Terre Haute

“ But the skin of the earth is restless, as the inner fires waver in their long cooling. Beneath the volatile cloak of air, and the tidal robe of waters, the rocky layer encrusting the unknown vast core of the earth moves in its own hour. A slow adjustment, a period of planetary shudders, and a land is engulfed, a continent pressed upward. ”

“ You see, the earth used to be just a great ball of melted rock, whirling around in the air, and growing cool over the outside. But as it grew cool and hard, deeper and deeper down, the core seemed to shrink, and so the outside began to wrinkle, just like a dried-up old winter apple. And because it was colder than the air, the water condensed on the earth like steam on a cold window, and it all ran down into the low places, so there was an ocean where the Rocky Mountains are now. ”

“ Range behind range of great mountains lie below, like a Titanic ocean stilled by some mighty hand. From this supreme elevation it is possible to study the structural character of the region, and to count all the great chains that cross the country, while no words can express the varying and exquisite color that, like a glamour of heavenly enchantment, lies over the wide expanse. The whole earth, “and the beauty thereof,” seems to be spread out at one’s feet, and the airs that come to this high mountain crest are full of freshness and balm. ”

“ To us north and south, east and west are of equal interest and importance. Our desire now is to understand, if haply we may, the complex system of which we ourselves form a part. The distribution of land and water—the configuration of continental areas and oceanic basins—the circulation of oceanic and terrestrial waters—earth-movements and volcanoes—ice-formations—the atmosphere—climatology—the geographical distribution of plants and animals—in a word, the world as one organic whole now forms the subject of our contemplation. ”

“ It is universally admitted that the last great change of the surface of the earth, by whatever cause brought about, left the surface of the uplands very much in the same form in which we now find them. ”

“ Every rock beneath our feet has its story of change to tell us. Mountains, valleys, and plains, continents and islands, have passed through vicissitudes innumerable, and bear within them the evidence of a gradual development or evolution. Looking back through the vista of the past one sees the dry lands gradually separating from the ocean, and gathering together into continental masses according to a definite plan. It is this slow growth, this august evolution, carried on through countless æons, which most impresses the student of physical geology. ”

“ It is doubtful if such an earth would be suitable for life,—certainly not for man.
The Real Earth of Land, Water, and Inclined Axis. The different manner in which land and water surfaces absorb, radiate, and reflect the heat from the sun has a profound influence on climate, which also is modified by latitude, elevation above sea level, elevation above a valley or above a surrounding plane, direction of wind, height and trend of direction of hills and mountains, the position of lakes and inland seas, the relative position and magnitude of continents and oceans, storm tracks, and ocean currents. ”

“ We could not expect to find traces of air on the summit of a terrestrial mountain 134 miles high. The conclusion, therefore, is, that though the near hemisphere is a lifeless desert, having neither water nor air to sustain life, the hidden hemisphere may have a teeming population, rejoicing in all the comforts and amenities of life. The imagination is set free to picture broad oceans, bearing on their bosom the commerce of this new world, rivers fertilising the valleys through which they flow, a luxuriant vegetation, and buildings of colossal size. ”

“ Everything that shapely form and atmosphere can achieve in the way of effect these little mountains of ours are capable of. Our much maligned climate not merely clothes them in a chequered mantle of green and russet, of grey, purple, or saffron, only less in winter than in summer, but gives them those ever-changing moods and aspects that few people who know both would as a permanency exchange for all the sun glare of the earth. ”

“ We may thus speak of the great world-ridges as regions of dominant elevation, and of the profound oceanic troughs as areas of more or less persistent depression. From one point of view, it is true, no part of the earth’s surface can be looked upon as a region of dominant elevation. Our globe is a cooling and contracting body, and depression must always be the prevailing movement of the lithosphere. The elevation of the continental plateau is thus only relative. ”

“ In climate every variation was to be found, from arctic to subtropical, with scenery unparalleled anywhere in the world for magnificence and grandeur and the brightness and softness of its colouring, the bold, snow-clad and desolate expanses contrasting sharply with the rich and luxuriant vegetation of the deep-cut valleys close at hand. ”

“ Now a vast, red, sandy desert was sweeping across the screen, now a waterway, now another city (always situated at the intersection of two canals) , and so from the distance of thirty-three millions of miles, they viewed the surface of the planet from ice clad north to ice clad south. Suddenly the lofty summit of a great mountain capped with an enormous black blotch swept across their vision. ”

“ If we consider man alone, we find him at Aden, on the Red Sea, at a temperature of 130° in the shade, and in Siberia at 70° below zero; grovelling in mines deep in the Earth, and living in great communities ten thousand feet above sea-level; fighting battles on the slopes of the Himalayas, at an altitude of 19,000 feet; nomadic on sterile tracts; sweltering under the glaring sun of the equator, and existing in regions of perpetual snow and ice, and without sunlight for six months of the year. ”

“ HOW THE MOUNTAINS WERE UPHEAVED. The notion that the ground is naturally steadfast is an error,—an error which arises from the incapacity of our senses to appreciate any but the most palpable, and at the same time most exceptional, of its movements. The idea of terra firma belongs with the ancient belief that the earth was the centre of the universe. It is, indeed, by their mobility that the continents survive the increasing assaults of the ocean waves, and the continuous down-wearing which the rivers and glaciers bring about.—Professor Shaler. ”

“ It is enough, from our present point of view, to be assured that the main features of the country were chalked out, as it were, at a very distant geological period, and that all the infinite variety in the relief of our land has been brought about directly, not by titanic convulsions and earth-movements, but by the long-continued working of rain and rivers—of frost and snow and ice, supplemented from time to time by the action of the sea. ”

“ If it be hard enough to allow the possibility of one great movement of elevation having affected so enormous an area of our hemisphere, if we find it extremely difficult to believe either that one such widespread movement, or that a multitude of local movements, each more or less independent of the other, could have lifted the glaciated regions successively within reach of the snow-line—we shall yet find it impossible to admit that such remarkable upheavals could be repeated again and again. ”

“ In fine, we cannot quit the subject without being convinced that these ceaseless changes afford one of the grandest examples of that continuous series of mutations—cycle and epicycle—which has been already alluded to as a distinguishing feature in all the operations of Nature. We are accustomed to think and speak of "the everlasting hills." We look on the solid lands whereon we dwell as the emblem of all that is stable and steadfast, and on the boundless ocean as the type of all that is unsteady and changeful. ”

“ When a polar continent heaves from the bosom of the deep, or when the inquiring eye rests upon the serrated rock, the antique victim of some drift-dispersing glacier, the mind perceives the effects and recognizes the existence of nature's omnipotent muscles, and their appalling power. ”

“ Almost every mile of land surface has been again and again depressed beneath the ocean; most of the great mountain chains have either originated or greatly increased in height during the Tertiary period; marvellous alterations of climate and vegetation have taken place over half the land-surface of the earth ”

“ But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other; and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our planet might remain what they are. ”

“ But their succession has been broken up by frequent and violent alterations in the configuration of the globe. Land and water have changed their level,—islands have been transformed to continents,—sea-bottoms have become dry land, and dry land has sunk to form sea-bottoms,—Alps and Himalayas, Pyrenees and Apennines, Alleghanies and Rocky Mountains, have had their stormy birthdays since many of these beds have been piled one above another, and there are but few spots on the earth's surface where any number of them may be found in their original order and natural position. ”

“ The dislocation of the crust of the globe elevated the mountains, dug the valleys, sank the seas, formed the continents, and, toward the end of the Tertiary period, the globe presented a surface much resembling what we see now. ”

“ When we examine the forms of any of our continents, we find that these elevated portions of the earth's crust appear to be made up of mountains and the table-lands which fringe those elevations. There is not, as some of our writers suppose, two different kinds of elevation in our great lands—the continents and the mountains which they bear—but one process of elevation by which the foldings and the massive uplifts which constitute the table-lands are simultaneously and by one process formed. ”

“ When we find in the glacial beds the leaves of trees still living in North America and Europe, and consider the vicissitudes of elevation and submergence of the land, and of Arctic and temperate climates which have occurred, we are struck with the persistence of the weak things of life, as compared with the changeableness of rocks and mountains. A superficial observer might think the fern or the moss of a granite hill a frail and temporary thing as compared with solid and apparently everlasting rock. ”

“ And on this occasion, I must beg leave to make a short digression on the heat and cold of different climates, and on the varieties which occur in the same place in different parts of the year, and in different places in the same degree of latitude.
The ancients conceived that of the five zones into which they divided the surface of the globe, two only were habitable, supposing that the heat between the tropics, and the cold within the polar circles, were too intense to be supported by mankind. ”

“ In addition to mere elevation and relative configuration of surface, the land of the globe brings about important modifications of climate in the degree in which its surface is covered with vegetation or is a desert waste. Of all surfaces that the earth presents to the influences of solar and terrestrial radiation an extent of sand is accompanied with the most extreme fluctuations of climate, as these are dependent on the temperature and moisture of the air ”

“ Oceans and continents, islands and lakes, hills and valleys, have come and gone with all their successive races of living things, and that same planet has marked them all. She has seen, too, as but a thing of yesterday, the appearance of man upon the scene, with all the successive centuries that have elapsed since then. ”

“ As the outer layers of the globe cooled, and the disturbances due to internal heat and chemical action became less marked, the conditions would arise in which the materials for geological history were accumulated. The influence of the sun, which must always have operated, would then stand out more clearly, giving rise to that wide circle of superficial changes wherein variations of temperature and the circulation of air and water over the surface of the earth come into play. ”

“ If we suppose, as may be done without committing any great error, that the expansion of the primitive mountains is equal to that of glass, and that they have been at a temperature of 200°, and even at a much lower one, the water of the sea would cover the secondary mountains, in which we find the remains of marine animals. ”

“ But though the men who live on these mountains have thus made three countries out of them, the whole region is in nature one. It constitutes one mighty mass of mountainous land, which is lifted up so high into the air that all the summits rise into [Pg 14] the regions of intense and perpetual cold, and so condense continually, from the atmosphere, inexhaustible quantities of rain and snow. ”

“ Thus simply and with little expense of altitude is the surface of the earth diversified. What would human life be without forests, those natural cities? From the tops of mountains they appear like smooth-shaven lawns ”

“ What inequalities in the surface? but upon a minute and attentive observation we shall find the greatest chain of mountains are nearer the equator than the poles; that in the Old Continent their direction is more from the east to west than from the north to south; and that, on the contrary, in the New World they extend more from north to south than from east to west ”

“ If this be so, it is plain that climate, and the conditions of life which depend upon climate, soil, and the presence of vegetables and of other animals besides man, must have been the forces which moulded and developed those varieties. From a remote antiquity, everybody has connected the dark colour of all, or nearly all, the races inhabiting the torrid zone with the power of the sun; and the fairer skin of the races of the temperate and arctic zones with the comparative feebleness of his rays in those regions. ”