Terran

“ Dalgard smiled, though the other could not see that.
"You see," deliberately he used the mind touch as if to accent those differences the more, "once our roots were the same, but now from these roots different plants have grown. And we must be left to ourselves a space before we mingle once more. My father's father's father's father was a Terran, but I am—what? We have something that you have not, just as you have [183] developed during centuries of separation qualities of mind and body we do not know. You live with machines. ”

“ Looking back through the long vista of the past, we see each continental area in a state of flux—land alternating with sea, and sea with land—mountains and plateaux appearing and disappearing—a constant succession of modifications, brought about by the antagonistic subterranean and sub-aërial agents. ”

“ Scale 1: 250,000. are deposited in a greyish layer, and which are collected by the natives of Terraneh, a village on the left bank of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. [1]
A few springs of fresh water, which have their source in the neighbouring rocks, help to support a scanty vegetation, mainly comprising Mediterranean species and a few sickly palm-trees. ”

“ In this respect, the Terrans are almost perfect prototypes, with two pairs of limbs, for locomotion and manipulation, extending from a central—single—abdominal cavity, which, although containing some single organs as well as some in pairs, is so symmetrically proportioned that the first assumption from an exterior view would be that everything inside was equally mirror-imaged. ”

“ They will remember that in comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces—of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. ”

“ So thin the land is that from the little steamer's deck, as from a great altitude, the eye can range over immense distances. These are the skirts of the continent, trending in multitudinous tatters southward to the sea;—and the practiced gaze of the geologist can discern the history of prodigious alluvial formation, the slow creation of future prairie lands, in those long grassy tongues,—those desolate islands, shaped like the letters of an Oriental alphabet,—those reaches of flesh-colored sand, that shift their shape with the years, but never cease to grow. ”

“ On both sides we see stretching away to the far horizon, like gleaming barriers of marble, tier on tier, terrace on terrace, peak on pinnacle, and pinnacle on peak, of the cold, glittering, alpine Cordilleras, every point being glorified by the slanting rays of a declining sun, glinting down from between bars of gold and amber and purple, until at length he sinks suddenly behind a Sierra, and the valley is rapidly enswathed in the sombre veil of a wintry night. ”

“ Westervelt tore his attention from the mementoes and turned toward the group as Smith settled himself behind the desk.
"This is no longer even approximately funny," said the department head. "I've had a few calls put through. Do you know how little we're going to have to work with?"
"I gather that it is not very much," said Parrish calmly.
"There are less than fifty Terrans on that whole planet!" declared Smith, running the fingers of one hand through his already untidy hair. "The nearest colony or friendly spaceport from which we could have equipment sent in is twenty odd lightyears away." ”

“ These five terraces are formed of shingle and sand; three of them, as marked by Captain B. Hall (namely, B, C, and F) , are much more conspicuous than the others. From the marine remains copiously strewed at the mouth of the valley on the lower terraces, and southward of the town on the upper one, they are, as before remarked, undoubtedly of marine origin; but within the valley, and this fact well deserves notice, at a distance of from only a mile and a half to three or four miles from the sea, I could not find even a fragment of a shell. ”

“ The eye ranges over a wilderness of fantastic-shaped mountains, some shooting up sharp as arrows, others round and ridgy, separated by sinuous sea-lochs and glittering tarns,—a land of awful ruggedness and desolation,—of rock-bound shores cleft into myriad bays and fiords by the thundering almost ever restless northern sea that beats against them. ”

“ I refer to river terraces, those comparatively horizontal steps which are sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, and occasionally on both, and which form a series of terraces ascending the valley; frequently varying as to difference of level, but often remarkably regular in their gradations. Many persons are under the impression that these terraces are the remains of former sea beaches; that to have formed them the sea must have covered whole continents, and reached near the tops of high mountains; that the land has either risen out of the sea, or that the sea has receded. ”

“ Their real value lies in the mutual compensation of highlands and lowlands, which is effected through the mediation of a third physical feature or system, which has received the name Lands of Gradation, or Terrace Lands, and which, by their gradual rise from the sea level, serve as the means of transition from the lowest lowlands to the loftiest plateaus and mountains. ”

“ It is a monotonous picture which I attempt to sketch when I seek to describe the tundra, a picture gray on gray, yet not devoid of all beauty; it is a desert with which we have to do, but a desert in which life, though for many months slumbering and apparently banished, stirs periodically in wondrous fulness. ”

“ You accept the situation as you find it. You leave it to the scientists to dispute whether the valley was formed wholly by glacial action or by some gigantic convulsion of nature, which tore its frowning cliffs apart, leaving the Valley rough, unfinished and uncouth to the gentle, molding hand of Time to smooth it up and beautify its floor with its present growth of oaks and pines and shrub and bush and ferns and vines, and laughing, running waters. ”

“ From terrace to terrace, climate to climate, down one creeps in sun and shade, through gorge and gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long scramble on foot, at last beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand, roaring river. ”

“ The long straggling promontories are mountainous, towering ridges of rock, springing up in precipices from the water; while the bays between them, instead of being rounded with shelving sandy shores, on which the sea tumbles its waves, as in bays of our coast, are, in fact, long narrow valleys, filled with sea, instead of being laid out in fields and meadows. ”

“ We obtained a wide view over the surrounding country: to the north a swampy moorland extended, but to the south we had a scene of savage magnificence, well becoming Tierra del Fuego. There was a degree of mysterious grandeur in mountain behind mountain, with the deep intervening valleys, all covered by one thick, dusky mass of forest. The atmosphere, likewise, in this climate, where gale succeeds gale, with rain, hail, and sleet, seems blacker than anywhere else. ”

“ This superb plain or valley, thirty miles long, by five in breadth, spread away to the westward, between the mighty mass of Olympus on the one side, and a range of lofty mountains on the other, the sides of which presented a charming mixture of forest and cultivated land. ”

“ The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the variety of aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed with the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain region seen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me with surprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half the broad declivities—imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf and footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocks browzing, and you have Switzerland before you. ”

“ Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea, and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude—the shadows of the clouds. ”

“ Yet in that little land there is every kind of soil, from mere sand and broken limestone to rich red and chocolate loam. It is a mountainous country throughout, and its inhabitants{38} are a race of Highlanders. So numerous are its mountain spurs that you may pass up and down the centre of the country for scores of miles, and yet never catch sight of the sea, though you constantly feel it in the breeze. Everything is there—the gorge, the wide sweeping valley, the great plain, the rolling tableland. ”

“ The terral, or land-wind, which is usually strongest towards morning, moaned loudly on the hillside, and came rushing past with a melancholy sough, through the brushwood that surrounded the hut, shaking off the heavy dew from the palm and cocoa-nut trees, like large drops of rain. ”

“ Open sea, land-locked bay, deep firth, rocky islet, placid expanse of unruffled deep blue, cloud-capped mountain, wooded height, bosky dell, villa-crowned ridges, and terrace on terrace of massive buildings, all can be seen by a single roving glance from whatever coign of vantage the beholder may command. ”

“ But the infinite variety of the naked craggy mountains, and the sand and rubbish-filled valley, treeless and bushless, make so wholly uniform impressions, that no one of us would have recognised the principal valley as the right, if the direction and general distance of it had not told us that it was the right one. ”

“ In our fair continent there are thousands upon thousands of square miles of fertile country that Nature herself has planned and mapped out into wide fields, with gentle declivities and slopes, fit for the reception of the modest channel that shall convey the living water over the great pasture lands; and now we want the magician to come, and, with the wand of human skill, bring the interior waters to the surface, and make the desert blossom. ”

“ In the central zone, lying parallel to the former, the plain and the forest long contend with each other for the possession of the soil; the trees prevail for some distance, but gradually dwindle into stunted and thorny bushes, only reappearing in belts of forest along the banks of the streams, until finally in the south, the victory remains with the plain, which displays its smooth, velvet-like surface unbounded and unbroken. ”

“ A community of simple, honest, truthful, unsophisticated white people!
For some distance through the Desert the explorers travelled without meeting with anything but the traditional burning sand and blistering stones, until, almost without warning, they found themselves in hilly country, and green growths began to show between the interstices of the stones. As the explorers ascended, the air grew cooler, and the glare of the sun on the soil less painful to the eyes. Soon the travellers were astonished and delighted to observe what appeared to be human habitations in the far distance. ”

“ Behold, then, a sterile coastline, beaten by never-ending surf, broken by rocky promontories, bird-covered perhaps, and seal-haunted, whence the distant roar of breaking rollers at times comes seaward, and, inland, a rising, undulating zone of desert and cañon, brown or tawny or purple in its shadows, stretching away mysteriously for perhaps a hundred miles to where it meets the solemn Cordillera, which, grey, faint and serrated, with no form save that of outline—the true test of distance—forms our horizon on the east. ”

“ Unless when deeply buried beneath drift-sand and clay, trappean regions usually possess scenery of a marked kind. A green undulating country stretches out as far as the eye can reach, diversified here and there with bold abrupt crags and conical hills. ”

“ Do you want to know about storms that leave the worst Northern trails a summer picnic, and muskegs and tundra that leave you searching for something bigger than miles to measure with, and barren, fly-ridden territory without a leaf or blade of grass and scored every way at once with rifts and water canyons so you can't tell the north from the Desert of Sahara? ”

“ From the level of the sea to the summit of the highest mountains pastures are to be found extending for hundreds of miles,—now undulating smoothly and almost imperceptibly, then extending in broad, flat plains, or over a succession of round-backed hills, broken with rocky ranges, and ending in deep gullies. ”

“ Everywhere this terrace would present cliffs of gravel and sand, facing the river. That such a series of movements has actually taken place in the main valley of the Mississippi and in its tributary valleys during oscillations of level, [p.85] I have endeavoured to show in my description of that country [85-A] ; and the freshwater shells of existing species and bones of land quadrupeds, partly of extinct races preserved in the terraces of fluviatile origin, attest the exclusion of the sea during the whole process of filling up and partial re-excavation. ”

“ They are most abundant and perfect in the drift latitudes—that is, where the continental floors are deeply covered by the waste and débris of the Glacial Period, which closely preceded that of the Terraces. If we examine the valley of a gently-flowing river, we may study all the processes by which it was formed, and step-like terraces distributed along its banks. ”

“ To the south stood a long range of wooded hills—also with an absolutely flat sky-line. We ourselves were not higher than 1,400 ft. above the sea level. My animals stumbled along over a region of much-broken-up débris; then again travelling was easier, although heavy, over tufa, sand and ashes. On descending to a stream, 1,200 ft. above sea level, we slipped terribly on the steep argillaceous slope, and the animals had great difficulty in climbing up on the opposite side, where we made our camp. ”