inscriptions on which it was recorded.
Turning to the western side of the Atlantic, we find in the "Teo
Amoxtli," as translated by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourburg, an
account of the overwhelming of a country by the sea, when thunder
and flames came out of it, and "the mountains were sinking and
rising." Everywhere throughout America there are traditions of a
great catastrophe, in which a whole country was submerged, and only
a few people escaped to the mountains; and the Spanish conquerors
relate with wonder the accounts they found amongst the Indians of a
universal deluge. Amongst the modern Indians the traveller, Catlin,
relates that in one hundred and twenty different tribes that he had
visited in North, and South, and Central America, "every tribe
related, more or less distinctly, their tradition of the deluge, in
which one, or three, or eight persons were saved above the waters
on the top of a high mountain."* (* "Lifted and Subsided Rocks in
America" by G. Catlin page 182.)
If Atlantis were lowlands connecting the West Indian Islands with
America, the other islands mentioned by Plato may have been the
Azores, also greatly increased in extent by the lowering of the
ocean; and the overwhelming of this lowland, on the melting of the
ice at the close of the glacial period, may be that great
catastrophe that is recorded on both sides of the Atlantic, but is
more clearly remembered in the traditions of America, because all
the highlands there had been covered with ice, and the inhabitants
were restricted to those that were overwhelmed by the deluge.
I approached this subject from the side of Natural History. I was
driven to look for a refuge for the animals and plants of tropical
America during the glacial period, when I found proofs that the
land they now occupy was at that time either covered with ice or
too cold for genera that can now only live where frost is unknown.
I had arrived at the conclusion that they must have inhabited
lowlands now submerged, and following up the question, I soon saw
that the very accumulation of ice that made their abode impossible
provided another for them by the lowering of the sea. Then pursuing
the subject still further, I saw that all over the world curious
questions concerning the distribution of races of mankind, of
animals, and of plants, were rendered more easy of solution on the
theory that land was more continuous once than now; that islands
now separated were then joined together, and to adjacent
continents; and that what are now banks and shoals beneath the sea
were then peopled lowlands.
I have said that during the glacial period, if, as I believe, it
was contemporaneous in the two hemispheres, the sea must have stood
at least 1000 feet lower than it now does. It may have been much
lower than this, but I prefer to err on the safe side. When
geologists have mapped out the limits of ancient glacier and
continental ice all over the world, it will be possible to
calculate the minimum amount of water that was abstracted from the
sea; and if by that time hydrographers have shown on their charts
the shoals and submerged banks that would be laid dry, fabled
Atlantis will rise before our eyes between Europe and America, and
in the Pacific the Malay Archipelago will give place to the Malay
Continent. Here is a noble inquiry, an unexplored region of
research, at the entrance of which I can only stand and point the
way for abler and stronger minds; an inquiry that will lead to the
knowledge of the lands where dwelt the peoples of the glacial
period who lived before the flood.
Vague and visionary as these speculations must seem to many, to
others who are acquainted with the enormous glaciation to which
America has been subjected they will appear to be based on
substantial truths. The immense accumulation of ice over both
poles, reaching far down into the temperate zones, in some
meridians encroaching on the tropics, and in Equatorial America
certainly all the land, lying 2000 feet above the level of the sea,
supporting great glaciers, involve conditions which must have
greatly drained the sea. Lands now submerged must have been
uncovered, and on the return of the waters at the close of the
glacial period many a peopled lowland must have been overwhelmed in
the nearly universal deluge.