THE HERMIT THRUSH
NELLY HART WOODWORTH
Does the thrush drink wild honey? a nectar distilled
From the flowers of the field, that his message is filled
With such sweetness? O'er the twilight 'tis ringing —
June's divinest refrain, 'tis a soul that is singing,
Oh, so trustfully sweet, rapture blended with pain,
Rings the silver bell softly, I hear it again,
And the wood is enchanted, uncertain it seems,
As some moment of waking, the dreams, oh the dreams!
Does he bathe evermore in the miracle springs,
That his wings and his heart are in rhythm when he sings?
Tears moisten the harpstrings, they quiver with pain,
Then the triumph, the peace but the finest souls gain —
Earth's losses, its tears through the notes sweep along,
The longings of earth find a voice in the song,
Till outechoed by angels they find a release,
To be silenced henceforth, merged in infinite peace.
Will the spirit bird sing through the ages to come,
Or the soul take its flight and, still singing, go home,
And the world weep aghast when, the music withdrawn,
The lark still a wing tells the rapture of dawn?
THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO
[From Major J. W. Powell's Report of the Exploration of the Cañons of the Colorado – 1869.]
"FOR two years previous to the exploration, I had been making some geological studies among the heads of the cañons leading to the Colorado, and a desire to explore the Grand Cañon itself grew upon me. Early in the spring of 1869 a small party was organized for this purpose. Boats were built in Chicago, and transported by rail to the point where the Union Pacific Railroad crosses the Green River. With these we were to descend the Green into the Colorado, and the Colorado down to the foot of the Grand Cañon."
From the record of May 24, 1869, we quote the following:
"The good people of Green River City turn out to see us start – a party of ten men. We raise our little flag, push the boats from shore, and the swift current carries us down."
"Our boats are four in number. Three are built of oak, staunch and firm."
"We take with us rations deemed sufficient to last ten months, abundant supplies of clothing, also a large quantity of ammunition and two or three dozen traps."
On the 26th they go into camp at the foot of the Uintah Mountains, at the head of Flaming Gorge Cañon, the first to be explored.
We quote again: "The river is running to the south; the mountains have an easterly and westerly trend directly athwart its course, yet it glides on in a quiet way as if it thought a mountain range no formidable obstruction to its course. It enters the range by a flaring, brilliant-red gorge, that may be seen from the north a score of miles away."
"You must not think of a mountain range as a line of peaks standing on a plain, but as a broad platform many miles wide, from which mountains have been carved by the waters. You must conceive, too, that this plateau is cut by gulches and cañons in many directions, and that beautiful valleys are scattered about at different altitudes. The first series of cañons we are about to explore constitute a river channel through such a range of mountains. The cañon is cut nearly half-way through the range, then turns to the east, and is cut along the central line, or axis, gradually crossing it to the south. Keeping this direction for more than fifty miles, it then turns abruptly to a southwest course, and goes diagonally through the southern slope of the range."
"May 30. – This morning we are ready to enter the mysterious cañon, and start with some anxiety. The old mountaineers tell us it cannot be run; the Indians say, 'Water heap catch 'em;' but all are eager for the trial, and off we go."
"Entering Flaming Gorge, we quickly run through it on a swift current, and emerge into a little park. Half a mile below, the river wheels sharply to the left, and we turn into another cañon cut into the mountain. We enter the narrow passage. On either side the walls rapidly increase in altitude. On the left are overhanging ledges and cliffs five hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred feet high.
"On the right the rocks are broken and ragged, and the water fills the channel from cliff to cliff. Now the river turns abruptly around a point to the right, and the waters plunge swiftly down among great rocks; and here we have our first experience with cañon rapids. I stand up on the deck of my boat to seek a way among the wave-beaten rocks. All untried as we are with such waters, the moments are filled with intense anxiety. Soon our boats reach the swift current; a stroke or two, now on this side, now on that, and we thread the narrow passage with exhilarating velocity, mounting the high waves, whose foaming crests dash over us, and plunging into the troughs, until we reach the quiet water below; and then comes a feeling of great relief. Our first rapid run. Another mile and we come into the valley again.
"Let me explain this cañon. Where the river turns to the left above, it takes a course directly into the mountain, penetrating to its very heart, then wheels back upon itself, and runs into the valley from which it started, only half a mile below the point at which it entered; so the cañon is in the form of an elongated U, with the apex in the center of the mountain. We name it Horseshoe Cañon.
"Last spring, I had a conversation with an old Indian named Pa-ri-ats, who told me about one of his tribe attempting to run this cañon. 'The rocks,' he said, holding his hands above his head, his arms vertical, looking between them to the heavens – 'the rocks h-e-a-p, h-e-a-p high; the water go h-oo-woogh, h-oo-woogh! water-pony (boat) h-e-a-p buck; water catch 'em; no see 'em Injun any more! no see 'em squaw any more! no see 'em pappoose any more!'
"June 7. – On a rock we find a pool of clear, cold water, caught from yesterday evening's shower. After a good drink we walk to the brink of the cañon, and look down to the water below. I can do this now, but it has taken several years of mountain climbing to cool my nerves, so that I can sit, with my feet over the edge, and calmly look down a precipice two thousand feet. And yet I cannot look on and see another do the same. I must either bid him come away or turn my head.
"This evening, as I write, the sun is going down, and the shadows are settling in the cañon. The vermilion gleams and roseate hues, blending with the green and gray tints, are slowly changing to somber brown above, and black shadows are creeping over them below; and now it is a dark portal to a region of gloom – the gateway through which we are to enter on our voyage of exploration to-morrow."
The 9th of June brought disaster to a boat containing three of the men, who were carried down the rapids, but all were rescued.
They pass the mouths of the Uintah and the White Rivers, with constantly changing scenes, making a tortuous journey through many dangerous rapids, much of the time between high, perpendicular walls.
On the 15th they pass around a great bend, five miles in length, and come back to a point one-quarter of a mile from where they started. Then they sweep around another great bend to the left, making a circuit of nine miles, and come back to one-third of a mile from where the bend started. The figure 8 properly describes the fourteen miles' journey. July 17 they arrive at the junction of the Grand and Green rivers, having traversed about eight hundred and four miles.
On the morning of July 19, the Major and a companion start to climb the left wall below the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers. They reach the summit of the rocks. The view is thus described: "And what a world of grandeur is spread before us! Below, us is the cañon, through which the Colorado runs. We can trace its course for miles, as at points we catch glimpses of the river. From the northwest comes the Green, in a narrow, winding gorge. From the northeast comes the Grand, through a cañon that seems bottomless, from where we stand. Away to the west are lines of cliff and ledges of rock – not such ledges as you may have seen, where the quarry-man splits his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mountains, that, rolled on the plain below, would stand a lofty range; and not such cliffs as you may have seen, where the swallow builds his nest, but cliffs where the soaring eagle is lost to view ere he reaches the summit. Between us and the distant cliffs are the strangely carved and pinnacled rocks of the Toom pin wu-near Tu-weap. On the summit of the opposite wall of the cañon are rock forms that we do not understand. Away to the east a group of eruptive mountains are seen – the Sierra La Sal. Their slopes are covered with pines, and deep gulches are flanked with great crags, and snow fields are seen near the summits. So the mountains are in uniform – green, gray, and silver. Wherever we look there is but a wilderness of rocks; deep gorges, where the rivers are lost below cliffs and towers and pinnacles; and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds."
"Traveling as fast as I can run, I soon reach the foot of the stream, for the rain did not reach the lower end of the cañon, and the water is running down a bed of dry sand; and, although it comes in waves several feet high and fifteen or twenty feet in width, the sands soak it up, and it is lost. But wave follows wave, and rolls along, and is swallowed up; and still the floods come on from above. I find that I can travel faster than the stream; so I hasten to camp and tell the men there is a river coming down the cañon."
The exploring party next passes through Narrow Cañon, nine and a half miles long, Glen Cañon, one hundred and forty-nine miles in length; and Marble Cañon, sixty-five and one-half miles long. The depth of the last named is three thousand five hundred feet at the lower end. They emerge from Marble Cañon August 10, and find themselves separated from the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the "Great Unknown," by the narrow valley of the Little Colorado.
The Grand Cañon is now entered and safely passed, a distance of two hundred and seventeen and one-half miles, terminating with the Grand Wash.
We are compelled to terminate this article abruptly for lack of space. It is proper to say that this journey has scarcely ever been equaled for daring and hardihood. Each time they descended a rapids, they were liable to come to a fall too great to shoot over, with walls so steep they could not be climbed, and rapids so swift as to prevent return.
The Grand Cañon, as one of the wonders of the world, is visited every summer by hundreds of tourists.
OPTIMUS
BY REV. CHARLES COKE WOODS
A glow-worm in the grass at night shed forth
Its feeble light, but darkness deepened fast;
The wee thing did its uttermost to banish night,
And that, forsooth, was truest toil, indeed,
Success in God's clear sight, though in man's view,
Obscured by things of sense, 'twas but defeat.
A fire-fly flashed its fitful light, while soft
The evening shadows fell, and clouds hid stars,
And veiled in black the gentle moon's bright face;
As if the night, like one afraid, would haste
To flee when lightning flashed from those small wings,
With courage high the insect gave its light,
Though all alone with none to proffer aid —
Nor sun, nor moon, nor star a single beam.
At last the dawn shot crimson up the sky;
The tiny toilers crawled away to rest,
And sweet, methinks, was their well-earned repose,
For each its place had filled, its task had done
In keeping with the great Creator's thought.
HOW THE EARTH WAS FORMED
T. C. CHAMBERLIN,
Head Professor of Geology, University of Chicago
JUST how the earth was formed at the outset is not certainly known. The most common view of men of science is that it was once in the form of a fiery gas. It is supposed that all the planets and satellites that now revolve around the sun were once a part of a common mass of gas in the form of a vast sphere which was very large and very hot. This gradually lost its heat and shrank as most bodies do when they cool. If it was not already whirling round at the outset it must have come to do so as it shrank, and as more and more of its heat was lost it rotated more and more rapidly. At length it came to whirl so fast that the outer part, which was moving fastest, could no longer be held down to the surface, and so it separated in the form of a ring around the equator of the great sphere.
The main mass kept on cooling and shrinking and whirling faster and faster and hence other rings separated. Each of these rings also kept on cooling and shrinking and is supposed to have parted at some point and gradually gathered together into a globe, but still in the form of fiery gas, even though it had lost much of its heat. But at last this globe of gas cooled so much that the main part of it became liquid. This was that part which afterwards became the solid part of the earth. It then had the form of lava. It was still too hot for the water to condense and hence it remained in the form of steam or vapor, forming a vast envelope all about the earth. There are supposed to have been many other vapors in the air at that stage, and it must have been very dense. But at length the globe of lava cooled so that the outer part crusted over, and this crust grew thicker and thicker as time went on. After a while it became cool enough to permit the water to condense on the surface and so the ocean began to be formed. The water grew in depth until nearly all the steam was condensed and many of the other vapors that had been in the air while it was so hot were condensed also. And this left the gases which cannot easily be condensed behind, and they formed the air much as it is to-day. And that is the way the atmosphere is commonly supposed to have come about.
But all this is theory. It cannot now be proved. But there are several great facts that fit in with it and make it seem as though it might be true. As wells and mines are sunk deep in the ground it is found that the earth grows warmer and warmer. Volcanoes pour out molten rock and this shows that it is very hot somewhere beneath them. Many of the mountains on the earth are really wrinkles in its crust, and it has been thought that these are caused by the cooling and shrinking of the globe. It is because these and other things fit in so well with the theory that most scientific men have come to accept it as probably true. It is known as the Nebular theory. But there are other ways of explaining all these things, and perhaps it may be proven that there are better ways.
Some scientists have supposed that the earth was formed by small masses or particles of matter gathered in from the heavens. On a clear night shooting stars may be seen quite often. These are little bits of stone or metallic matter shooting through space at high rates of speed, which strike the atmosphere and become hot. The earth also is moving at great speed – nearly nineteen miles per second. It is not strange then that when the little stranger collides with the earth it should "make the fire fly." Usually the outside is melted and carried away so fast that the little mass is entirely used up in a few seconds. It merely makes a little streak of light. But sometimes the mass is large enough to stand the waste and still reach the ground. In such cases it is found to be mainly stony matter and iron. No substance has ever been found in any of them which is not found in the earth. Only a few of these shooting stars or meteorites will be seen in looking at any one point in the heavens. But the earth is very large and there are many such points, and when these are taken all together it is found that the number of these little bodies which fall in a day is very large. It is estimated at twenty millions. But still they are small and do not add very much to the size of the earth. But as they are being constantly swept up from space and are growing fewer and fewer, and as this has been going on for a very long time, it is reasonable to suppose they may once have been much more abundant and that the earth then grew much faster by reason of them. It is thought by some that the earth may have grown up entirely by gathering them in, the idea being that it was itself once only a little meteorite that succeeded in gathering the others in. It is commonly supposed, however, by those who hold to this view, that the earth was formed from some special cluster of these meteorites that gathered together. It has been thought that perhaps the gas of the rings mentioned before may have cooled down into little solid particles before they were collected together and that they built up the earth. This brings the two theories together in a measure. The planet Saturn, you know, has rings of this kind and they are made up of small solid bodies, and not of gas or liquid, as was once supposed.
If the earth was built up this way we must account for the heat in the interior, but this would come naturally enough. As the little bodies fell upon the surface they would strike hot. But unless they came fast they would cool off before others struck the same spot and the earth would not get very hot. But as they gradually built up the surface the matter below would be pressed together harder and harder because of the growing weight upon it, and this pressing together would make it hot. It is figured out that it would become very, very hot indeed, though this might not seem so at first thought, and that the volcanoes and mountains may all be explained in this way quite as well, and perhaps better, than in the other way. This is called the Accretion theory.
It may be that neither of these theories is right, and we will do well to hold them only as possible ways in which the earth may have been formed at the beginning. But, at any rate, the earth has been shaped over on the surface. In a certain sense its outer part has been remade. And this concerns us more than the question of its far-off origin, because our soils, ores, marbles, and precious stones, as well as our lands and seas, are all due to this reshaping. In the deepest parts of the earth which we can get at for study, we find that it is made up of rocks of the granite class; not always granite proper, but rocks like it. What is below this in the great heart of the earth we do not know, except that it is very dense and heavy. Rocks of the granite class are formed under great heat and pressure, or by the cooling of molten rock material. They may be called the basement rock or great floor, on which all the other rocks near the surface are laid. They underlie all the surface, but at different depths. In some places they have been crowded up by the pressure that came from the shrinking of the earth, of which we spoke before, and so have come to be actually at the surface, except that soil, clay, sand, or gravel may cover them. Under about one-fifth of the land these rocks lie just below the clays, gravels, sands, and soils that occupy the immediate surface. Sometimes they come out to the actual surface, and may be seen in ledges or bluffs. But usually the soils, sands, gravels, and clays cover them up more or less deeply, but even then they are often struck in sinking wells.
Under the other four-fifths of the land they lie much deeper, often several thousands of feet, and there are spread over them sandstones, shales, and limestones. These are the rocks we usually see in the quarries and cliffs of the interior states. The materials to form these were taken from the older rocks of the granite class by a process which is now going on – so we know how it is done. This is the way in which it takes place: The air and the rains and the water in the ground act upon the rocks, and cause them to soften and fall to pieces, forming soils, or sand, or little rock fragments. This material is gradually washed away by rains and floods. This does not usually quite keep pace with the softening; so the surface is covered with soil and other loose material. But it is little by little washed away, and carried down to sea, where it settles on the bottom, and forms layers of mud or of sand. The mud afterwards hardens, and becomes a kind of rock known as shale. The sands become cemented by lime or iron, or some other substance, and form a sandstone. The lime in the rocks that softened and decayed is chiefly dissolved out by the carbonic acid in the waters of the ground, and is carried away to the sea in solution. This lime is then taken up by sea animals to form their shells, skeletons, teeth, and other hard parts. Afterwards the animals die, and these hard, limy parts usually crumble more or less and form a bed of lime material, and later this hardens into limestone.
Some of the lime is also separated from the waters by evaporation or by other changes. You have noticed that on the inside of a tea kettle there gathers a stony crust. This is made of the same material as limestone – indeed, it is limestone. It was dissolved in the water put in the tea kettle, but as the water was heated and partly changed into steam it could no longer hold all the lime, and some or all of it had to be deposited. So, in a similar way, sea-water is dried up by the sun and air, and deposits lime, and so beds of limestone are formed. You will readily see from what has been said why shales, sandstones, and limestones take the form of beds lying upon each other.