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 itoccurred to him to wonder if Ted would not have first to take up aclaim,--for it was Government land. Anyway, he would see to it that theboy was rewarded for his find.
The fire now being extinguished, Radcliffe had flown to other battlelines, first taking Rosa--as she insisted--back to her fire outlook. Theplan was for the two boys to keep on hunting for the Mexicans, (as theharried Ranger now counted on their doing), joining the rest of thecamping 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 homeby train. He then carried them one at a time to where the burros had beenleft,--and where the lazy rascals still browsed on the rich mountainmeadows.
For a day or two, all the boys could talk, think or dream about was theadventures they had just been through. But at last they had relievedtheir minds to some extent, and one evening around the fire, Norris gavethem his long promised explanation of some of the natural wonders theyhad seen.
"I have already told you," began Norris, "how the earth probablyoriginated. That much the astronomer has given us. And before thegeologist can begin to interpret the evolution of our earth, he has toknow what scientists have established in the fields of chemistry,mechanics and geodesy,--the study of the curvature and elevation of theearth's surface. He then proceeds to theorize, hand in hand with thepaleontologist, or student of ancient life. The newest theory is in linewith 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 ourplanetary system was disrupted from the sun, it was less than a hundredthpart of the parent body? And our earth is a good deal less than amillionth of the size of our sun, and our sun is among the smaller of thestars of the firmament."
"Phew!" whistled Long Lester, round eyed, while Ted and Pedro satmotionless.
"Picture the earth and moon, revolving about the sun, gathering by forceof their own gravity-pull the tiny planetesimals nearest them, thesebodies hurling themselves into the earth mass at the rate of perhaps tenmiles 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 earthmass, composed of molten rock and gases and water vapor, was condensing.Probably by the time it had engulfed all the stray planetesimals itcould, it was anywhere from 200 to 400 times as large as it is now. Ithas 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 in_your_ lifetime. It only shrinks at times; then the earth's surfacewrinkles 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 breakingthrough the cold outer shell in volcanoes, as the heat rose to thesurface."
"Thet sure must have been hell," laughed the old man.
"As the cold crust was churned into the hot interior, of course it meltedand expanded, and that caused more volcanoes, and so on in a viciouscircle, till finally, by the end of the Formative Era, so called, therock that contained more heavy minerals sank to the lower levels, whilethe 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 thisFormative Era our atmosphere, and the hydrosphere or oceanic areas werebeing formed, along with the granite continents. But while we are on thesubject, I hope you boys will some day see The Valley of Ten ThousandSmokes, in Alaska, where the earth is still boiling so close to thesurface 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 crustallows very little of it to rise to the surface. After the Formative Eracame the Archeozoic Era, when life began in the form of amoebas or somesimple form of protoplasm. For with the formation of the gases of theearth mass into an envelope of air, to moderate the sun's warmth by dayand retain some of it by night,--life became possible."
"But where did those first creatures come from?" Ted could not restrainhimself from asking.
"According to one theory, the first germs of life flew here from someother planet, and not necessarily one of those revolving around our ownsun, for space is full of suns and planetary systems. But that theory canneither be proved nor disproved. When I was a student, Osborn's theorywas the latest. That was in 1916. Without going into it too deeply, ithad to do with the electric energy of the chemical elements that composeprotoplasm, and these always had been latent in the earth mass."
"Then they must have been latent in the sun, too," marveled Ted. "And inother suns and their planets too."
"Very likely," assented the Geological Survey man. "Now of course theocean waters collected in the depressed areas over the heavier rockbottoms, the basalt. You remember just after we lost the burro we were ona 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, butthe general trend has been decidedly upward, while the trend of the oceanfloor has been downward. At that, the shell of the earth--so to speak--isonly 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 ofcenturies,--it will likely be all ocean. And there used to be far moreland, in proportion, than there is now. There was less ocean water thenbecause of all that is continually pouring through hot springs.
"Of course the land is slowly being washed back into the ocean. And thehigher the mountains, the steeper the stream beds, and hence the fasterthe streams, and the faster they erode the high elevations, till finallyall 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 400miles in diameter,--since the beginning,--'when the earth was unformedand void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.' It is stillshrinking. And this internal movement is felt on the surface indifferences that generally amount to only a few hundred feet. I can showyou places over there on the East wall of the Sierras where the mountainshave been upthrust that way.
"Then, every now and again, the interior activities fairly break therocky earth shell or lithosphere, and whole mountain ranges are raised.There have been at least eight such minor breaks in the earth crust inNorth 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. Inaddition, there have been major readjustments that thrust wholecontinents higher and ocean beds lower. Geologists find evidence of atleast six of these major breaks in the earth crust,--marking thebeginnings of the Archeozoic Era, when _life_ originated, the ProterozoicEra, or age of _invertebrates_, the Paleozoic Era or age of _fish_dominance, the Mesozoic Era or age of _reptile_ dominance, the CenozoicEra or age of _mammal_ dominance, and the present Psychozoic Era or ageof _man_."
"Phew!" whistled Long Lester again. "Don't tell me this earth used to beall fish."
"It did, though. We'll go into that some other time. I'll just finishabout continent building now, and then we'll turn in. At these timeswhen the lands are at their highest and the oceans are smallest inbreadth, (because greatest in depth), the continents are united byland-bridges such as those we hav
e now uniting North and South America."
"And Alaska and Asia?" suggested Ted.
"Practically, yes. And probably, at one time, South America andAustralia. These land-bridges changed the direction of the oceanstreams. You know in the age of reptiles there was nothing to divide theAtlantic from the Pacific. Added to that, the high mountain ranges tookthe moisture out of the winds from the oceans, as the Rockies now do thePacific trade winds, so that by the time they reach Nevada there is nomoisture 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, moretemperate stage now have to adapt themselves to life on high, coldelevations, or in dry, hot desert areas, or to migrate via theland-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, (theTriassic period, a rock from which I showed you, if you remember), theJurassic period, which gave rise to flying reptiles, from which our firstbirds were derived; the Comanchean period, which gave rise to floweringplants and the higher insects, and the Cretaceous period, when our mostprimitive mammal forms evolved.
"At first the earth was peopled with dinosaurs and flying dragons, andthe seas by squid-like mollusks. In those days all the earth was level,swampy, tropic and overgrown with giant tree ferns and a primitiveconifer.
"As the high mountain ranges arose and deserts were made, these formsgradually gave way to flowers and hardwood forests, peopled with insectsand mammals. Only the most intelligent forms survived, and the struggleitself developed a higher degree of intelligence."
"What in tarnation were _dinosaurs_?" asked Long Lester.
"Oh, haven't you ever seen pictures of them?" laughed Ace. "Picture agiant 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 crossbetween a crocodile and a kangaroo, what with his long hind legs that hecould walk half erect on. There were some as small as eight or teninches, 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 adinosaur found right in the Connecticut Valley! There was one found ahundred years ago in Oxford, England. We have heaps of fossils of themout West here. In fact, this part of the world used to be their stampingground, though fossils of them have been found as far away as NewZealand."
"Did they eat people?" gasped Lester.
"There weren't any people in those days to eat, but some of them preyedon other animals, and some browsed on the herbage of the swamps. Theydidn't have much of any brains, the Triceratops, dinosaurs twice as heavyas elephants, that looked like horned toads, didn't have two pounds ofbrains apiece, or so we infer from the size of their skulls. They knewjust about enough to eat when they were hungry, and not enough to migratewhen things got unlivable for them, and so they perished off the face ofthe earth."
"I'm shore glad of that," the old man heaved a sigh of relief. "I'd shorehate 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 ofthem,--lived in the swamps, and had long, snakelike necks and flat,apparently earless heads, and long tails. But Triceratops had athree-horned face, one horn over each eye to protect it in battle and oneover the nose. Of course he was the largest animal of his time, but heprobably fought rival swains for his lady love. We have a pair ofTriceratops horns in the National Museum. One is broken, and it must havebeen broken during life, for the stump is healed over. There were manyother kinds of dinosaurs. If we come to any fossil remains, I'll tell youmore about them. But," (stifling a yawn), "I guess you fellows have hadabout all you can stand for to-night."
The boys protested to the contrary, but Norris promised the rest of thestory 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 wideawake, and Norris threw a handful of browse on the fire to light thescene. Then the old man managed to articulate: "Gosh A'mighty!--I surethought the Dinosaurs were arter me!"
"You've been dreaming," Norris laughed, while the boys fairly rolled overone another in their enjoyment.
Ace and Ted now made two flights daily in search of the Mexicans, or thesmoke of their cook-fire.
Next day they came to a canyon that filled the Geological Survey man withprofound enthusiasm, for, he said, it illustrated both the last glacialperiod and the last period of volcanic mountain building. First theynoted that the little mountain stream had worn its torrential way throughthe basalt or volcanic rock in a narrow canyon perhaps 200 feet deep. Aflow of molten basalt, accompanied by cinders, had been erupted from the8,000-foot peak at the upper end of the canyon, and had flowed down in alayer 200 feet thick when it hardened. It had flowed,--as the underlyingrock still showed in places,--over a lateral moraine or rock debris leftby a glacier as it flowed down that way. And from the weathered conditionof this rock debris, Norris said, it must have been a glacier, not ofthe last ice age, but of the one preceding,--for of the four glacierperiods generally recognized by geologists to-day, evidences of the lasttwo can be seen in the Sierras.
What made this little canyon even more of a find, (from the point ofview of what he wanted to show the boys), was that on top of the volcanicrock lay the deposit from another glacier, one that flowed in the lastice age, as the condition of the rock debris plainly showed the expert.
The boys tucked a few rock specimens into their packs and launched anavalanche of questions. But he made them wait till they had establishedall snug for the night beside a stretch of rapids, where they could lookforward to catching trout for breakfast. Then, lighting his pipe, andstretching his feet to the bon-fire,--for the night wind swept cool uponthem,--Norris began with Ted's question as to glaciers and volcanoes.
"During the times I spoke of last night, when the earth crust isbreaking, the molten rock and gases and water vapor in the interior ofthe planet rise in the hearts of the mountain ranges, and often breakthrough as active volcanoes, pouring their lava and ash over theunderlying granite, and building it still higher.
"These heightened mountain ranges bring about the glacial climates. Forthe snows on their cold peaks do not melt when summer comes, andconsequently they accumulate, and accumulate, till their own weightpresses them down as hard as ice,--that is, makes glaciers of them. I amgoing to be on the look-out for a glacier, for you will have a goodchance to see them in this region. At the same time, during these glacialperiods, the astronomer could explain how it is that the temperature isfrom ten to twenty degrees colder in both winter and summer than it isnow, so that helps the ice to accumulate. Then the glacier, flowingslowly, slowly, (a river of ice), down the mountainsides, carries with itquantities of the underlying rocks, till it reaches a lower level wherethe ice melts and it becomes a river and carries those rocks and soil tothe sea. That way, the mountains are gradually worn down to sea level andthe whole cycle is ready to start over again."
"I see," said the ranch boy. "How long ago did you say the last glacierperiod 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 olderstill,--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 th
e age ofinvertebrates."
"Then has the climate been the same since the last ice age?"
"Not at all. The change is gradual, and geologists naturally concludethat some time we will have another ice age. We'll hope man has found abetter way to keep warm by that time. Our climate, with all its ups anddowns, 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,--thereis a plain story in the rings of growth in the Big Trees. Don't youremember those cut stumps, and the thousands of rings we counted, one fora year? And some were wider than others, because in those years there hadbeen more rainfall."
"Well, I never!" was all the old prospector could articulate, as allhands once more called it a day.
Next day Ace searched in concentric circles, but without finding a traceof Mexicans, or, indeed, of any one.
The next night found the little party encamped an eight hours' hike upthe side of another glacial-polished slope. The trail,--that is to saythe way they picked to go,--led first to the upper end of the canyon andover the rocks that bordered a green-white waterfall. The wind blowingthe spray in first one direction and then another, they got well wetted,though the clear California sunshine soon dried them again. But the mostcurious part of their climb past the falls was the rainbow that persistedin following them till they seemed to be at the hub of a huge semi-circleof opalescent tints.
Above, (perhaps eight hundred feet higher than their camp at the hotspring), they came to where the river slid green and transparent overgranite slopes just bordered by a fringe of pine. The water ran deep andswift, 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. Itwould have been inevitable, had he done so, that he should almostinstantly go hurtling over that eight hundred foot drop, whose watersroared till the boys had to shout at each other to be heard even a fewpaces away. But the water was deliciously icy, from its fountain-head inthe glacier above.
Wide slopes just steep enough to make climbing demand considerablesure-footedness widened this hanging valley on either side, with nogreenery save the picturesque bits that grew along the weathered cracks.Beyond this, the canyon walls continued to rise abruptly.
Trailing along beside the river till it had widened out and quieted itssong, they found one of the typically open, parklike, forests of silverfirs, jeweled with occasional emerald meadows fragrant with purple lupinand gay with crimson columbine and golden buttercups. Under foot werewhite violets and wee, monkey-faced mimulus, with occasionally a rarescarlet monkey-flower.
They passed one of the tributaries of the river, crossed it on a log, andpaused to drink deep of its sweet fluid. They found a huge fallen logwith a mushroom growth that Pedro pronounced edible and which they foundnot unlike cooked crab meat. They crossed other brooklets, paused at noonto eat a dry lunch, and to their amazement spied a doe and her half-grownfawn in the edge of the clearing watching them wistfully as they threwtheir scraps away. Pedro, approaching softly, and casting peace offeringsbefore him, was able to approach to within several paces of the mother,though her young hopeful was less trustful. Having probably never seen abiped before, both animals were consumed with curiosity and comparativelyunafraid. The old prospector suggested with a wink that a little "wildmutton" would not go amiss, the game laws being adaptable to the needs ofthose in extremity, but Norris reminded him that they were no longer inextremity, and the boys voted unanimously not to betray the trust of thiswild mother.
Now came a stiff climb around a rocky shoulder of the mountain, and alongthe cracks of the smooth rock slopes, as once more they traversed thepath of an ancient glacier. The opening here between the two folds ofmountains again disclosed their river, now smaller, but if anything evennoisier, by reason of its race over a series of cascades. They had leftthe silver fir belt and were in the region of dwarfed mountainpines. They estimated that they must be about 8,000 feet high.
Ace joined them with still no news of the fugitive fire setters. It wasmysterious.
It being Ted's and Pedro's turn to make camp that night, they droppedthe packs under a gnarled old juniper whose trunk had been split bylightning into seven splinters that curved out over a little hollow,making an ideal shelter, with its fubsy foliage, its storm-twisted limbsmaking natural seats, and a flat-topped rock a table. They had to carrypine 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 shortremaining distance to the top of the ridge, where they could gaze acrossat snow-capped peaks on which the alpine glow of approaching sunset hadspread a luscious rose.
While they were reclining in quiet enjoyment around the supper fire,--thelast flutter of the breeze fanning their faces,--a tawny, catlike formsuddenly came tip-toeing out from behind an edge of rock. It was ananimal possibly a hundred pounds in weight,--the California mountain lionis not a heavy animal,--and for all its wide, heavy looking feet it trodwith 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 itshunting grounds.)
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 allthe denizens of the wild, none are so shy of human kind, in regions wherethey are hunted,--none so thoroughly nocturnal. The three men fairly heldtheir breaths to watch.
First the animal leapt to a branch of a wind-beaten tree and crouchedalong its limb, lying so still that, had they not seen it move, theymight have glanced squarely in that direction and never noticed. Andthere it lay, sharpening its claws, cat fashion.
Suddenly it began narrowing its yellow eyes at what must have been amovement behind the rock whence it had emerged. Gathering its feet for aspring, it laid its ears back, and the great muscles rippling beneath itsskin, leapt at a second lion whose head could now be seen peering aroundthe rock. But did they fight? Not a bit of it! With hiss and archingback, and all claws out like the picture of a witch cat, the young cougarchallenged his playfellow, then retreated as the other would have givenhim 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 branchthan he turned and chased the other back. This play was repeated severaltimes, while the three men watched to the windward, silent andmotionless, and hence unseen by the near-sighted animals.
A small rock had been loosened by their scramble, and as it went rollingover the granite slope, the first cat pounced after it playfully, finallycatching 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 wouldstampede 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 theonlookers, the huge cat pounced on the stone as playfully as before. Acenow hurled a small rock so that it just escaped the tawny flank, butagain she pounced, as playful as a kitten, at each missile, and it wasnot till the three men rose and shouted that the lion took alarm andraced away.
"I declare!" exclaimed Pedro, when he heard about it, "I'd never havebelieved it!"
"I was out in Devil's Gulch one day," remarked Long Lester, "with acoupla dogs. It's all granite,--hard for the dogs to get a scent, butthere's lots of lions there, in among the rocks. Finally, though, theygot one into a little Digger Pine. I took a shot at her, and out shetumbled."
"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 acircus 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 Winchester22, 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 theboy had to circle around trying to find a chance to shoot. Then it jumpedup into a pine tree and lay with its head over the limb looking down athim. He shot at it, but I guess it didn't hit, for it ran again, and byjings, 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 aremostly cowards."
"But bears are not?"
"Bears? No, nothing cowardly about them. They're more lazy'n anythingelse."