Aardvark

“ Shy and suspicious, the least unusual sound will send them scuttling to earth, for their sense of hearing is very keen. They seem to change their minds somewhat frequently, when engaged in digging out a new burrow; for half-excavated burrows in the side of ant-hills are very commonly met with. A fully grown aard-vark is about 6 feet long—generally rather more. Although this animal is frequently kept in captivity, it is but rarely seen by visitors, owing to its nocturnal habits, of which we have already spoken. ”

“ This lava flow seems to have been poured out during the same eruption that gave birth to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a little way into the woods and overwhelming the trees in its way, the ends of some of the charred trunks still being visible, projecting from beneath the advanced snout of the flow where it came to rest; while the floor of the forest for miles around is so thickly strewn with loose cinders that walking is very fatiguing. ”

“ The long tongues of bare spaces between forests mark their track. Incredible quantities of snow are torn from the mountain side; trees are uprooted and boulders carried downwards. The avalanche comes to rest far below, and spreads out a discoloured tongue of snow-blocks, dark with the earth rooted from the mountain side, and strewn with small trees and shrubs. Sometimes, after an unusually severe winter, these big spring avalanches extend their domain, and destroy chalets, and bridges, and even villages. ”

“ The avalanche, as has been said, shot with incredible swiftness horizontally across the valley. It pitched on to the Düniberg, struck it obliquely, and was thus deflected down the level and fertile valley-floor, which it covered in a few seconds, to the distance of nearly a mile and over its whole width, with a mass of rock débris more than 30 feet thick. Most of the people on the hillside were instantly killed, the avalanche falling on to them and crushing them flat, ‘as an insect is crushed into a red streak under a man’s foot.’ Only six persons here escaped. ”

“ Torrents and avalanches from the hills carry mud and gravel over the plains. Peat bogs accumulate in the hollows. Glaciers heap up confused masses of moraine, and the advancing sea piles up stones and shingle to be imbedded in mud on its further advance, while boreal marine animals invade the now submerged plains. At length the ice and water meet everywhere, or leave only a few green strips where hardy Arctic plants still survive, and a few well-clad animals manage to protract their existence. ”

“ Soon we leave the trees behind us altogether; nothing but wild chaotic masses of gravel and stones, tossed and heaped one on the other, by the fierce avalanche—the very rocks grey and crumbling with age; here and there patches of black bog, with little oases of emerald green turf perched in their centre, the black orchis growing thick upon them, and perfuming the air yards around. ”

“ After the usual eructation, a general bubble, half veiled in white vapour, rose like a gigantic glass-shade from the still surface, and the troubled water trickled down the basin sides in miniature boiling cascades. Thence it flowed eastwards by a single waste-channel which presently forms a delta of two arms, the base being the cold, rapid, and brawling rivulet: the{181} northern fork has a dwarf “force,” used as a douche, and the southern exceeds it in length, measuring some 350 paces. ”

“ Under the snow and under the rotting patches of ice, innumerable small streams were everywhere hurrying to swell the still ice-fettered flood of the river, the Big Fork, whose roomy valley lay about a half-mile eastward through the woods. Every now and then, when a soft gust drew up from the south, it bore with it a heavy roar, a noise as of muffled and tremendous trampling, the voice of the Big Fork Falls thundering out from under their decaying lid of ice. The Falls were the only thing which the black bear really feared. ”

“ These islands were covered on all sides with the richest moss and the most delicate ferns, and on the top of each grew great trees, their long roots gripping the sides of the rock like petrified pythons. Then a water-course choked with smaller boulders, and rising [281] out of it, straight up for five hundred feet, a solid wall of rock crowned with a pine forest. The wall was a half-mile long and so smooth that one could well imagine some terrible convulsion of these Adirondacks during which a mountain had been split in twain, one side grinding itself into these boulder-islands of the forest. ”

“ Every instant of the day we fought swarms of gnats and mosquitos; though the sun rarely got a peep in upon us, its damp, heavy heat kept us half-blinded with the salt sweat in our eyes. The road was really a long tunnel through unbroken forest meeting overhead, into which the thorny undergrowth crowded in spite of the ox-cart traffic. All day long, mud-holes, often waist-deep for long distances, completely occupied the narrow forest lane. ”

“ Since, however, these rocks have been claimed by Professor Judd as the superficial lava-currents of a volcano which broke out after the time of the plateau-basalts, like the Scuir of Eigg, some further details in regard to the geological structure of the district, which would otherwise be superfluous, may here be given.
The number of sills and dykes in Ardnamurchan is astonishingly great. There must be hundreds of them visible, and perhaps as many more concealed under superficial coverings. They are well exposed on the shore traversing the Jurassic strata and the schists. ”

“ Into crevasses and out again, into moraines, shifted and reinforced and reformed by avalanches, melting from pedestals, etc. Rain, frost, and dew help in the work; they are swept in rills, caught and ground in pot-hole mills. Moraines of washed pebbles, like those on glacier margins, are formed by snow avalanches deposited in crevasses, then weathered out and projected on the ice as shallow raised moraines. There is one such at this camp. ”

“ The mass is composed of more than one stream; its total thickness being, on an average, about eighty feet: the lower portion has certainly flowed beneath the sea, and probably likewise the upper portion. The chief part of this lava has flowed from the central districts, between the hills marked A, B, C, etc., in the woodcut-map. The surface of the country, near the coast, is level and barren; towards the interior, the land rises by successive terraces, of which four, when viewed from a distance, could be distinctly counted.
Volcanic eruptions subsequent to the elevation of the coastland ”

“ They roped and set forth, scaling the towers or turning them, now on this side now on that; sometimes standing on teeth of rock that seemed cut off from all earth else, solitary in a sea of shifting vapour; sometimes descending into a deep gash in the ridge with a blank wall rearing aloft on the further side and empty air yawning to left and right. The rocks were firm and good, like those they had first climbed from the glacier. But they went but a slow pace, for the climbing was difficult and made dangerous by new snow and by the ice that glazed the rocks. ”

“ If you turn away from the sawmill and wander alongside the river, you will see a perfect multitude of logs, thousands of them, held together inside a boom of logs, chained or ironed together, like a huge flock of sheep penned within a sheepfold. These immense masses of timber are floated down the streams in spring, when the snows, melting, flood the rivers with swift, eddying, and often turbulent freshets. Occasionally it happens that the stream grows so swift and violent that it causes the logs to burst the boom or log-linked enclosure within which they are confined. ”

“ The Arafuras, when at sea, protect themselves from the rain, which they dislike greatly, by means of long bags open on one side, made from the bark of a tree. When the weather is fine, they roll these up and use them as a cushion to sit upon. ”

“ Faint coruscations of the Aurora Borealis appeared one evening but their presence did not in the least affect the electrometer or the compass. The ice daily became thicker in the lake and the frost had now nearly overpowered the rapid current of the Saskatchewan River; indeed parties of men who were sent from both the forts to search for the Indians and procure whatever skins and provisions they might have collected crossed that stream this day on the ice. The white partridges made their first appearance near the house, which birds are considered as the infallible harbingers of severe weather. ”

“ The grey lavas contain numerous, minute, black, easily fusible specks; and but very few large crystals of feldspar. They are generally much softened; with the exception of this character, and of being in many parts highly cellular, they are quite similar to those great sheets of lava which overhang the coast at Prosperous Bay. Considerable intervals of time appear to have elapsed, judging from the marks of denudation, between the formation of the successive beds, of which this ridge is composed. ”

“ Once in the breeze, it was comical to turn around slowly and see their efforts to keep under the lee of one's hunting shirt, as one by one they lose their hold and are wafted away in the wind. If these pests had been almost unbearable before, they now became simply fiendish while we were repairing our raft; nothing could be done unless a wind was blowing or unless we stood in a smoke from the resinous pine or spruce so thick that the eyes remained in an acute state of inflammation. ”

“ These beautiful tree avalanches, hundreds of which may be seen falling at once on fine mornings after storms, pile their snow in raised rings around corresponding hollows beneath the trees, making the forest mantle somewhat irregular, but without greatly influencing its duration and the flow of the streams.
The large storm avalanches are most abundant on the Summit peaks of the range. They descend the broad, steep slopes, as well as narrow gorges and couloirs, with grand roaring and booming, and glide in graceful curves out on the glaciers they so bountifully feed. ”

“ The few aurochs that have survived the general destruction of their species graze in the woods of Lithuania; the elk inhabits the extreme north of Europe and America. Transported to our warmer climate, they would soon perish, being unable to endure a temperature too high for them. Since they flourished here in ancient times, the climate of our regions must at that distant epoch have been colder, more severe, than it is to-day. ”

“ There were occasional pauses in the volcanic activity, during which vegetation established itself on the weathered surface of the lava, and left traces of its existence in the leaves and twigs preserved in the sedimentary material enclosed between successive lava-floras. At Ardtun Head in the Isle of Mull beautifully preserved leaves of Ginkgo, 2-4 inches in breadth, with the median sinus and the venation characteristic of the leaves of the existing plant, have been discovered in a bed of clay which marks the site of a lake in a depression on the lava-plateau. ”

“ The effects of river erosion, together with the weathering of rocks are seen in Fig. 31, which is a sketch of a section of Wilmington Pass, in the Adirondacks. The precipitous sides of rock, are shown with evergreens growing wherever they can find a foothold in the soil made by the disintegration of the rocks above. Boulders and trees have been brought down by the loosening of masses of rock, through the action of frost, heat, and melted snow, causing obstructions in the stream, over and between which the waters tumble and roll. ”

“ The aard-vark feeds entirely upon termites and ants, and is nearly always to be found where the nests of those insects are plentiful. It digs with great rapidity, and is said to be able to burrow into the ground faster than a man armed with a spade can dig it out. So it has no difficulty in tearing a hole through the walls of the termites' and ants' nests, and then it licks out the insects in thousands. ”

“ Cold at last drove me back to the Aurora, and, on relating my experiences, the ice-master told me that I would find the dead animals at the weather side of the hole, as the ice, drifting before the wind, would travel faster than the dead and almost completely submerged seals. So taking a man with me, I had the satisfaction of seeing seven big male harps pulled out, the first I had ever killed and the first secured by the ship. ”

“ During our passage along the valley our dogs started two vlakvarks. White men seized their guns, black men followed with their assegais, and a hot chase lasted for twenty minutes before the creatures were brought down. Although it has more formidable tusks than any other of its species, in comparison with the European wild boar, the vlakvark is a feeble, spiritless creature; its skin is extremely thin, and nothing gives it so remarkable an appearance as its conspicuous white whiskers. ”

“ The lava is terrible beyond description, and our track lay over ledges of the roughest kind, in some places glassy and smooth like slag from the furnace, compact and heavy like basalt; in others, tumbled into enormous mounds, or sunk in deep valleys, or rent into fissures, ridges, and clefts. This was at the verge of the snow not twenty yards of the whole space could be called level or even. In every direction vast holes or mouths are seen, varying in size, form and colour, from ten to seventy feet high. The lava that has been vomited forth from these openings presents a truly novel spectacle. ”

“ Almost positively were there no other forms of insect-life upon these glaciers, and there was no vegetation to support insect-life, except microscopic organisms. Nevertheless the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a description of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland, and less definitely fits another description. There is no opposition here, if our data of falls are clear. Frogs of every-day ponds look like frogs said to have fallen from the sky—except the whitish frogs of Birmingham. ”