Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863», страница 13

Over the waves we toiled slowly, pulling for life. The men stuffed their pea-jackets into the holes in her side, and bailed incessantly. We neared the Rhode Island; but now a new peril appeared. Right down upon our centre, borne by the might of rushing water, came the whale-boat sent to rescue others from the iron-clad. We barely floated; if she struck us with her bows full on us, we must go to the bottom. One sprang, and, as she neared, with outstretched arms, met and turned her course. She passed against us, and his hand, caught between the two, was crushed, and the arm, wrenched from its socket, fell a helpless weight at his side; but life remained. We were saved, and an arm was a small price to pay for life.

We reached the Rhode Island; ropes were flung over her side, and caught with a death-grip. Some lost their hold, were washed away, and again dragged in by the boat's crew. What chance had one whose right arm hung a dead weight, when strong men with their two hands went down before him? He caught at a rope, found it impossible to save himself alone, and then for the first time said,—"I am injured; can any one aid me?" Ensign Taylor, at the risk of his own life, brought the rope around his shoulder in such a way it could not slip, and he was drawn up in safety.

In the mean time the whale-boat, nearly our destruction, had reached the side of the Monitor, and now the captain said,—"It is madness to remain here longer; let each man save himself." For a moment he descended to the cabin for a coat, and his faithful servant followed to secure a jewel-box, containing the accumulated treasure of years. A sad, sorry sight it was. In the heavy air the lamps burned dimly, and the water, waist-deep, splashed sullenly against the wardroom's sides. One lingering look, and he left the Monitor's cabin forever.

Time was precious; he hastened to the deck, where, in the midst of a terrible sea, Lieutenant Greene nobly held his post. He seized the rope from the whale-boat, wound it about an iron stanchion, and then around his wrists, for days afterward swollen and useless from the strain. His black body-servant stood near him.

"Can you swim, William?" he asked.

"No," replied the man.

"Then keep by me, and I'll save you."

One by one, watching their time between the waves, the men filled in, the captain helping the poor black to a place, and at last, after all effort for others and none for themselves, Captain Bankhead and Lieutenant Greene took their places in the boat. Two or three still remained, clinging to the turret; the captain had begged them to come down, but, paralyzed with fear, they sat immovable, and the gallant Brown, promising to return for them, pushed off, and soon had his boat-load safe upon the Rhode Island's deck.

Here the heartiest and most tender reception met us. Our drenched clothing was replaced by warm and dry garments, and all on board vied with each other in acts of kindness. The only one who had received any injury, Surgeon Weeks, was carefully attended to, the dislocated arm set, and the crushed fingers amputated by the gentlest and most considerate of surgeons, Dr. Webber of the Rhode Island.

For an hour or more we watched from the deck of the Rhode Island the lonely light upon the Monitor's turret; a hundred times we thought it gone forever,—a hundred times it reappeared, till at last, about two o'clock, Wednesday morning, it sank, and we saw it no more.

We had looked, too, most anxiously, for the whale-boat which had last gone out, under the command of Master's-Mate Brown, but saw no signs of it. We knew it had reached the Monitor, but whether swamped by the waved, or drawn in as the Monitor went down, we could not tell. Captain Trenchard would not leave the spot, but sailed about, looking in vain for the missing boat, till late Wednesday afternoon, when it would have been given up as hopelessly lost, except for the captain's dependence on the coolness and skill of its tried officer. He thought it useless to search longer, but, hoping it might have been picked up by some coasting vessel, turned towards Fortress Monroe.

Two days' sail brought us to the fort, whence we had started on Monday with so many glowing hopes, and, alas! with some who were never to return. The same kindness met us here as on the Rhode Island; loans of money, clothing, and other necessaries, were offered us. It was almost well to have suffered, so much beautiful feeling did it bring out.

A day or two at the fort, waiting for official permission to return to our homes, and we were on our way,—the week seeming, as we looked back upon it, like some wild dream. One thing only appeared real: our little vessel was lost, and we, who, in months gone by, had learned to love her, felt a strange pang go through us as we remembered that never more might we tread her deck, or gather in her little cabin at evening.

We had left her behind us, one more treasure added to the priceless store which Ocean so jealously hides. The Cumberland and Congress went first; the little boat that avenged their loss has followed; in both noble souls have gone down. Their names are for history; and so long as we remain a people, so long will the work of the Monitor be remembered, and her story told to our children's children.

* * * * *

LYRICS OF THE STREET.
V

THE DARKENED HOUSE

 
  One year ago, this dreary night,
    This house, that, in my way,
  Checks the swift pulses of delight,
    Was cordial glad, and gay.
 
 
  The household angels tended there
    Their ivy-cinctured bower,
  And by the hardier plant grew fair
    A lovely lily-flower.
 
 
  The skies rained sunshine on its head,
    It throve in summer air:
  "How straight and sound!" the father said;
    The mother said, "How fair!"
 
 
  One little year is gathering up
    Its glories to depart;
  The skies have left one marble drop
    Within the lily's heart.
 
 
  For growth and bloom no more avails
    The Seasons' changing breath;
  With sudden constancy it feels
    The sculpture-touch of Death
 
 
  But from its breast let golden rays,
    Immortal, break and rise,
  Linking the sorrow-clouded days
    With dawning Paradise.
 

* * * * *

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD

First-born among the Continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.

In the present state of our knowledge, our conclusions respecting the beginning of the earth's history, the way in which it took form and shape as a distinct, separate planet, must, of course, be very vague and hypothetical. Yet the progress of science is so rapidly reconstructing the past that we may hope to solve even this problem; and to one who looks upon man's appearance upon the earth as the crowning work in a succession of creative acts, all of which have had relation to his coming in the end, it will not seem strange that he should at last be allowed to understand a history which was but the introduction to his own existence. It is my belief that not only the future, but the past also, is the inheritance of man, and that we shall yet conquer our lost birthright.

Even now our knowledge carries us far enough to warrant the assertion that there was a time when our earth was in a state of igneous fusion, when no ocean bathed it and no atmosphere surrounded it, when no wind blew over it and no rain fell upon it, but an intense heat held all its materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very bones and sinews of our mother earth—her granites, her porphyries, her basalts, her syenites—were melted into a liquid mass. As I am writing for the unscientific reader, who may not be familiar with the facts through which these inferences have been reached, I will answer here a question which, were we talking together, he might naturally ask in a somewhat skeptical tone. How do you know that this state of things ever existed, and, supposing that the solid materials of which our earth consists were ever in a liquid condition, what right have you to infer that this condition was caused by the action of heat upon them? I answer, Because it is acting upon them still; because the earth we tread is but a thin crust floating on a liquid sea of fire; because the agencies that were at work then are at work now, and the present is the logical sequence of the past. From artesian wells, from mines, from geysers, from hot springs, a mass of facts has been collected proving incontestably the heated condition of all materials at a certain depth below the earth's surface; and if we need more positive evidence, we have it in the fiery eruptions that even now bear fearful testimony to the molten ocean seething within the globe and forcing its way out from time to time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive and perfectly connected steps back to a time when what is now only an occasional and rare phenomenon was the normal condition of our earth; when those internal fires were inclosed in an envelope so thin that it opposed but little resistance to their frequent outbreak, and they constantly forced themselves through this crust, pouring out melted materials that subsequently cooled and consolidated on its surface. So constant were these eruptions, and so slight was the resistance they encountered, that some portions of the earlier rock-deposits are perforated with numerous chimneys, narrow tunnels as it were, bored by the liquid masses that poured out through them and greatly modified their first condition.

The question at once suggests itself, How was even this thin crust formed? what should cause any solid envelope, however slight and filmy when compared to the whole bulk of the globe, to form upon the surface of such a molten mass? At this point of the investigation the geologist must appeal to the astronomer; for in this vague and nebulous border-land, where the very rocks lose their outlines and flow into each other, where matter exists only in its essential elements, not yet specialized into definite forms and substances,—there the two sciences meet. Astronomy shows us our planet thrown off from the central mass of which it once formed a part, to move henceforth in an independent orbit of its own. That orbit, it tells us, passed through celestial spaces cold enough to chill this heated globe, and of course to consolidate it externally. We know, from the action of similar causes on a smaller scale and on comparatively insignificant objects immediately about us, what must have been the effect of this cooling process upon the heated mass of the globe. All substances when heated occupy more space than they do when cold. Water, which expands when freezing, is the only exception to this rule. The first effect of cooling the surface of our planet must have been to solidify it, and thus to form a film or crust over it. That crust would shrink as the cooling process went on; in consequence of the shrinking, wrinkles and folds would arise upon it, and here and there, where the tension was too great, cracks and fissures would be produced. In proportion as the surface cooled, the masses within would be affected by the change of temperature outside of them, and would consolidate internally also, the crust gradually thickening by this process.

But there was another element without the globe, equally powerful in building it up. Fire and water wrought together in this work, if not always harmoniously, at least with equal force and persistency. I have said that there was a time when no atmosphere surrounded the earth; but one of the first results of the cooling of its crust must have been the formation of an atmosphere, with all the phenomena connected with it,—the rising of vapors, their condensation into clouds, the falling of rains, the gathering of waters upon its surface. Water is a very active agent of destruction, but it works over again the materials it pulls down or wears away, and builds them up anew in other forms. As soon as an ocean washed over the consolidated crust of the globe, it would begin to abrade the surfaces upon which it moved, gradually loosening and detaching materials, to deposit them again as sand or mud or pebbles at its bottom in successive layers, one above another. Thus, in analyzing the crust of the globe, we find at once two kinds of rocks, the respective work of fire and water: the first poured out from the furnaces within, and cooling, as one may see any mass of metal cool that is poured out from a smelting-furnace today, in solid crystalline masses, without any division into separate layers or leaves; and the latter in successive beds, one over another, the heavier materials below, the lighter above, or sometimes in alternate layers, as special causes may have determined successive deposits of lighter or heavier materials at some given spot.

There were many well-fought battles between geologists before it was understood that these two elements had been equally active in building up the crust of the earth. The ground was hotly contested by the disciples of the two geological schools, one of which held that the solid envelope of the earth was exclusively due to the influence of fire, while the other insisted that it had been accumulated wholly under the agency of water. This difference of opinion grew up very naturally; for the great leaders of the two schools lived in different localities, and pursued their investigations over regions where the geological phenomena were of an entirely opposite character,—the one exhibiting the effect of volcanic eruptions, the other that of stratified deposits. It was the old story of the two knights on opposite sides of the shield, one swearing that it was made of gold, the other that it was made of silver, and almost killing each other before they discovered that it was made of both. So prone are men to hug their theories and shut their eyes to any antagonistic facts, that it is related of Werner, the great leader of the Aqueons school, that he was actually on his way to see a geological locality of especial interest, but, being told that it confirmed the views of his opponents, he turned round and went home again, refusing to see what might force him to change his opinions. If the rocks did not confirm his theory, so much the worse for the rocks,—he would none of them. At last it was found that the two great chemists, fire and water, had worked together in the vast laboratory of the globe, and since then scientific men have decided to work together also; and if they still have a passage at arms occasionally over some doubtful point, yet the results of their investigations are ever drawing them nearer to each other,—since men who study truth, when they reach their goal, must always meet at last on common ground.

The rocks formed under the influence of heat are called, in geological language, the Igneous, or, as some naturalists have named them, the Plutonic rocks, alluding to their fiery origin, while the others have been called Aqueous or Neptunic rocks, in reference to their origin under the agency of water. A simpler term, however, quite as distinctive, and more descriptive of their structure, is that of the stratified and unstratified or massive rocks. We shall see hereafter how the relative position of these two kinds of rocks and their action upon each other enables us to determine the chronology of the earth, to compare the age of her mountains, and if we have no standard by which to estimate the positive duration of her continents, to say at least which was the first-born among them, and how their characteristic features have been successively worked out. I am aware that many of these inferences, drawn from what is called "the geological record," must seem to be the work of the imagination. In a certain sense this is true,—for imagination, chastened by correct observation, is our best guide in the study of Nature. We are too apt to associate the exercise of this faculty with works of fiction, while it is in fact the keenest detective of truth.

Beside the stratified and unstratified rocks, there is still a third set, produced by the contact of these two, and called, in consequence of the changes thus brought about, the Metamorphic rocks. The effect of heat upon clay is to bake it into slate; limestone under the influence of heat becomes quick-lime, or if subjected afterwards to the action of water, it is changed to mortar; sand under the same agency is changed to a coarse kind of glass. Suppose, then, that a volcanic eruption takes place in a region of the earth's surface where successive layers of limestone, of clay, and of sandstone have been previously deposited by the action of water. If such an eruption has force enough to break through these beds, the hot, melted masses will pour out through the rent, flow over its edges, and fill all the lesser cracks and fissures produced by such a disturbance. What will be the effect upon the stratified rocks? Wherever these liquid masses, melted by a heat more intense than can be produced by any artificial means, have flowed over them or cooled in immediate contact with them, the clays will be changed to slate, the limestone will have assumed a character more like marble, while the sandstones will be vitrified. This is exactly what has been found to be the case, wherever the stratified rocks have been penetrated by the melted masses from beneath. They have been themselves partially melted by the contact, and when they have cooled again, their stratification, though still perceptible, has been partly obliterated, and their substance changed. Such effects may often be traced in dikes, which are only the cracks in rocks filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls that inclose such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that it has cooled more quickly on the outside, where it meets the walls, than at the centre.

The first two great classes of rocks, the unstratified and stratified rocks, represent different epochs in the world's physical history: the former mark its revolutions, while the latter chronicle its periods of rest. All mountains and mountain-chains have been upheaved by great convulsions of the globe, which rent asunder the surface of the earth, destroyed the animals and plants living upon it at the time, and were then succeeded by long intervals of repose, when all things returned to their accustomed order, ocean and river deposited fresh beds in uninterrupted succession, the accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them coherence and completeness again. But within the last half-century this work has been accomplished in many parts of the world with an amazing degree of accuracy, considering the disconnected character of the phenomena to be studied; and I think I shall be able to convince my readers that the modern results of geological investigation are perfectly sound logical inferences from well-established facts. In this, as in so many other things, we are but "children of a larger growth." The world is the geologist's great puzzle-box; he stands before it like the child to whom the separate pieces of his puzzle remain a mystery till he detects their relation and sees where they fit, and then his fragments grow at once into a connected picture beneath his hand.

It is a curious fact in the history of progress, that, by a kind of intuitive insight, the earlier observers seem to have had a wider, more comprehensive recognition of natural phenomena as a whole than their successors, who far excel them in their knowledge of special points, but often lose their grasp of broader relations in the more minute investigation of details. When geologists first turned their attention to the physical history of the earth, they saw at once certain great features which they took to be the skeleton and basis of the whole structure. They saw the great masses of granite forming the mountains and mountain-chains, with the stratified rocks resting against their slopes; and they assumed that granite was the first primary agent, and that all stratified rocks must be of a later formation. Although this involved a partial error, as we shall see hereafter, when we trace the upheavals of granite even into comparatively modern periods, yet it held a great geological truth also; for, though granite formations are by no means limited to those early periods, they are nevertheless very characteristic of them, and are indeed the great foundation-stones on which the physical history of the globe is built.

Starting from this landmark, the earlier geologists divided the world's history into three periods. As the historian recognizes as distinct phases in the growth of the human race Ancient History, the Middle Ages, and Modern History, so they distinguished between what they called the Primary period, when, as they believed, no life stirred on the surface of the earth, the Secondary or middle period, when animals and plants were introduced and the land began to assume continental proportions, and the Tertiary period, or comparatively modern geological times, when the aspect of the earth as well as its inhabitants was approaching more nearly to the present condition of things. But as their investigations proceeded, they found that every one of these great ages of the world's history was divided into numerous lesser epochs, each of which had been characterized by a peculiar set of animals and plants, and had been closed by some great physical convulsion, that disturbed and displaced the materials accumulated during such a period of rest. The further study of these subordinate periods showed that what had been called Primary formations, the volcanic or Plutonic rocks, formerly believed to be confined to the first geological ages, belonged to all the periods, successive eruptions having taken place at all times, pouring up through the accumulated deposits, penetrating and injecting their cracks, fissures, and inequalities, as well as throwing out large masses on the surface. Up to our own day there has never been a period when such eruptions have not taken place, though they have been constantly diminishing in frequency and extent. In consequence of this discovery, that rocks of igneous character were by no means exclusively characteristic of the earliest times, they are now classified together upon very different grounds from those on which geologists first united them; though, as the name Primary was long retained, we still find it applied to them, even in geological works of quite recent date. This defect of nomenclature is to be regretted as likely to mislead the student, because it seems to refer to time; whereas it no longer signifies the age of the rocks, but simply their character. The name Plutonic or Massive rocks is, however, now almost universally substituted for that of Primary.

There is still a wide field of investigation to be explored by the chemist and the geologist together, in the mineralogical character of the Plutonic rocks, which differs greatly in the different periods. The earlier eruptions seem to have been chiefly granitic, though this must not be understood in too wide a sense, since there are granite formations even as late as the Tertiary period; those of the middle periods were mostly porphyries and basalts; while in the more recent ones, lavas predominate. We have as yet no clue to the laws by which this distribution of volcanic elements in the formation of the earth is regulated; but there is found to be a difference in the crystals of the Plutonic rocks belonging to different ages, which, when fully understood, enables us to determine the age of any Plutonic rock by its mode of crystallization; so that the mineralogist will as readily tell you by its crystals whether a bit of stone of igneous origin belongs to this or that period of the world's history, as the palaeontologist will tell you by its fossils whether a piece of rock of aqueous origin belongs to the Silurian or Devonian or Carboniferous deposits. Although subsequent investigations have multiplied so extensively not only the number of geological periods, but also the successive creations that have characterized them, yet the first general division into three great eras was nevertheless founded upon a broad and true generalization. In the first stratified rocks in which any organic remains are found, the highest animals are fishes, and the highest plants are cryptogams; in the middle periods reptiles come in, accompanied by fern and moss forests; in later times quadrupeds are introduced, with a dicotyledonous vegetation. So closely does the march of animal and vegetable life keep pace with the material progress of the world, that we may well consider these three divisions, included under the first general classification of its physical history, as the three Ages of Nature; the more important epochs which subdivide them may be compared to so many great dynasties, while the lesser periods are the separate reigns contained therein. Of such epochs there are ten, well known to geologists; of the lesser periods about sixty are already distinguished, while many more loom up from the dim regions of the past, just discerned by the eye of science, though their history is not yet unravelled.

Before proceeding farther, I will enumerate the geological epochs in their succession, confining myself, however, to such as are perfectly well established, without alluding to those of which the limits are less definitely determined, and which are still subject to doubts and discussions among geologists. As I do not propose to make here any treatise of Geology, but simply to place before my readers some pictures of the old world, with the animals and plants that inhabited it at various times, I shall avoid, as far as possible, all debatable ground, and confine myself to those parts of my subject which are best known, and can therefore be more clearly presented.

First, we have the Azoic period, devoid of life, as its name signifies,—namely, the earliest stratified deposits upon the heated film forming the first solid surface of the earth, in which no trace of living thing has ever been found. Next comes the Silurian period, when the crust of the earth had thickened and cooled sufficiently to render the existence of animals and plants upon it possible, and when the atmospheric conditions necessary to their maintenance were already established. Many of the names given to these periods are by no means significant of their character, but are merely the result of accident: as, for instance, that of Silurian, given by Sir Roderick Murchison to this set of beds, because he first studied them in that part of Wales occupied by the ancient tribe of the Silures. The next period, the Devonian, was for a similar reason named after the county of Devonshire, in England, where it was first investigated. Upon this follows the Carboniferous period, with the immense deposits of coal from which it derives its name. Then comes the Permian period, named, again, from local circumstances, the first investigation of its deposits having taken place in the province of Permia, in Russia. Next in succession we have the Triassic period, so called from the trio of rocks, the red sandstone, Muschel Kalk, (shell-limestone.) and Keuper, (clay,) most frequently combined in its formations; the Jurassic, so amply illustrated in the chain of the Jura, where geologists first found the clue to its history; and the Cretaceous period, to which the chalk cliffs of England and all the extensive chalk deposits belong. Upon these follow the so-called Tertiary formations, divided into three periods, all of which have received most characteristic names. In this epoch of the world's history we see the first approach to a condition of things resembling that now prevailing, and Sir Charles Lyell has most fitly named its three divisions, the "Eocene," or the dawn, the "Miocene," meaning the continuance and increase of that light, and lastly, the "Pliocene," signifying its fulness and completion. Above these deposits comes what has been called in science the present period,—the modern times of the geologist,—that period to which man himself belongs, and since the beginning of which, though its duration be counted by hundreds of thousands of years, there has been no alteration in the general configuration of the earth, consequently no important modification of its climatic conditions, and no change in the animals and plants inhabiting it.

I have spoken of the first of these periods, the Azoic, as having been absolutely devoid of life, and I believe this statement to be strictly true; but I ought to add that there is a difference of opinion among geologists upon this point, many believing that the first surface of our globe may have been inhabited by living beings, but that all traces of their existence have been obliterated by the eruptions of melted materials, which not only altered the character of those earliest stratified rocks, but destroyed all the organic remains contained in them. It will be my object to show in this series of papers, not only that the absence of the climatic and atmospheric conditions essential to organic life as we understand it, must have rendered the previous existence of any living beings impossible, but also that the completeness of the Animal Kingdom in those deposits where we first find organic remains, its intelligible and coherent connection with the successive creations of all geological times and with the animals now living, affords the strongest internal evidence that we have indeed found in the lower Silurian formations, immediately following the Azoic, the beginning of life upon earth. When a story seems to us complete and consistent from the beginning to the end, we shall not seek for a first chapter, even though the copy in which we have read it be so torn and defaced as to suggest the idea that some portion of it may have been lost. The unity of the work, as a whole, is an incontestable proof that we possess it in its original integrity. The validity of this argument will be recognized, perhaps, only by those naturalists to whom the Animal Kingdom has begun to appear as a connected whole. For those who do not see order in Nature it can have no value.