The next hour after crossing the stream I spent in climbing and descending a low wooded ridge with smooth surface and gentle slopes. Then there was one more river, the Little Cimarron, to cross. An Engelmann spruce, with scaly, flaky bark, that had stood perfectly perpendicular for a century or two but had recently been hurled to the horizontal, provided a long, vibrating bridge for me to cross on. Once across, I started to climb the most unstable mountain that I had ever trodden.
Mt. Coxcomb, up which I climbed, is not one of the "eternal hills" but a crumbling, dissolving, tumbling, transient mountain. Every hard rain dissolves, erodes, and uncovers the sides of this mountain as if it were composed of sugar, paste, and stones. It is made up of a confused mingling of parts and masses of soluble and flinty materials. Here change and erosion run riot after every rain. There is a great falling to pieces; gravity, the insatiable, is temporarily satisfied, and the gulches feast on earthy materials, while the river-channel is glutted with crushed cliffs, acres of earth, and the débris of ruined forests. Here and there these are flung together in fierce confusion.
On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes of scenes,—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the earth is ever changing like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff is born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine and the blue. The Storm King comes, the thunders echo among crags and cañons, the broken clouds clear away, and the beautiful bow bends above a ruined cliff.
Here and there strange, immature monsters are struggling to rise,—to free themselves from the earth. Occasionally a crag is brought forth full grown during one operation of gravity, erosion, and storm, and left upon a foundation that would raise corn but never sustain cliff or crag. Scattered monoliths at times indulge in a contest of leaning the farthest from the perpendicular without falling. The potato-patch foundations of these in time give way, then gravity drags them head foremost, or in broken installments, down the slope.
Among the forested slopes that I traversed there were rock-slides, earthy glaciers, and leafless gulches with crumbling walls. Some of these gulches extended from bottom to top of the mountain, while others were digging their way. An occasional one had a temporary ending against the bottom of a kingly cliff, whose short reign was about to end as its igneous throne was disorganized and decomposed. The storm and darkness continued as I climbed the mountain of short-lived scenes,—a mountain so eagerly moving from its place in the sky to a bed in the sea. The saturation had softened and lubricated the surface; these sedimentary slopes had been made restless by the rain.
I endeavored to follow up one of the ridges, but it was narrow and all the pulpy places very slippery. Fearing to tumble off into the dark unknown, I climbed down into a gully and up this made my way toward the top. All my mountain experience told me to stay on the ridge and not travel in darkness the way in which gravity flings all his spoils.
The clouds were low, and I climbed well up into them. The temperature was cooler, and snow was whitening the earth. When I was well up to the silver lining of the clouds, a gust of wind momentarily rent them, and I stood amid snow-covered statuary,—leaning monoliths and shattered minarets all weird and enchanting in the moonlight. A few seconds later I was in darkness and snowstorm again.
The gulch steepened and apparently grew shallower. Occasionally a mass of mud or a few small stones rolled from the sides of the gulch to my feet and told that saturation was at work dissolving and loosening anchorages and foundations. It was time to get out of the gulch. While I was making haste to do so, there came a sudden tremor instantly followed by an awful crash and roar. Then r-r-rip! z-zi-ip! s-w-w-r-r-ip! A bombardment of flying, bounding, plunging rocks from an overturned cliff above was raking my gulch. Nothing could be seen, but several slaps in the face from dashes of snow which these rock missiles disturbed and displaced was expressively comprehensive.
As this brief bombardment ceased, the ominous sounds from above echoing among the cliffs shouted warning of an advancing landslide. This gave a little zest to my efforts to get out of the gulch; too much perhaps, for my scramble ended in a slip and a tumble back to the bottom. In the second attempt a long, uncovered tree-root reached down to me in the darkness, and with the aid of this I climbed out of the way of the avalanche. None too soon, however. With quarreling and subdued grinding sounds the rushing flood of landslide material went past, followed by an offensive smell.
While I paused listening to the monster groan and grind his way downward, the cliffs fired a few more rock missiles in my direction. One struck a crag beside me. The explosive contact gave forth a blast of sputtering sparks and an offensive, rotten-egg smell. A flying fragment of this shattered missile struck my left instep, breaking one of the small bones.
Fortunately my foot was resting in the mud when struck. When consciousness came back to me I was lying in the mud and snow, drenched, mud-bespattered, and cold. The rain and snow had almost ceased to fall, and while I was bandaging my foot the pale light of day began to show feebly through heavy clouds. If that luminous place is in the eastern horizon, then I have lost my sense of direction. An appeal to the compass brought no consolation, for it said laconically, "Yes, you are turned around now, even though you never were before." The accuracy of the compass was at once doubted,—but its decree was followed.
Slowly, painfully, the slippery, snowy steeps were scaled beneath a low, gloomy sky. My plan was to cross the north shoulder of Mt. Coxcomb and then down slope and gulch descend to the deeply filled alluvium Uncompahgre valley and the railroad village of Ridgway. With the summit only a few feet above, the wall became so steep and the hold so insecure that it appeared best to turn back lest I be precipitated from the cliff. The small, hard points in the sedimentary wall had been loosened in their settings by the rain. Climbing this wall with two good feet in a dry time would be adventurous pastime. While I was flattened against the wall, descending with greatest caution, there came a roaring crash together with a trembling of earth and air. An enormous section of the opposite side of the mass that I was on had fallen away, and the oscillations of the cliff nearly hurled me to the rock wreckage at the bottom of the wall.
On safe footing at last, I followed along the bottom of the summit cliff and encountered the place from which the rocks had been hurled at me in the darkness and where a cliff had fallen to start the slide. It was evident that the storm waters had wrecked the foundation of the cliff. Ridges and gullies of the Bad Land's type fluted the slope and prevented my traveling along close to the summit at right angles to the slope. There appeared no course for me but to descend to the Little Cimarron River. Hours were required for less than two miles of painful though intensely interesting travel.
It was a day of landslides,—just as there are, in the heights, days of snow slides. This excessive saturation after months of drought left cohesion and adhesion but slight hold on these strange sedimentary mixtures. The surface tore loose and crawled; cliffs tumbled. After counting the crash and echoing roar of forty-three fallen cliffs, I ceased counting and gave more attention to other demonstrations.
On the steeps, numerous fleshy areas crawled, slipped, and crept. The front of a long one had brought up against a rock ledge while the blind rear of the mass pressed powerfully forward, crumpling, folding, and piling the front part against the ledge. At one place an enormous rocky buttress had tumbled over. Below, the largest piece of this, a wreck in a mass of mud, floated slowly down the slope in a shallow, moderately tilted gulch. This buttress had been something of an impounding, retaining wall against which loosened, down-drifting materials had accumulated into a terrace. The terrace had long been adorned with a cluster of tall spruces whose presence produced vegetable mould and improved soil conditions.
On the falling-away of this buttress the tree-plumed terrace commenced to sag and settle. The soil-covered débris was well roped together and reinforced with tree-roots. When I came along, these tall trees, so long bravely erect, were leaning, drooping forward. Their entire foundation had slipped several feet and was steadily crowding out over the pit from which gravity had dragged the buttress. The trees, with their roots wedged in crevices, were anchored to bed-rock and clinging on for dear life. Now and then a low, thudding, earth-muffled sound told of strained or ruptured roots. The foundation steadily gave way while the trees drooped dangerously forward. United on the heights, the brave trees had struggled through the seasons, and united they would go down together. They had fixed and fertilized the spoil from the slopes above. This spoil had been held and made to produce, and prevented from going down to clog the channel of the Little Cimarron or making with the waters the long, sifting, shifting journey, joining at last the lifeless soil deposits in the delta tongues of the Colorado. But the steadfast trees, with all their power to check erosion and create soil, were to fall before the overwhelming elements.
Farther and farther the unsupported and water-lubricated foundation slipped; more and more the trees leaned and drooped forward; until gravity tore all loose and plunged the trees head foremost into the pit, crushing down upon tumbled tons of rocks, soil, matted mud, and roots,—all the wreckage of the time-formed, tree-crowned terrace.
The slide that narrowly missed me in the night was a monster one and grew in magnitude as it brutally rooted and gouged its way downward. After descending more than half a mile it struck an enormous dome rock, which stayed a small part of it, while the remainder, deflected, made an awesome plunge and engulfed a small, circular grove in an easily sloping grassy plot. Most of the towering spruces were thrown down and deeply buried beneath mud, smashed cliffs, and the mangled forms of trees from up the slope. A few trees on the margin of the grove were left standing, but they suffered from cruel bruises and badly torn bark.
On the farther side of the grove a number of the trees were bent forward but only partly buried; with heads and shoulders out, they were struggling to extricate themselves, and now and then one shook an arm free from the débris. Over the place where a few hours before tall tree plumes had stood in the sky, a fierce confusion of slide wreckage settled and tumbled to pieces while the buried and half-buried trees whispered, murmured, and sighed as they struggled to rise.
Out with nature trees are supposed to stand in one place all their lives, but one of the most interesting movements of this elemental day was the transplanting, by gravity, of an entire clump of tall old firs. Water released these trees, and they appeared to enjoy being dragged by gravity to a new home and setting. I was resting my foot and watching a gigantic monolithic stone settle and come down gracefully, when a tree-clump on the skyline just beyond appeared to move forward several yards, then make a stop. While I was trying to decide whether they really had moved or not, they moved forward again with all their earthly claims, a few square rods of surface together with their foundations beneath. With all tops merrily erect they slid forward, swerving right and left along the line of least resistance, and finally came to rest in a small unclaimed flat in which no doubt they grew up with the country.
The many-sized slides of that weird day showed a change of position varying from a few feet to a mile. Several ploughed out into the Little Cimarron and piled its channel more than full of spoils from the slopes. Through this the river fought its way, and from it the waters flowed richly laden with earthy matter.
The great changes which took place on Mt. Coxcomb in a few hours were more marked and extensive than the alterations in most mountains since the Sphinx began to watch the shifting, changing sands by the Nile.
By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the snow commenced to deepen upon the earth. Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress down the slope. Just at twilight a mother bear and her two cubs met me. They probably were climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to let them pass. When a few yards distant the bear rose up and looked at me with a combination of curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt. With Woof! Woof! more in a tone of disgust than of fear or anger, she rushed off, followed by the cubs, and the three disappeared in the darkening, snow-filling forest aisles.
The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I went. Years of training had given me great physical endurance, and this, along with a peculiar mental attitude that Nature had developed in me from being alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her and an enthusiastic though unconscious confidence in the ultimate success of whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors.
About two o'clock in the morning I at last descended to the river. The fresh débris on my side of the stream so hampered traveling that it became necessary to cross. Not finding any fallen-tree bridge, I started to wade across in a wide place that I supposed to be shallow. Midway and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck the injured foot against a boulder, momentarily flinching, and the current swirled me off my feet. After much struggling and battling with the turbulent waters, I succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. This immersion did not make me any wetter than I was or than I had been for hours, but the water chilled me; so I hurried forward as rapidly as possible to warm up.
After a few steps the injured leg suddenly became helpless, and I tumbled down in the snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and being very cold from my icy-water experience, I endeavored to start a fire. Everything was soaked and snow-covered; the snow was falling and the trees dripping water; I groped about on my hands and one knee, dragging the paralyzed leg; all these disadvantages, along with chattering teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-starting attempts a series of failures.
That night of raw, primitive life is worse in retrospect than was the real one. Still I was deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four hours of alertness and activity in the wilds, swimming and wading a torrent of ice-water at two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shelter, a crushed foot and a helpless leg, the penetrating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going back to nature about ten thousand years farther than it is desirable to go. But I was not discouraged even for a moment, and it did not occur to me to complain, though, as I look back now, the theory of non-resistance appears to have been carried a trifle too far. At last the fire blazed. After two hours beside it I went down the river greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen inches deep.
Shortly before daylight I felt that I was close to a trail I had traveled, one that came to Cimarron near by Court-House Rock. Recrossing the river on a fallen log, I lay down to sleep beneath a shelving rock with a roaring fire before me, sleeping soundly and deeply until the crash of an overturned cliff awakened me. Jumping to my feet, I found the storm over with the clouds broken and drifting back and forth in two strata as though undecided whether to go or remain. Above a low, lazy cloud, I caught a glimpse of Turret-Top, and turning, beheld Court-House Rock.
The foot gave no pain as I limped along the trail I had so often followed. Now and then I turned to take a photograph. The stars and the lights in the village were just appearing when I limped into the surgeon's office in Ridgway.
The Maker of Scenery and
Soil
During my first boyish exploring trip in the Rocky Mountains I was impressed with the stupendous changes which the upper slope of these mountains had undergone. In places were immense embankments and wild deltas of débris that plainly had come from elsewhere. In other places the rough edges of the cañons and ridges had been trimmed and polished; their cliffs and projections were gone and their surfaces had been swept clean of all loose material. Later, I tried vainly to account for some cañon walls being trimmed and polished at the bottom while their upper parts were jagged. In most cañons the height of the polishings above the bottom was equal on both walls, with the upper edge of the polish even or level for the entire length of the cañon. In one cañon, in both floor and walls, were deep lateral scratches in the rocks.
One day I found some polished boulders perched like driftwood on the top of a polished rock dome; they were porphyry, while the dome was flawless granite. They plainly had come from somewhere else. How they managed to be where they were was too much for me. Mountain floods were terrible but not wild enough in their fiercest rushes to do this. Upon a mountainside across a gorge about two miles distant, and a thousand feet above the perched boulders on the dome, I found a porphyry outcrop; but this situation only added to my confusion. I did not then know of the glacial period, or the actions of glaciers. It was a delightful revelation when John Muir told me of these wonders.
Much of the earth's surface, together with most mountain-ranges, have gone through a glacial period or periods. There is extensive and varied evidence that the greater portion of the earth has been carved and extensively changed by the Ice King. Substantial works, blurred and broken records, and impressive ruins in wide array over the earth show long and active possession by the Ice King, as eloquently as the monumental ruins in the Seven Hills tell of their intense association with man.
Both the northern and the southern hemispheres have had their heavy, slow-going floods of ice that appear to have swept from the polar world far toward the equator. During the great glacial period, which may have lasted for ages, a mountainous flood of ice overspread America from the north and extended far down the Mississippi Valley. This ice may have been a mile or more in depth. It utterly changed the topography and made a new earth. Lakes were filled and new ones made. New landscapes were formed: mountains were rubbed down to plains, morainal hills were built upon plains, and streams were moved bodily.
It is probable that during the last ice age the location and course of both the Ohio and the Missouri Rivers were changed. Originally the Missouri flowed east and north, probably emptying into a lake that had possession of the Lake Superior territory. The Ice King deliberately shoved this river hundreds of miles toward the south. The Ohio probably had a similar experience. These rivers appear to mark the "Farthest South" of the ice; their position probably was determined by the ice. Had a line been traced on the map along the ragged edge and front of the glacier at its maximum extension, this line would almost answer for the present position of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers.
The most suggestive and revealing words concerning glaciers that I have ever read are these of John Muir in "The Mountains of California": "When we bear in mind that all the Sierra forests are young, growing upon moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear and broad harmonies take their places."
"A glacier," says Judge Junius Henderson, in the best definition that I have heard, "is a body of ice originating in an area where the annual accumulation of snow exceeds the dissipation, and moving downward and outward to an area where dissipation exceeds accumulation."
A glacier may move forward only a few feet in a year or it may move several feet in a day. It may be only a few hundred feet in length, or, as during the Ice Age, have an area of thousands of square miles. The Arapahoe Glacier moves slowly, as do all small glaciers and some large ones. One year's measured movement was 27.7 feet near the centre and 11.15 near the edge. This, too, is about the average for one year, and also an approximate movement for most small mountain glaciers. The centre of the glacier, meeting less resistance than the edges, commonly flows much more rapidly. The enormous Alaskan glaciers have a much more rapid flow, many moving forward five or more feet a day.
A glacier is the greatest of eroding agents. It wears away the surface over which it flows. It grinds mountains to dust, transports soil and boulders, scoops out lake-basins, gives flowing lines to landscapes. Beyond comprehension we are indebted to them for scenery and soil.
Glaciers, or ice rivers, make vast changes. Those in the Rocky Mountains overthrew cliffs, pinnacles, and rocky headlands. These in part were crushed and in part they became embedded in the front, bottom, and sides of the ice. This rock-set front tore into the sides and bottom of its channel—after it had made a channel!—with a terrible, rasping, crushing, and grinding effect, forced irresistibly forward by a pressure of untold millions of tons. Glaciers, large and small, the world over, have like characteristics and influences. To know one glacier will enable one to enjoy glaciers everywhere and to appreciate the stupendous influence they have had upon the surface of the earth.
They have planed down the surface and even reduced mountain-ridges to turtle outlines. In places the nose of the glacier was thrust with such enormous pressure against a mountainside that the ice was forced up the slope which it flowed across and then descended on the opposite side. Sustained by constant and measureless pressure, years of fearful and incessant application of this weighty, flowing, planing, ploughing sandpaper wore the mountain down. In time, too, the small ragged-edged, V-shaped ravines became widened, deepened, and extended into enormous U-shaped glaciated gorges.
Glaciers have gouged or scooped many basins in the solid rock. These commonly are made at the bottom of a deep slope where the descending ice bore heavily on the lever or against a reverse incline. The size of the basin thus made is determined by the size, width, and weight of the glacier and by other factors. In the Rocky Mountains these excavations vary in size from a few acres to a few thousand. They became lake-basins on the disappearance of the ice.
More than a thousand lakes of glacial origin dot the upper portions of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Most of these are above the altitude of nine thousand feet, and the largest, Grand Lake, is three miles in length. Landslides and silt have filled many of the old glacier lake basins, and these, overgrown with grass and sedge, are called glacier meadows.
Vast was the quantity of material picked up and transported by these glaciers. Mountains were moved piecemeal, and ground to boulders, pebbles, and rock-flour in the moving. In addition to the material which the glacier gathered up and excavated, it also carried the wreckage brought down by landslides and the eroded matter poured upon it by streams from the heights. Most of the material which falls upon the top of the upper end of the glacier ultimately works its way to the bottom, where, with the other gathered material, it is pressed against the bottom and sides and used as a cutting or grinding tool until worn to a powder or pebbles.
Train-loads of débris often accumulate upon the top of the glacier. On the lower course this often is a hundred feet or more above the surface, and as the glacier descends and shrivels, enormous quantities of this rocky débris fall off the sides and, in places, form enormous embankments; these often closely parallel long stretches of the glacier like river levees.
The large remainder of the material is carried to the end of the glacier, where the melting ice unloads and releases it. This accumulation, which corresponds to the delta of a river, is the terminal moraine. For years the bulk of the ice may melt away at about the same place; this accumulates an enormous amount of débris; an advance of the ice may plough through this and repile it, or the retreat of the ice or a changed direction of its flow may pile the débris elsewhere and over wide areas. Many of these terminal moraines are an array of broken embankments, small basin-like holes and smooth, level spaces. The débris of these moraines embraces rock-flour, gravel, pebbles, a few angular rock-masses, and enormous quantities of many-sized boulders,—rocks rounded by the grind of the glacial mill.
Strange freight, of unknown age, these creeping ice rivers bring down. One season the frozen carcass of a mountain sheep was taken from the ice at the end of the Arapahoe Glacier. If this sheep fell into a crevasse at the upper end of the glacier, its carcass probably had been in the ice for more than a century. Human victims, too, have been strangely handled by glaciers. It appears that in 1820 Dr. Hamil and a party of climbers were struck by a snowslide on the slope of Mont Blanc. One escaped with his life, while the others were swept down into a crevasse and buried so deeply in the snow and ice that their bodies could not be recovered. Scientists said that at the rate the glacier was moving it would give up its dead after forty years. Far down the mountain forty-one years afterward, the ice gave up its victims. A writer has founded on this incident an interesting story, in which the bodies are recovered in an excellent state of preservation, and an old woman with sunken cheeks and gray hair clasps the youthful body of her lover of long ago, the guide.
Where morainal débris covers thousands of acres, it is probable that valuable mineral veins were in some cases covered, prospecting prevented, and mineral wealth lost; but on the other hand, the erosion done by the glacier, often cutting down several hundred feet, has in many cases uncovered leads which otherwise probably would have been left buried beyond search. Then, too, millions of dollars of placer gold have been washed from moraines.
In addition to the work of making and giving the mountains flowing lines of beauty, the glaciers added inconceivably to the richness of the earth's resources by creating vast estates of soil. It is probable that glaciers have supplied one half of the productive areas of the earth with soil; the mills of the glaciers have ground as much rock-flour—soil—for the earth as wind, frost, heat, and rain,—all the weathering forces. This flour and other coarser glacial grindings were quickly changed by the chemistry of Nature into plant-food,—the staff of life for forests and flowers.
Glaciers have not only ground the soil but in many places have carried this and spread it out hundreds of miles from the place where the original raw rocks were obtained. Wind and water have done an enormous amount of work sorting out the soil in moraines and, leaving the boulders behind, this soil was scattered and sifted far and wide to feed the hungry plant-life.
At last the Glacial Winter ended, and each year more snow melted and evaporated than fell. Snow-line retreated up the slopes and finally became broken, even in the heights. To-day, in the Rockies, there are only a dozen or so small glaciers, mere fragments of the once great ice cap which originally covered deeply all the higher places and slopes, and extended unbroken for hundreds of miles, pierced strangely with a few sharp peaks.
The small remaining glaciers in the Rocky Mountains lie in sheltered basins or cirques in the summits and mostly above the altitude of thirteen thousand feet. These are built and supplied by the winds which carry and sweep snow to them from off thousands of acres of treeless, barren summits. The present climate of these mountains is very different from what it was ages ago. Then for a time the annual snowfall was extremely heavy. Each year the sun and the wind removed only a part of the snow which fell during the year. This icy remainder was added to the left-over of preceding years until the accumulation was of vast depth and weight.
On the summit slopes this snow appears to have been from a few hundred to a few thousand feet deep. Softened from the saturation of melting and compressed from its own weight, it became a stratum of ice. This overlay the summit of the main ranges, and was pierced by only a few of the higher, sharper peaks which were sufficiently steep to be stripped of snow by snowslides and the wind.
The weight of this superimposed icy stratum was immense; it was greater than the bottom layers could support. Ice is plastic—rubbery—if sufficient pressure or weight be applied. Under the enormous pressure the bottom layers started to crawl or flow from beneath like squeezed dough. This forced mass moved outward and downward in the direction of the least resistance,—down the slope. Thus a glacier is conceived and born.
Numbers of these glaciers—immense serpents and tongues of ice—extended down the slopes, in places miles beyond the line of perpetual snow. Some of these were miles in length, a thousand or more feet wide, and hundreds of feet deep, and they forced and crushed their way irresistibly. It is probable they had a sustained, continuous flow for centuries.
A glacier is one of the natural wonders of the world and well might every one pay a visit to one of these great earth-sculpturers. The time to visit a glacier is during late summer, when the snows of the preceding winter are most completely removed from the surface. With the snows removed, the beauty of the ice and its almost stratified make-up are revealed. The snow, too, conceals the yawning bergschlunds and the dangerous, splendid crevasses. A visit to one of these ponderous, patient, and effective monsters is not without danger; concealed crevasses, or thinly covered icy caverns, or recently deposited and insecurely placed boulders on the moraines are potent dangers that require vigilance to avoid. However, the careful explorer will find one of these places far safer than the city's chaotic and crowded street.
For the study of old glacier records few places can equal the Estes Park district in Colorado. The Arapahoe, on Arapahoe Peak, Colorado, is an excellent glacier to visit. It is characteristic and is easy of access. It is close to civilization,—within a few miles of a railroad,—is comprehensively situated, and is amid some of the grandest scenery in the Rocky Mountains. It has been mapped and studied, and its rate of movement and many other things concerning it are accurately known. It is the abstract and brief chronicle of the Ice Age, a key to all the glacier ways and secrets.
In the Arapahoe Glacier one may see the cirque in which the snow is deposited or drifted by the wind; and the bergschlund-yawn—crack of separation—made by glacier ice where it moves away from the névé or snowy ice above. In walking over the ice in summer one may see or descend into the crevasses. These deep, wide cracks, miniature cañons, are caused by the ice flowing over inequalities in the surface. At the end of this glacier one may see the terminal moraine,—a raw, muddy pile of powdered, crushed, and rounded rocks. Farther along down the slope one may see the lakes that were made, the rocks that were polished, and the lateral moraine deposited by the glacier in its bigger days,—times when the Ice King almost conquered the earth.
In the Rocky Mountains the soil and morainal débris were transported only a few miles, while the Wisconsin and Iowa glaciers brought thousands of acres of rich surfacing, now on the productive farms of Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, from places hundreds of miles to the north in Canada. In the Rocky Mountains most of the forests are growing in soil or moraines that were ground and distributed by glaciers. Thus the work of the glaciers has made the earth and the mountains far more useful in addition to giving them gentler influences,—charming lakes and flowing landscape lines. It is wonderful that the mighty worker and earth-shaper, the Ice King, should have used snowflakes for edge-tools, millstones, and crushing stamps!
To know the story of the Ice King—to be able to understand and restore the conditions that made lakes and headlands, moraines and fertile fields—will add mightily to the enjoyment of a visit to the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the coasts and mountains of Norway and New England, Alaska's unrivaled glacier realm, or the extraordinary ice sculpturing in the Yosemite National Park.
Edward Orton, Jr., formerly State Geologist of Ohio, who spent weeks toiling over and mapping the Mills Moraine on the east slope of Long's Peak, gave a glimpse of what one may feel and enjoy from nature investigation in his closing remarks concerning this experience. He said, "If one adds to the physical pleasures of mountaineering, the intellectual delight of looking with the seeing eye, of explaining, interpreting, and understanding the gigantic forces which have wrought these wonders; if by these studies one's vision may be extended past the sublime beauties of the present down through the dim ages of the past until each carved and bastioned peak tells a romance above words; if by communion with this greatness, one's soul is uplifted and attuned into fuller accord with the great cosmic forces of which we are the higher manifestation, then mountaineering becomes not a pastime but an inspiration."
A Rainy Day at the
Stream's Source
To spend a day in the rain at the source of a stream was an experience I had long desired, for the behavior of the waters in collecting and hurrying down slopes would doubtless show some of Nature's interesting ways. On the Rockies no spot seemed quite so promising as the watershed on which the St. Vrain made its start to the sea. This had steep and moderate slopes, rock ledges, and deep soil; and about one half of its five thousand acres was covered with primeval forest, while the remainder had been burned almost to barrenness by a fierce forest fire. Here were varied and contrasting conditions to give many moods to the waters, and all this display could easily be seen during one active day.
June was the month chosen, since in the region of the St. Vrain that is the rainiest part of the year. After thoroughly exploring the ground I concluded to go down the river a few miles and make headquarters in a new sawmill. There I spent delightful days in gathering information concerning tree-growth and in making biographical studies of several veteran logs, as the saw ripped open and revealed their life-scrolls.
One morning I was awakened by the pelting and thumping of large, widely scattered raindrops on the roof of the mill. Tree stories were forgotten, and I rushed outdoors. The sky was filled with the structureless gloom of storm-cloud, and the heavy, calm air suggested rain. "We'll get a wetting such as you read of, to-day!" declared the sawmill foreman, as I made haste to start for the wilds.
I plunged into the woods and went eagerly up the dim, steep mountain trail which kept close company with the river St. Vrain. Any doubts concerning the strength of the storm were quickly washed away. My dry-weather clothes were swiftly soaked, but with notebook safe under my hat, I hastened to gain the "forks" as soon as possible, enjoying the general downpour and the softened noise that it made through the woods. I had often been out in rains on the Rockies, but this one was wetting the earth with less effort than any I had ever experienced. For half an hour no air stirred; then, while crossing a small irregular opening in the woods, I was caught in a storm-centre of wrangling winds and waters, and now and then their weight would almost knock me over, until, like a sapling, I bowed, streaming, in the storm. The air was full of "water-dust," and, once across the open, I made haste to hug a tree, hoping to find a breath of air that was not saturated to strangulation.
Neither bird nor beast had been seen, nor did I expect to come upon any, unless by chance my movements drove one from its refuge; but while I sat on a sodden log, reveling in elemental moods and sounds, a water-ouzel came flying along. He alighted on a boulder which the on-sweeping stream at my feet seemed determined to drown or dislodge, and, making his usual courtesies, he began to sing. His melody is penetrating; but so sustained was the combined roar of the stream and the storm that there came to me only a few notes of his energetic nesting-time song. His expressive attitudes and gestures were so harmoniously united with these, however, that I could not help feeling that he was singing with all his might to the water, the woods, and me.
Keeping close to the stream, I continued my climb. My ear now caught the feeble note of a robin, who was making discouraged and disconsolate efforts at song, and it seemed to issue from a throat clogged with wet cotton. Plainly the world was not beautiful to him, and the attempt at music was made to kill time or cheer himself up.
The robin and the ouzel,—how I love them both, and yet how utterly unlike they are! The former usually chooses so poor a building-site, anchors its nest so carelessly, or builds so clumsily, that the precious contents are often spilled or the nest discovered by some enemy. His mental make-up is such that he is prone to predict the worst possible outcome of any new situation. The ouzel, on the other hand, is sweet and serene. He builds his nest upon a rock and tucks it where search and sharp eyes may not find it. He appears indifferent to the comings and goings of beast or man, enjoys all weathers, seems entranced with life, and may sing every day of the year.
Up in the lower margin of the Engelmann spruce forest the wind now ceased and the clouds began to conserve their waters. The territory which I was about to explore is on the eastern summit slopes of the Rockies, between the altitudes of ninety-five hundred and twelve thousand feet. Most of these slopes were steep, and much of the soil had a basis of disintegrated granite. The forested and the treeless slopes had approximately equal areas, and were much alike in regard to soil, inclination, and altitude, while the verdure of both areas before the forest fire had been almost identical. The St. Vrain is formed by two branches flowing northeasterly and southeasterly, the former draining the treeless area and the latter the forested one. Below the junction, the united waters sweep away through the woods, but at it, and a short distance above, the fire had destroyed every living thing.
At the forks I found many things of interest. The branch with dark waters from the barren slopes was already swollen to many times its normal volume and was thick with sediment from the fire-scarred region. The stream with white waters from the forest had risen just a trifle, and there was only a slight stain visible. These noticeable changes were produced by an hour of rain. I dipped several canfuls from the deforested drainage fork, and after each had stood half a minute the water was poured off. The average quantity of sediment remaining was one fifth of a canful, while the white water from the forested slope deposited only a thin layer on the bottom of the can. It was evident that the forest was absorbing and delaying the water clinging to its soil and sediment. In fact, both streams carried so much suggestive and alluring news concerning storm effects on the slopes above that I determined to hasten on in order to climb over and watch them while they were dashed and drenched with rain.
Planning to return and give more attention to the waters of both branches at this place, I started to inspect first the forested sides. The lower of these slopes were tilted with a twenty to twenty-five per cent grade, and covered with a primeval Engelmann spruce forest of tall, crowding trees, the age of which, as I had learned during previous visits, was only a few years less than two centuries.
The forest floor was covered with a thick carpet of litter,—one which the years had woven out of the wreckage of limbs and leaves. This, though loosely, coarsely woven, has a firm feeling when trodden during dry weather. To-day however, the forest floor seemed recently upholstered. It is absorbent; hence the water had filled the interstices and given elasticity. I cleared away some of this litter and found that it had an average depth of fifteen inches. The upper third lay loosely, but below it the weave was more compact and much finer than that on or near the surface. I judged that two inches of rain had fallen and had soaked to an average depth of eight inches. It was interesting to watch the water ooze from the broken walls of this litter, or humus, on the upper sides of the holes which I dug down into it. One of these was close to a bare, tilted slope of granite. As I stood watching the water slowly dripping from the broken humus and rapidly racing down the rocks, the thought came to me that, with the same difference in speed, the run-off from the deforested land might be breaking through the levees at New Orleans before the water from these woods escaped and got down as far as the sawmill.
The forest might well proclaim: "As long as I stand, my countless roots shall clutch and clasp the soil like eagles' claws and hold it on these slopes. I shall add to this soil by annually creating more. I shall heave it with my growing roots, loosen and cover it with litter rugs, and maintain a porous, sievelike surface that will catch the rain and so delay and distribute these waters that at the foot of my slope perennial springs will ever flow quietly toward the sea. Destroy me, and on stormy days the waters may wash away the unanchored soil as they run unresisted down the slopes, to form a black, destructive flood in the home-dotted valley below."
The summit of the forested slope was comparatively smooth where I gained it, and contained a few small, ragged-edged, grassy spaces among its spruces and firs. The wind was blowing and the low clouds pressed, hurried along the ground, whirled through the grassy places, and were driven and dragged swiftly among the trees. I was in the lower margin of cloud, and it was like a wet, gray night. Nothing could be seen clearly, even at a few feet, and every breath I took was like swallowing a saturated sponge.
These conditions did not last long, for a wind-surge completely rent the clouds and gave me a glimpse of the blue, sun-filled sky. I hurried along the ascending trend of the ridge, hoping to get above the clouds, but they kept rising, and after I had traveled half a mile or more I gave it up. Presently I was impressed with the height of an exceptionally tall spruce that stood in the centre of a group of its companions. At once I decided to climb it and have a look over the country and cloud from its swaying top.
When half way up, the swift manner in which the tree was tracing seismographic lines through the air awakened my interest in the trunk that was holding me. Was it sound or not? At the foot appearances gave it good standing. The exercising action of ordinary winds probably toughens the wood fibres of young trees, but this one was no longer young, and the wind was high. I held an ear against the trunk and heard a humming whisper which told only of soundness. A blow with broad side of my belt axe told me that it rang true and would stand the storm and myself.
The sound brought a spectator from a spruce with broken top that stood almost within touching distance of me. In this tree was a squirrel home, and my axe had brought the owner from his hole. What an angry, comic midget he was, this Frémont squirrel! With fierce whiskers and a rattling, choppy, jerky chatter, he came out on a dead limb that pointed toward me, and made a rush as though to annihilate me or to cause me to take hurried flight; but as I held on he found himself more "up in the air" than I was. He stopped short, shut off his chatter, and held himself at close range facing me, a picture of furious study. This scene occurred in a brief period that was undisturbed by either wind or rain. We had a good look at each other. He was every inch alive, but for a second or two both his place and expression were fixed. He sat with eyes full of telling wonder and with face that showed intense curiosity. A dash of wind and rain ended our interview, for after his explosive introduction neither of us had uttered a sound. He fled into his hole, and from this a moment later thrust forth his head; but presently he subsided and withdrew. As I began to climb again, I heard muffled expletives from within his tree that sounded plainly like "Fool, fool, fool!"
The wind had tried hard to dislodge me, but, seated on the small limbs and astride the slender top, I held on. The tree shook and danced; splendidly we charged, circled, looped, and angled; such wild, exhilarating joy I have not elsewhere experienced. At all times I could feel in the trunk a subdued quiver or vibration, and I half believe that a tree's greatest joys are the dances it takes with the winds.
Conditions changed while I rocked there; the clouds rose, the wind calmed, and the rain ceased to fall. Thunder occasionally rumbled, but I was completely unprepared for the blinding flash and explosive crash of the bolt that came. The violent concussion, the wave of air which spread from it like an enormous, invisible breaker, almost knocked me over. A tall fir that stood within fifty feet of me was struck, the top whirled off, and the trunk split in rails to the ground. I quickly went back to earth, for I was eager to see the full effect of the lightning's stroke on that tall, slender evergreen cone. With one wild, mighty stroke, in a second or less, the century-old tree tower was wrecked.
Leaving this centenarian, I climbed up the incline a few hundred feet higher and started out through the woods to the deforested side. Though it was the last week in June, it was not long before I was hampered with snow. Ragged patches, about six feet deep, covered more than half of the forest floor. This was melting rapidly and was "rotten" from the rain, so that I quickly gave up the difficult task of fording it and made an abrupt descent until below the snow-line, where I again headed for the fire-cleared slopes.
As I was leaving the wood, the storm seemed to begin all over again. The rain at first fell steadily, but soon slackened, and the lower cloud-margins began to drift through the woods. Just before reaching the barrens I paused to breathe in a place where the trees were well spaced, and found myself facing a large one with deeply furrowed bark and limbs plentifully covered with short, fat, blunt needles. I was at first puzzled to know what kind it was, but at last I recognized it as a Douglas fir or "Oregon pine." I had never before seen this species at so great an altitude,—approximately ten thousand feet. It was a long distance from home, but it stood so contentedly in the quiet rain that I half expected to hear it remark, "The traditions of my family are mostly associated with gray, growing days of this kind."
Out on the barren slopes the few widely scattered, fire-killed, fire-preserved trees with broken arms stood partly concealed and lonely in the mists. After zigzagging for a time over the ruins, I concluded to go at once to the uppermost side and thence down to the forks. But the rain was again falling, and the clouds were so low and heavy that the standing skeleton trees could not be seen unless one was within touching distance. There was no wind or lightning, only a warm, steady rain. It was, in fact, so comfortable that I sat down to enjoy it until a slackening should enable me better to see the things I most wanted to observe.
There was no snow about, and three weeks before at the same place I had found only one small drift which was shielded and half-covered with shelving rock. The dry Western air is insatiable and absorbs enormous quantities of water, and, as the Indians say, "eats snow." The snowless area about me was on a similar slope and at about the same altitude as the snow-filled woods, so the forest is evidently an effective check upon the ravenous winds.
Now the rain almost ceased, and I began to descend. The upper gentle slopes were completely covered with a filmy sheet of clear water which separated into tattered torrents and took on color. These united and grew in size as they progressed from the top, and each was separated from its companions by ridges that widened and gulches that deepened as down the sides they went. The waters carried most of the eroded material away, but here and there, where they crossed a comparatively level stretch, small deposits of gravel were made or sandbars and deltas formed.
Occasionally I saw miniature landslides, and, hoping for a larger one to move, I hurried downward. Knowing that the soil is often deep at the foot of crags on account of contributions from above, together with the protection from erosion which the cliffs gave, I endeavored to find such a place. While searching, I had occasion to jump from a lower ledge on a cliff to the deposit below. The distance to the slope and its real pitch were minimized by the mists. After shooting through the air for at least thrice the supposed distance to the slope, I struck heavily and loosened several rods of a landslide. I tumbled off the back of it, but not before its rock points had made some impressions.
I sought safety and a place of lookout on a crag, and picked bits of granite gravel from my anatomy. Presently I heard a muffled creaking, and looked up to see a gigantic landslide starting. At first it moved slowly, seemed to hesitate, then slid faster, with its stone-filled front edge here and there doubling and rolling under; finally the entire mass broke into yawning, ragged fissures as it shot forward and plunged over a cliff. Waiting until most of the straggling, detached riffraff had followed, I hastened to examine the place just evacuated. In getting down I disturbed a ground-hog from his rock point, and found that he was in the same attitude and position I had seen him holding just before the slide started, so that the exhibition had merely caused him to move his eyes a little.
In the cracks and crevices of the glaciated rock-slope from which this mass had slid, there were broken, half-decayed roots and numerous marks which showed where other roots had held. It seems probable that if the grove which sustained them had not been destroyed by fire, they in turn would have anchored and held securely the portion of land which had just slipped away.
I went over the lower slopes of the burned area and had a look at numerous new-made gullies, and near the forks I measured a large one. It was more than a hundred feet long, two to four feet wide, and, over the greater part of its length, more than four feet deep. It was eroded by the late downpour, and its misplaced material, after being deposited by the waters, would of itself almost call for an increase of the river and harbor appropriations.
Late in the afternoon, with the storm breaking, I stopped and watched the largest torrent from the devastated region pour over a cliff. This waterfall more nearly represented a liquefied landslide, for it was burdened with sediment and spoils. As it rushed wildly over, it carried enormous quantities of dirt, gravel, and other earthy wreckage, and some of the stones were as large as a man's hat. Now and then there was a slackening, but these momentary subsidences were followed by explosive outpourings with which mingled large pieces of charred or half-decayed wood, sometimes closely pursued by a small boulder or some rock-fragments. Surely, these deforested slopes were heavy contributors to the millions of tons of undesirable matter that annually went in to fill the channel and vex the current of the Mississippi!
These demonstrations brought to mind a remark of an army engineer to the effect that the "Western forest fires had resulted in filling the Missouri River channel full of dissolved Rocky Mountains." The action of the water on this single burned area suggested that ten thousand other fireswept heights must be rapidly diminishing. At all events, it is evident that, unless this erosion is stopped, boats before long will hardly find room to enter the Mississippi. It now became easier to account for the mud-filled channel of the great river, and also for the innumerable bars that display their broad backs above its shallow, sluggish water. Every smooth or fluted fill in this great stream tells of a ragged gulch or a roughened, soilless place somewhere on a slope at one of its sources.
What a mingling of matter makes up the mud of the Mississippi,—a soil mixture from twenty States, the blended richness of ten thousand slopes! Coming up the "Father of Waters," and noting its obstructions of sediment and sand, its embarrassment of misplaced material, its dumps and deposits of soil,—monumental ruins of wasted resources,—one may say, "Here lies the lineal descendant of Pike's Peak; here the greater part of an Ohio hill"; or, "A flood took this from a terraced cotton-field, and this from a farm in sunny Tennessee." A mud flat itself might remark, "The thoughtless lumberman who caused my downfall is now in Congress urging river improvement"; and the shallow waters at the big bend could add, "Our once deep channel was filled with soil from a fire-scourged mountain. The minister whose vacation fire caused this ruin is now a militant missionary among the heathen of Cherry Blossom land."