CHAPTER XHOW THE EARTH WAS MADE
CHAPTER X
HOW THE EARTH WAS MADE
Ted’s fossil would have to wait to be exhumed. In fact, Norris told him, he could sell it as it stood, and let the purchaser do the work. Then it occurred to him to wonder if Ted would not have first to take up a claim,—for it was Government land. Anyway, he would see to it that the boy was rewarded for his find.
The fire now being extinguished, Radcliffe had flown to other battle lines, first taking Rosa—as she insisted—back to her fire outlook. The plan was for the two boys to keep on hunting for the Mexicans, (as the harried Ranger now counted on their doing), joining the rest of the camping party every night, at points they would agree upon. But first, Ace had made a flight to Fresno for supplies and to start his pilot home by train. He then carried them oneat a time to where the burros had been left,—and where the lazy rascals still browsed on the rich mountain meadows.
For a day or two, all the boys could talk, think or dream about was the adventures they had just been through. But at last they had relieved their minds to some extent, and one evening around the fire, Norris gave them his long promised explanation of some of the natural wonders they had seen.
“I have already told you,” began Norris, “how the earth probably originated. That much the astronomer has given us. And before the geologist can begin to interpret the evolution of our earth, he has to know what scientists have established in the fields of chemistry, mechanics and geodesy,—the study of the curvature and elevation of the earth’s surface. He then proceeds to theorize, hand in hand with the paleontologist, or student of ancient life. The newest theory is in line with what I learned in 1917 at Yale.”
“It’s all theory, then?” asked Ted.
“Just as all sciences are, to some extent. Did I tell you that when our planetary system was disrupted from the sun, it was less than ahundredth part of the parent body? And our earth is a good deal less than a millionth of the size of our sun, and our sun is among the smaller of the stars of the firmament.”
“Phew!” whistled Long Lester, round eyed, while Ted and Pedro sat motionless.
“Picture the earth and moon, revolving about the sun, gathering by force of their own gravity-pull the tiny planetesimals nearest them, these bodies hurling themselves into the earth mass at the rate of perhaps ten miles a second!––”
“It shore must have het things up some,” said Long Lester.
“It did! Literally melted the rocks. On top of that, this original earth mass, composed of molten rock and gases and water vapor, was condensing. Probably by the time it had engulfed all the stray planetesimals it could, it was anywhere from 200 to 400 times as large as it is now. It has been shrinking ever since.”
“Is it still shrinking?” gasped the old prospector.
“Sure thing! But not so fast that you will ever know the difference inyourlifetime. Itonly shrinks at times; then the earth’s surface wrinkles into mountain ranges.”
“How many times has that been, sixteen?” suggested Ace.
“We’ll come to that. As I was going to say, while the earth was so hot, it kept boiling, as it were, inside, and the molten matter kept breaking through the cold outer shell in volcanoes, as the heat rose to the surface.”
“Thet sure must have been hell,” laughed the old man.
“As the cold crust was churned into the hot interior, of course it melted and expanded, and that caused more volcanoes, and so on in a vicious circle, till finally, by the end of the Formative Era, so called, the rock that contained more heavy minerals sank to the lower levels, while the lighter ones rose as granite.”
“Gee!” said Ted, “I’d have called granite heavy.”
“Not so heavy as the specimens of basic rock we’ll find. Well, in this Formative Era our atmosphere, and the hydrosphere or oceanic areas were being formed, along with the granite continents. But while we are on the subject, I hope you boys will some day see The Valleyof Ten Thousand Smokes, in Alaska, where the earth is still boiling so close to the surface that you have to watch your step or you’ll break through into––”
“The Hot Place?” laughed Pedro.
“Literally, yes.”
“Oh, tell us about that!”
“Some time!—The interior of the earth is still hot, but the rock crust allows very little of it to rise to the surface. After the Formative Era came the Archeozoic Era, when life began in the form of amœbas or some simple form of protoplasm. For with the formation of the gases of the earth mass into an envelope of air, to moderate the sun’s warmth by day and retain some of it by night,—life became possible.”
“But where did those first creatures come from?” Ted could not restrain himself from asking.
“According to one theory, the first germs of life flew here from some other planet, and not necessarily one of those revolving around our own sun, for space is full of suns and planetary systems. But that theory can neither be proved nor disproved. When I was a student, Osborn’s theory was the latest. That was in1916. Without going into it too deeply, it had to do with the electric energy of the chemical elements that compose protoplasm, and these always had been latent in the earth mass.”
“Then they must have been latent in the sun, too,” marveled Ted. “And in other suns and their planets too.”
“Very likely,” assented the Geological Survey man. “Now of course the ocean waters collected in the depressed areas over the heavier rock bottoms, the basalt. You remember just after we lost the burro we were on a basalt formation––”
“Then that was formerly a part of the ocean floor?” asked Ted.
“Either that or volcanic lava.”
“But how did it––”
“Just a minute. Of course land masses have gone down as well as up, but the general trend has been decidedly upward, while the trend of the ocean floor has been downward. At that, the shell of the earth—so to speak—is only about 150 miles thick or a fiftieth of the earth’s present diameter.”
“Then I should think the oceans would be growing deeper,” ventured Pedro.
“Right again. When this earth reaches its old age,—speaking in terms of centuries,—it will likely be all ocean. And there used to be far more land, in proportion, than there is now. There was less ocean water then because of all that is continually pouring through hot springs.
“Of course the land is slowly being washed back into the ocean. And the higher the mountains, the steeper the stream beds, and hence the faster the streams, and the faster they erode the high elevations, till finally all is reduced to sea level again.”
“Then how do the mountains get rebuilt?” Pedro testified his interest.
“The earth has, as I think I said before, shrunk between 200 and 400 miles in diameter,—since the beginning,—‘when the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.’ It is still shrinking. And this internal movement is felt on the surface in differences that generally amount to only a few hundred feet. I can show you places over there on the East wall of the Sierras where the mountains have been upthrust that way.
“Then, every now and again, the interioractivities fairly break the rocky earth shell or lithosphere, and whole mountain ranges are raised. There have been at least eight such minor breaks in the earth crust in North America alone, and each time ranges perhaps a thousand miles long, or more, have been raised near one end of the continent or the other. In addition, there have been major re-adjustments that thrust whole continents higher and ocean beds lower. Geologists find evidence of at least six of these major breaks in the earth crust,—marking the beginnings of the Archeozoic Era, whenlifeoriginated, the Proterozoic Era, or age ofinvertebrates, the Paleozoic Era or age offishdominance, the Mesozoic Era or age ofreptiledominance, the Cenozoic Era or age ofmammaldominance, and the present Psychozoic Era or age ofman.”
“Phew!” whistled Long Lester again. “Don’t tell me this earth used to be all fish.”
“It did, though. We’ll go into that some other time. I’ll just finish about continent building now, and then we’ll turn in. At these times when the lands are at their highest and the oceans are smallest in breadth, (because greatest in depth), the continents are united byland-bridges such as those we have now uniting North and South America.”
“And Alaska and Asia?” suggested Ted.
“Practically, yes. And probably, at one time, South America and Australia. These land-bridges changed the direction of the ocean streams. You know in the age of reptiles there was nothing to divide the Atlantic from the Pacific. Added to that, the high mountain ranges took the moisture out of the winds from the oceans, as the Rockies now do the Pacific trade winds, so that by the time they reach Nevada there is no moisture left in them to form clouds and fall in rain, and we have desert.
“Of course the animals that lived on the earth in its flatter, more temperate stage now have to adapt themselves to life on high, cold elevations, or in dry, hot desert areas, or to migrate via the land-bridges to more favorable climates. Those unable to do this perished.
“For instance, take the age of reptile dominance, (the Mesozoic Era), which was in turn divided into four periods, those of dinosaurs, (the Triassic period, a rock from which I showed you, if you remember), the Jurassic period, which gave rise to flying reptiles, from whichour first birds were derived; the Comanchean period, which gave rise to flowering plants and the higher insects, and the Cretaceous period, when our most primitive mammal forms evolved.
“At first the earth was peopled with dinosaurs and flying dragons, and the seas by squid-like mollusks. In those days all the earth was level, swampy, tropic and overgrown with giant tree ferns and a primitive conifer.
“As the high mountain ranges arose and deserts were made, these forms gradually gave way to flowers and hardwood forests, peopled with insects and mammals. Only the most intelligent forms survived, and the struggle itself developed a higher degree of intelligence.”
“What in tarnation weredinosaurs?” asked Long Lester.
“Oh, haven’t you ever seen pictures of them?” laughed Ace. “Picture a giant lizard, perhaps 40 feet long––”
“Here, here,” protested the old man. “I don’t bite.”
“It is perfectly true,” said Norris soberly.
“Honest Injun!” vowed Ace. “One of these fellows was a sort of cross between a crocodileand a kangaroo, what with his long hind legs that he could walk half erect on. There were some as small as eight or ten inches, too, and some so large that you wouldn’t have come to his knee. His big toe was as long as your arm.”
“And how do you know all that?” protested the old prospector feebly.
“By their bones,—fossils. Why, there have been fossil bones of a dinosaur found right in the Connecticut Valley! There was one found a hundred years ago in Oxford, England. We have heaps of fossils of them out West here. In fact, this part of the world used to be their stamping ground, though fossils of them have been found as far away as New Zealand.”
“Did they eat people?” gasped Lester.
“There weren’t any people in those days to eat, but some of them preyed on other animals, and some browsed on the herbage of the swamps. They didn’t have much of any brains, the Triceratops, dinosaurs twice as heavy as elephants, that looked like horned toads, didn’t have two pounds of brains apiece, or so we infer from the size of their skulls. They knew just about enough to eat when they were hungry,and not enough to migrate when things got unlivable for them, and so they perished off the face of the earth.”
“I’m shore glad of that,” the old man heaved a sigh of relief. “I’d shore hate to ’ve met up with one of them fellows.”
“And next time I want to cast aspersions on any one’s intelligence,” shouted Pedro, “I’m going to call him a—what was it?”
“Triceratops,” said Norris. “Some dinosaurs,—in fact, most of them,—lived in the swamps, and had long, snakelike necks and flat, apparently earless heads, and long tails. But Triceratops had a three-horned face, one horn over each eye to protect it in battle and one over the nose. Of course he was the largest animal of his time, but he probably fought rival swains for his lady love. We have a pair of Triceratops horns in the National Museum. One is broken, and it must have been broken during life, for the stump is healed over. There were many other kinds of dinosaurs. If we come to any fossil remains, I’ll tell you more about them. But,” (stifling a yawn), “I guess you fellows have had about all you can stand for to-night.”
The boys protested to the contrary, but Norris promised the rest of the story their next evening together around a bon-fire.
In the middle of the night the boys were awakened by a terrific racket. Long Lester was yelling for all he was worth. Every one started wide awake, and Norris threw a handful of browse on the fire to light the scene. Then the old man managed to articulate: “Gosh A’mighty!—I sure thought the Dinosaurs were arter me!”
“You’ve been dreaming,” Norris laughed, while the boys fairly rolled over one another in their enjoyment.
Ace and Ted now made two flights daily in search of the Mexicans, or the smoke of their cook-fire.
Next day they came to a canyon that filled the Geological Survey man with profound enthusiasm, for, he said, it illustrated both the last glacial period and the last period of volcanic mountain building. First they noted that the little mountain stream had worn its torrential way through the basalt or volcanic rock in a narrow canyon perhaps 200 feet deep. A flow of molten basalt, accompanied by cinders,had been erupted from the 8,000 foot peak at the upper end of the canyon, and had flowed down in a layer 200 feet thick when it hardened. It had flowed,—as the underlying rock still showed in places,—over a lateral moraine or rock débris left by a glacier as it flowed down that way. And from the weathered condition of this rock débris, Norris said, it must have been a glacier, not of the last ice age, but of the one preceding,—for of the four glacier periods generally recognized by geologists to-day, evidences of the last two can be seen in the Sierras.
What made this little canyon even more of a find, (from the point of view of what he wanted to show the boys), was that on top of the volcanic rock lay the deposit from another glacier, one that flowed in the last ice age, as the condition of the rock débris plainly showed the expert.
The boys tucked a few rock specimens into their packs and launched an avalanche of questions. But he made them wait till they had established all snug for the night beside a stretch of rapids, where they could look forward to catching trout for breakfast. Then, lightinghis pipe, and stretching his feet to the bon-fire,—for the night wind swept cool upon them,—Norris began with Ted’s question as to glaciers and volcanoes.
“During the times I spoke of last night, when the earth crust is breaking, the molten rock and gases and water vapor in the interior of the planet rise in the hearts of the mountain ranges, and often break through as active volcanoes, pouring their lava and ash over the underlying granite, and building it still higher.
“These heightened mountain ranges bring about the glacial climates. For the snows on their cold peaks do not melt when summer comes, and consequently they accumulate, and accumulate, till their own weight presses them down as hard as ice,—that is, makes glaciers of them. I am going to be on the look-out for a glacier, for you will have a good chance to see them in this region. At the same time, during these glacial periods, the astronomer could explain how it is that the temperature is from ten to twenty degrees colder in both winter and summer than it is now, so that helps the ice to accumulate. Then the glacier, flowing slowly, slowly, (a river of ice), down the mountainsides,carries with it quantities of the underlying rocks, till it reaches a lower level where the ice melts and it becomes a river and carries those rocks and soil to the sea. That way, the mountains are gradually worn down to sea level and the whole cycle is ready to start over again.”
“I see,” said the ranch boy. “How long ago did you say the last glacier period came?”
“Probably not since the time of the first men,—perhaps 30,000 years ago.”
“And those glacial deposits you showed us to-day are 30,000 years old?” the boy breathed.
“Yes, and the deposits from the glacial period before that are older still,—a souvenir from the age of reptile dominance.”
“Then when did the other ice ages come? Did you say there were five?”
“I did, but only four great ones. There were two away back in the age of invertebrates.”
“Then has the climate been the same since the last ice age?”
“Not at all. The change is gradual, and geologists naturally conclude that some time we will have another ice age. We’ll hope man has found a better way to keep warm by thattime. Our climate, with all its ups and downs, is little by little, through the centuries, growing colder!”
“And how do you know about all these ups and downs of climate?” challenged Long Lester.
“Why, for one thing,—we don’t have to read it all from the rocks,—there is a plain story in the rings of growth in the Big Trees. Don’t you remember those cut stumps, and the thousands of rings we counted, one for a year? And some were wider than others, because in those years there had been more rainfall.”
“Well, I never!” was all the old prospector could articulate, as all hands once more called it a day.
Next day Ace searched in concentric circles, but without finding a trace of Mexicans, or, indeed, of any one.
The next night found the little party encamped an eight hours’ hike up the side of another glacial polished slope. The trail,—that is to say the way they picked to go,—led first to the upper end of the canyon and over the rocks that bordered a green-white water-fall. The wind blowing the spray in first one direction and then another, they got well wetted, thoughthe clear California sunshine soon dried them again. But the most curious part of their climb past the falls was the rainbow that persisted in following them till they seemed to be at the hub of a huge semicircle of opalescent tints.
Above, (perhaps eight hundred feet higher than their camp at the hot spring), they came to where the river slid green and transparent over granite slopes just bordered by a fringe of pine. The water ran deep and swift, though, and as Ted stooped to drink, he found that, rhythmically, a larger swell, (call it a wave), would slap him in the face, till once, blinded by the unexpected onslaught, he all but lost his balance. It would have been inevitable, had he done so, that he should almost instantly go hurtling over that eight hundred foot drop, whose waters roared till the boys had to shout at each other to be heard even a few paces away. But the water was deliciously icy, from its fountain-head in the glacier above.
Wide slopes just steep enough to make climbing demand considerable sure-footedness widened this hanging valley on either side, with no greenery save the picturesque bits that grewalong the weathered cracks. Beyond this, the canyon walls continued to rise abruptly.
Trailing along beside the river till it had widened out and quieted its song, they found one of the typically open, parklike, forests of silver firs, jeweled with occasional emerald meadows fragrant with purple lupin and gay with crimson columbine and golden buttercups. Under foot were white violets and wee, monkey-faced mimulus, with occasionally a rare scarlet monkey-flower.
They passed one of the tributaries of the river, crossed it on a log, and paused to drink deep of its sweet fluid. They found a huge fallen log with a mushroom growth that Pedro pronounced edible and which they found not unlike cooked crab meat. They crossed other brooklets, paused at noon to eat a dry lunch, and to their amazement spied a doe and her half-grown fawn in the edge of the clearing watching them wistfully as they threw their scraps away. Pedro, approaching softly, and casting peace offerings before him, was able to approach to within several paces of the mother, though her young hopeful was less trustful. Having probably never seen a biped before, both animalswere consumed with curiosity and comparatively unafraid. The old prospector suggested with a wink that a little “wild mutton” would not go amiss, the game laws being adaptable to the needs of those in extremity, but Norris reminded him that they were no longer in extremity, and the boys voted unanimously not to betray the trust of this wild mother.
Now came a stiff climb around a rocky shoulder of the mountain, and along the cracks of the smooth rock slopes, as once more they traversed the path of an ancient glacier. The opening here between the two folds of mountains again disclosed their river, now smaller, but if anything even noisier, by reason of its race over a series of cascades. They had left the silver fir belt and were in the region of dwarfed mountain pines. They estimated that they must be about 8,000 feet high.
Ace joined them with still no news of the fugitive fire setters. It was mysterious.
It being Ted’s and Pedro’s turn to make camp that night, they dropped the packs under a gnarled old juniper whose trunk had been split by lightning into seven splinters that curved out over a little hollow, making an idealshelter, with its fubsy foliage, its storm-twisted limbs making natural seats, and a flat-topped rock a table. They had to carry pine boughs some distance for their beds, as they did wood and water. Then they sallied forth for a string of fish.
All this gave Ace, Norris and Long Lester time to climb the short remaining distance to the top of the ridge, where they could gaze across at snow-capped peaks on which the alpine glow of approaching sunset had spread a luscious rose.
While they were reclining in quiet enjoyment around the supper fire,—the last flutter of the breeze fanning their faces,—a tawny, catlike form suddenly came tip-toeing out from behind an edge of rock. It was an animal possibly a hundred pounds in weight,—the California mountain lion is not a heavy animal,—and for all its wide, heavy looking feet it trod with lithe grace. (Those paws, so well adapted to travel over deep snow, would enable it to seek its prey when white winter shut down over all its hunting grounds.)
It was a rare treat to see a lion so close.
It was a rare treat to see a lion so close.
Now it was to all of them a rare treat to see a lion so close to. Of all the denizens of the wild, none are so shy of human kind, in regions where they are hunted,—none so thoroughly nocturnal. The three men fairly held their breaths to watch.
First the animal leapt to a branch of a wind-beaten tree and crouched along its limb, lying so still that, had they not seen it move, they might have glanced squarely in that direction and never noticed. And there it lay, sharpening its claws, cat fashion.
Suddenly it began narrowing its yellow eyes at what must have been a movement behind the rock whence it had emerged. Gathering its feet for a spring, it laid its ears back, and the great muscles rippling beneath its skin, leapt at a second lion whose head could now be seen peering around the rock. But did they fight? Not a bit of it! With hiss and arching back, and all claws out like the picture of a witch cat, the young cougar challenged his playfellow, then retreated as the other would have given him a swipe of his paw. Back to his tree he raced, the other after him. But no sooner had he reached the vantage point of his horizontal branch than he turned and chased the other back. This play was repeated several times,while the three men watched to the windward, silent and motionless, and hence unseen by the near-sighted animals.
A small rock had been loosened by their scramble, and as it went rolling over the granite slope, the first cat pounced after it playfully, finally catching the rolling stone and leaping about it as a cat does a mouse. Then he retired to his tree.
Norris, reflecting that the near presence of two such animals would stampede the burros, picked up a stone and threw it at the lion, intending, not to hit it, but to chase it away. To the surprise of the onlookers, the huge cat pounced on the stone as playfully as before. Ace now hurled a small rock so that it just escaped the tawny flank, but again she pounced, as playful as a kitten, at each missile, and it was not till the three men rose and shouted that the lion took alarm and raced away.
“I declare!” exclaimed Pedro, when he heard about it, “I’d never have believed it!”
“I was out in Devil’s Gulch one day,” remarked Long Lester, “with a coupla dogs. It’s all granite,—hard for the dogs to get a scent,but there’s lots of lions there, in among the rocks. Finally, though, they got one into a little Digger Pine. I took a shot at her, and out she tumbled.”
“Dead?” asked Norris.
“Yes. The dogs found her den, and dragged out three cubs.”
“How large?”
“About the size of house cats, that’s all.”
“Then what?”
“Oh, I put ’em into my shirt and tuk ’em home. I sold ’em afterwards to a circus man.”
“Well, do lions always act the way this one did to-night?”
“I heard tell of a boy that was out with an old three dollar Winchester 22, and a dog that had lost a leg in a bear trap. Pretty soon he barked ‘treed.’ He had a lion up in a scrub oak. It came down fighting, so the boy had to circle around trying to find a chance to shoot. Then it jumped up into a pine tree and lay with its head over the limb looking down at him. He shot at it, but I guess it didn’t hit, for it ran again, and by jings, it finally got clean away!”
“Don’t they ever fight?” marveled Pedro.
“They’ll fight a dog if they come down wounded, but the big cats are mostly cowards.”
“But bears are not?”
“Bears? No, nothing cowardly about them. They’re more lazy’n anything else.”