Alluvion

“ C'est parmi ces tempêtes que naît la vie.’ ... ‘Les eaux, de nouveau tranquillisées, mais dont le contenu a changé, déposent des couches moins épaisses et plus variées, où les débris des corps vivans s'accumulent successivement dans un ordre non moins fixe que celui des roches qui les contiennent. Enfin, la dernière retraite des eaux répand sur le continent d'immenses alluvions de matières meubles, premiers sièges de la végétation, de la culture et de la sociabilité.’ Eloge de Werner, in Cuvier, Recueil des Elogés Historiques, vol. ”

“ Light from the darkness doth thy hand unfold:
Beauty from dust we in thy deeds behold:
The frail, the dimmed, the withered, worn and old
Thy breath dissolves, that they may shine anew.
The city flames, and melts the tottering wall;
Again she rises fairer for the fall.
Thou beckonest back the flood! and at thy call,
From crust-capped mounts, volcanic splendors pour.
The absent sun his way to morning bends;
The waning star to thy command attends,
Fills out and burns; and man to dust descends,
In hope to live, when thou shalt be no more. ”

“ It was a battle between the heavens and the earth,—the stream of molten rock, blinding [Pg 57] hot from the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits the mould into which it is poured. ”

“ The flood, and swallowed up the fallow waves,
The struggling sea—the abyss devoured it all. 1590
Yet not the waves alone it swallowed up;
But fourteen men, worst caitiffs of the throng,
Went headlong to destruction with the flood
Under the yawning earth. Then sore afraid
Was many a heart at that calamity;
They feared the slaughter both of men and wives,
A yet more wretched season of distress,
When once those sin-stained cruel murderers,
Those warriors fierce, plunged headlong down the abyss. ”

“ When, after successive convulsions, vast clouds of black smoke rose from a mountain and overspread the sky, when the brightness of noon was rapidly replaced by the darkness of midnight, when the air grew thick with stifling dust and a rain of stones and ashes fell from it on all the surrounding country, when streams of what looked like liquid fire poured forth and desolated gardens, vineyards, fields and villages—then did men feel sure that the gods were angry. ”

“ Then some great storm comes, and a liquid avalanche descends from the mountains where their sources lie, covers and ravages the plain, turning over the ancient alluviums, stirring up and mixing the old and new materials, and carrying farther each time the débris it has torn up on its passage. ”

“ Parched are all lips and eyes; for the air is full of dust, yea, even of gravel which cuts like hail. Aching are all right-sides; for the sudden chill brings on all manner of liver complaints and indigestions. All who can afford it, draw tight the jalousies, and sulk in darkness; the leaves are parched, as by an Atlantic gale; the air is filled with lurid haze, as in an English north-east wind; and no man can breathe freely, or eat his bread with joy, until the plague is past. ”

“ Destructive damps, and clouds of noxious dust, infect the air they breathe. Sometimes water incessantly distils on their naked bodies; or, bursting upon them in streams, drowns them, and deluges their work. At other times, pieces of detached rocks crush them to death; or the earth, breaking in upon them, buries them alive. ”

“ If the wind disturbed the sand, moved the stones, and made much noise, inundations were to be expected; and if the dust continued to fall one hour more, the plague would rage in the southern regions, and half the inhabitants to the southeast would be sick. ”

“ Smelt sickly, till it seemed through a swift tear-flood
That dead men blossomed in the garden-close.
[23]
LIMBO
After a week spent under raining skies,
In horror, mud and sleeplessness, a week
Of bursting shells, of blood and hideous cries
And the ever-watchful sniper: where the reek
Of death offends the living ... but poor dead
Can't sleep, must lie awake with the horrid sound
That roars and whirs and rattles overhead
All day, all night, and jars and tears the ground ”

“ When the storm reached the low point dividing the river, the house shook in the wind, and the rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf roof, the thunder spoke in one prolonged roll, and the incessant lightning disclosed a turmoil of leaping waters, driving logs, and the big trees bending before a brutal and merciless force.
Undisturbed by the nightly event of the rainy monsoon, the father slept quietly, oblivious alike of his hopes, his misfortunes, his friends, and his enemies ”

“ When the wind with its flood of rain comes toward us as we crouch by the wall we are beaten and drenched and buffeted and driven hard against that cold, blue surface. And the ragged edges of the rocks make bruises on our foreheads. ”

“ The men who had run to the walls, on hearing the shouts below, had let loose, into the depths, a deadly avalanche of earth, rocks, and timber. When the dust of it had drifted out, scores, hundreds, of dead and dying were seen half-buried in the fallen mass. ”

“ I turn upon my pillow and again
Compose myself for slumber.
Let them sweep;
I once survived great floods, and do not fear,
Though ominous planets congregate, and seem
To foretell strange disasters. ”

“ The wind rose in mighty gusts and with its arrogant, brutal, male caresses swept away any haze that still hung around. The glowing sun poured forth its flood as from a golden spout in the turquoise sky. ”

“ The fury of the storm increased, and flying stony particles of the rubbly soil stung our bodies like shot, as the wind took us by the scruff of the neck and thrust us along, to the whipping of drops of rain which had begun to fall. ”

“ The sun came out with blinding heat and light, vegetation withered, animals disappeared, streams and wells dried up, and at last the wretched woman gave up her life on a bed of fever, with no hand to soothe her dying moments, for her people, too, were dead. ”

“ The flood, the tornado, the volcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven, and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that blackened, the earthquake that devoured, were the messengers of the Creator. ”

“ The furnace winds of midnight were withering to flesh and blood. And sometimes the air carried invisible death in shape of poison gas or dust. In winter, sudden changes of temperature, whirling icy winds down upon a prospector who had gone to sleep in warmth, would freeze him to death. ”

“ As there are waters under the earth, so Ætna, Vesuvius, and other volcanoes, proclaim to the world that there are subterraneous fires too; and fire often falls from heaven, many desolations are made by lightning; so that, when the time predetermined comes, between these two fires the earth and all the works therein shall be burnt up, as the flood was brought upon the old world out of the fountains of the great deep and through the windows of heaven. ”

“ Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the daylight. ”

“ There, hidden under the beauty of the almost tropical vegetation, was the hideous rack of the fever and ague, waiting ready to torture the strength out of the men, the heart out of the women, and the very lives out of the children. ”

“ His plagues obedient to his voice flew forth out of their clouds
Falling upon America, as a storm to cut them off
As a blight cuts the tender corn when it begins to appear.
Dark is the heaven above, & cold & hard the earth beneath;
And as a plague wind fill'd with insects cuts off man & beast ”

“ In the wide moat, run dry with summer droughts Great scarlet poppies lay in drifts and heaps, Like bodies fall'n there in some vain assault. Within, decay and dolor had their court— Dolor, decay, and silence, lords of all. ”

“ For though during the moments of an eruption nothing but a wasteful scene of tumult and disorder be presented to our view, yet, when the fury of those flames and vapours, which have been struggling for a passage, has abated, everything then returns to its original state of rest ”

“ The enthusiast of Nature, who should conquer its precipitous descent, and stand upon the margin of the flood which creeps in death-like stillness through this guarded defile, might see on his right, the foam, the vapour, the tossing of a tempestuous conflict ”

“ These manly tears aged the countenance and rejuvenated the eyes: like lava disgorged from the inflamed bowels of the earth they burned ineradicable traces and buried beneath their flow world upon world of trivial cravings and of petty cares. ”

“ As to the Dissipation indeed of pestilential Vapours, or their Destruction in any Manner, they undoubtedly may do Service, but then that ought to be done at vast Distances only from where People inhabit. ”

“ We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip—death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild creatures. ”

“ At length came the greater curse of the Flood, which destroyed paradise and the whole human race, and swept them from the face of the earth. For if at this day rivers, bursting their banks, inflict by their floods such mighty calamities on men, beasts and fields, what must we suppose to have been the awfulness and horror of the calamities brought upon the earth by the universal Deluge! ”

“ Thus, too, the hidden fires of earth, ever smouldering within, ever restless in their workings—now tossing the foam and spray of the geysers in their play, or now opening in wide fissures of molten death, to scorch the surface of the earth with the poisonous sulphur smoke, or bury for centuries in dust and ashes, and under the lava tide, the homes and haunts of the men of the past. Thus God teaches men by His own ceaseless workings through ten thousand ever busy forces. ”

“ Like spring-wheat, blade by blade, they break ground late; like spring-wheat, many seeds have perished in the hard winter glebe. Oh, my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus’ dances, we raise not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up ”

“ Supposing that such a plague was to come upon us at the present day, we should consider it to be a terrible annoyance, yet scarcely worthy of the name of plague, and certainly not to be classed with the turning of a river into blood, with the hail and lightning that destroyed the crops and cattle, and with the simultaneous death of the first-born. ”

“ In many of the canons where water flows continuously, effects are produced that are exactly the opposite of those ascribed to water erosion. Instead of the running water cutting deeper into the earth it has partly filled the canon with alluvium, thereby demonstrating nature's universal leveling process. ”

“ We were then called again to our tasks, and worked through the heat of the day; the sun flaming upon our heads like fire, and raising salt blisters in those parts which were not completely covered. Our feet and legs, from standing in the salt water for so many hours, soon became full of dreadful boils, which eat down in some cases to the very bone, afflicting the sufferers with great torment. ”

“ Soon afterwards, the rain descended in torrents; gusts of wind, such are only experienced under the tropics, blew down houses, uprooted trees, and drove the waves mountain high, which threatened at each moment to overwhelm us with destruction. ”

“ But when ye have journeyed with much toil and no little peril over the mountain-necks, for by the gorge of the river, as aforesaid, no man may go, and have come out of the mountains once more, then again ye have the flood before you, cleaving a great waste of rocks mingled with sand, where groweth neither tree nor bush nor grass ”

“ For great as was the advancing and retiring flood which provided nourishment, the affections produced by external contact caused still greater tumult—when the body of any one met and came into collision with some external fire, or with the solid earth or the gliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and the motions produced by any of these impulses were carried through the body to the soul. ”

“ Sunlight and genial rain produce fertility and beauty, the hurricane and the flood leave behind them desolation. There are certain particles whose action, if diffused abroad in the air, breed disease and death; there are others whose effects are most refreshing and healthful to the body frame. ”

“ The waters thus polluted were a source for propagating the disease. The very water, gift of purity and cleanliness, became the channel of a loathsome death. An internal fire ate out the very core of life. ”

“ Scarcely had the plague lifted its hand from oppressing the people, ere the benumbed faculties of the woe-begone mourners were roused to fresh terror, by the grumbling murmurs of an earthquake;—storms, lightnings, hailstones, and tempests spread desolation in their course through all parts of the country in quick succession—a very age of trouble. ”

“ A steady rain, the absence of the sun, a deathlike stillness of the birds and domestic animals, and above all the dark and lowering aspect of the sky, are the premonitory symptoms of the coming calamity and inspire general consternation, while the thunderous roar of the torrents and waterfalls in the mountains strike on the ear with redoubled distinctness in the prevailing silence which preludes the storm. ”