Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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Nearly all the American tribes had similar presentiments. The
Chickasaws, the Mandans of the Missouri, the Pueblo Indians of New
Mexico, the Muyscas of Bogota, the Botocudos of Brazil, the
Araucanians of Chili, the Winnebagoes, all have possessed such a
belief from time immemorial. The Mayas of Yucatan had a prediction
which Father Lizana, _curé_ of Itzamal, preserved in the Spanish
language:

"At the close of the ages, it hath been decreed,
Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men,
And the world shall be _purged with ravening fire_."

We know that among our own people, the European races, this looking
forward to a conflagration which is to end all things is found
everywhere; and that everywhere a comet is regarded with terror. It
is a messenger of

[1. Brinton's "Myths," p. 235.

2. Ibid.]

{p. 429}

woe and disaster; it is a dreadful threat shining in the heavens; it
is "God's rod," even as it was in Job's day.

I could fill pages with the proofs of the truth of this statement.

An ancient writer, describing the great meteoric shower of the year
1202, says:

"The stars flew against one another like a scattering swarm of
locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until
daybreak; people were thrown into consternation and cried to God, the
Most High, with confused clamor."[1]

The great meteoric display of 1366 produced similar effects. An
historian of the time says:

"Those who saw it were filled with such great fear and dismay that
they were astounded, imagining that they were all dead men, and that
the end of the world had come."[2]

How could such a universal terror have fixed itself in the blood of
the race, if it had not originated from some great primeval fact? And
all this terror is associated with a dragon.

And Chambers says:

"The dragon appears in the mythical history and legendary poetry of
almost every nation, as the emblem of the destructive and anarchical
principle; . . . as misdirected physical force and untamable animal
passions. . . . The dragon proceeds openly to work, running on its
feet with expanded wings, and head and tail erect, violently and
ruthlessly outraging decency and propriety, _spouting fire and fury
from both mouth and tail, and wasting and devastating the whole
land_."[3]

This fiery monster is the comet.

[1. Popular Science Monthly," June, 1882, p. 193.

2. Ibid., p. 193.

3. "Chambers's Encyclopaedia," vol. iii, p. 655.]

{p. 430}

And Milton speaks from the same universal inspiration when he tells
us:

"A comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiucus huge
In th' arctic sky, and _from its horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war_."

And in the Shakespeare plays[1] we read:

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars."

Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet as a great terror
and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits uneasily when one
blazes in the sky. Even to the scholar and the scientist they are a
puzzle and a fear; they are erratic, unusual, anarchical,
monstrous--something let loose, like a tiger of the heavens, athwart
an orderly, peaceful, and harmonious world. They may be impalpable
and harmless attenuations of gas, or they way be loaded with death
and ruin; but in any event man can not contemplate them without
terror.

[1. 1 Henry VI, 1, 1.]

{p. 431}

CHAPTER VII.

THE EARTH STRUCK BY COMETS MANY TIMES.

IF the reader is satisfied, from my reasoning and the facts I have
adduced, that the so-called Glacial Age really represents a collision
of the earth with one of these wandering luminaries of space, the
question can not but occur to him, Was this the first and only
occasion, during all the thousands of millions of years that our
planet has been revolving on its axis and circling around the sun,
that such a catastrophe has occurred?

The answer must be in the negative.

We find that all through the rocky record of our globe the same
phenomena which we have learned to recognize as peculiar to the Drift
Age are, at distant intervals, repeated.

The long ages of the Palæozoic Time passed with few or no
disturbances. The movements of the earth's crust oscillated at a rate
not to exceed one foot in a century.[1] It was an age of peace. Then
came a tremendous convulsion. It has been styled by the geologists
"the epoch of the Appalachian revolution."

"Strata were upraised and flexed into great (olds, some of the folds
a score or more of miles in span. Deep fissures were opened in the
earth's crust," like the fiords or great rock-cracks which
accompanied the Diluvial or Drift Age. "Rocks were consolidated; and
over some parts sandstones and shales were crystallized into gneiss,

[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 150.]

{p. 432}

mica-schist, and other related rocks, and limestone into
architectural and statuary marble. Bituminous coal was turned into
anthracite in Pennsylvania."[1]

I copy from the same work (p. 153) the following cut, showing the
extent to which the rocks were crushed out of shape:

###

SECTION ON THE SCHUYLKILL, PENNSYLVANIA.

_P, Pottsville on the coal-measures; 2, Calciferous formation; 3,
Trenton; 4, Hudson River; 5, Oneida and Niagara; 7, Lower Helderberg;
8, 10, 11, Devonian; 12, 13, Subcarboniferous; 14, Carboniferous, or
coal-measures._

These tremendous changes were caused by a pressure of some kind which
came from the east, from where the Atlantic Ocean now rolls.

"It was due to a _lateral_ pressure, the folding having taken place
just as it might in paper or cloth under a lateral or _pushing_
movement."[2]

"It was accompanied by _great heat_ which melted and consolidated the
rocks, changed their condition, drove the volatile gases out of the
bituminous coal and changed it into anthracite, in some places
altered it to graphite, as if it had been passed through a
furnace."[3]

It also made an almost universal slaughter of all forms of life:

"The extermination of life which took place at this time was one of
the most extensive in all geological history; . . . no fossils of the
Carboniferous formation occur in later rocks."[4]

[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 152.

2. Ibid., p. 155.

3. Ibid., p. 155.

4. Ibid., p. 157.]

{p. 433}

it was accompanied or followed, as in the Drift Age, by tremendous
floods of water; the evaporated seas returned to the earth in wasting
storms:

"The waters commenced the work of denudation, which has been
continued to the present time."[1]

Is not all this a striking confirmation of my theory?

Here we find that, long before the age of man, a fearful catastrophe
happened to the earth. Its rocks were melted--not merely decomposed,
as in the Drift Age,--but actually melted and metamorphosed; the
heat, as in the Drift Age, sucked up the waters of the seas, to cast
them down again in great floods; it wiped out nearly all the life of
the planet, even as the Drift Age exterminated the great mammals;
whatever drift then fell probably melted with the burning rocks.

Here are phenomena which no ice-sheet, though it were a thousand
miles thick, can explain; here is heat, not ice; combustion, not
cold; and yet all these phenomena are but the results which we have
seen would naturally follow the contact of the earth with a comet.

But while, in this particular case, the size of the comet, or its
more fiery nature, melted the surface of the globe, and changed the
very texture of the solid rocks, we find in the geological record the
evidences of repeated visitations when Drift was thrown upon the
earth in great quantities; but the heat, as in the last Drift Age,
was not great enough to consume all things.

In the Cambrian formation, conglomerates are found, combinations of
stones and hardened clay, very much like the true "till."

In the Lower Silurian of the south of Scotland, large blocks and
bowlders (from one foot to five feet in diameter)

[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 156.]

{p. 434}

are found, "of gneiss, syenite, granite, etc., none of which belong
to the rocks of that neighborhood."

Geikie says:

"Possibly these bowlders may have come from some ancient Atlantis,
transported by ice."[1]

The conglomerates belonging to the Old Red Sandstone formation in the
north of England and in Scotland, we are told, "closely resemble a
consolidated bowlder drift."[2]

Near Victoria, in Australia, a conglomerate was found _nearly one
hundred feet in thickness_.

"Great beds of conglomerate occur at the bottom of the Carboniferous,
in various parts of Scotland, which it is difficult to believe are
other than ancient morainic _débris_. They are frequently quite
unstratified, and the stones _often show that peculiar blunted form
which is so characteristic of glacial work_."[3]

Professor Ramsay found well-scratched and blunted stones in a Permian
conglomerate.

In the north of Scotland, a coarse, bowlder-conglomerate is
associated with the Jurassic strata. The Cretaceous formation has
yielded great stones and bowlders. In the Eocene of Switzerland,
erratics have been found, some angular and some rounded. They often
attain great size; one measured one hundred and five feet in length,
ninety feet in breadth, and forty-five feet in height. Some of the
blocks consist of _a kind of granite not known to occur anywhere in
the Alps_.

Geikie says:

"The occurrence in the Eocene of huge ice-carried blocks seems
_incomprehensible_ when the general character of the Eocene fossils
is taken into account, for these have a somewhat _tropical_ aspect.
So, likewise, the appearance of ice-transported blocks in the Miocene
is a _sore puzzle_,

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 478.

2. Ibid., p. 479.

3. Ibid.]

{p. 435}

as the fossils imbedded in this formation speak to us of tropical and
sub-tropical climates having prevailed in Central Europe."[1]

It was precisely during the age when a warm climate prevailed in
Spitzbergen and North Greenland that these erratics were dropped down
on the plains of Italy!

And, strange to say, just as we have found the Drift-deposits of
Europe and America unfossiliferous,--that is to say, containing no
traces of animal or vegetable life,--so these strange stone and clay
deposits of other and more ancient ages were in like manner
unfossiliferous.[2]

In the "flysch" of the Eocene of the Alps, few or no fossils have
been found. In the conglomerates of Turin, belonging to the Upper
Miocene period, not a single organic remain has been found.

What conclusion is forced upon us?

That, written in the rocky pages of the great volume of the planet,
are the records of _repeated visitations from the comets_ which then
rushed through the heavens.

No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge,
unstratified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and
bowlders, locked away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks.

Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon an
orbit of such size that millions of years are required to complete
it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it
fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the
sun, and showers down upon us deluges of _débris_, while it fills the
world with flame? And are these recurring strata of stones and clay
and bowlders, written upon these widely separated pages of the
geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring
visitations?

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 480.

2. Ibid., p. 481.]

{p. 436}

Who shall say? Science will yet compare minutely the composition of
these different conglomerates. No secret can escape discovery when
the light of a world's intelligence is brought to bear upon it.

And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact:

It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten crust
of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened as
it cooled.

But, lo! the microscope, (so Professor Whichell tells us,) reveals
that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this
ancient globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which
were melted, fused, and run together in some awful conflagration
which wiped out all life on the planet.

Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and
rains, rivers and sediment carried into the waters to form the rocks
melted up in this granite; there were countless ages; possibly there
were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. Was this,
too, the result of a comet visitation?

Who shall tell the age of this old earth? Who shall count the ebbs
and flows of eternity? Who shall say how often this planet has been
developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often all this has
been obliterated in universal fire?

The earth is one great tomb of life:

"All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom."

In endless series the ages stretch along--birth, life, development,
destruction. And so shall it be till time is no more.

{p. 437}

CHAPTER VIII.

THE AFTER-WORD.

WHEN that magnificent genius, Francis Bacon, sent forth one of his
great works to the world, he wrote this prayer:

"Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first-born of
thy creatures, and didst pour into man the intellectual light as the
top and consummation of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and
govern this work, which coming from thy goodness returneth to thy
glory. . . . We humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us;
and that thou, by our hands and the hands of others, on whom thou
shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt please to convey a largess of new
alms to thy family of mankind."

And again he says:

"This also we beg, that human things may not prejudice such as are
divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and
the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of incredulity, or
intellectual night, may arise in our minds toward divine mysteries."

In the same spirit, but humbly halting afar after this illustrious
man, I should be sorry to permit this book to go out to the world
without a word to remove the impression which some who read it, and
may believe it, may form, that such a vast catastrophe as I have
depicted militates against the idea that God rules and cares for his
world and his creatures. It will be asked, If "there is a special
providence even in the fall of a sparrow," how

{p. 438}

could He have permitted such a calamity as this to overtake a
beautiful, populous, and perhaps civilized world?

Here we fall again upon the great debate of Job, and we may answer in
the words which the author of that book puts into the mouth of God
himself, when from out the whirlwind he answered him:

"Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him "He that
reproveth God, let him answer."

In other words, Who and what is man to penetrate the counsels and
purposes of the Creator; and who are you, Job?--

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare
it, if thou hast understanding.

"Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who has
stretched the line upon it?

"Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the
corner-stone thereof?

"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy."

Consider, Job, the littleness of man, the greatness of the universe;
and what right have you to ask Him, who made all this, the reasons
for his actions?

And this is a sufficient answer: A creature seventy inches long
prying into the purposes of an Awful Something, whose power ranges so
far that blazing suns are seen only as mist-specks!

But I may make another answer:

Although it seems that many times have comets smitten the earth,
covering it with _débris_, or causing its rocks to boil, and its
waters to ascend into the heavens, yet, considering all life, as
revealed in the fossils, from the first cells unto this day, _nothing
has perished that was worth preserving_.

{p. 439}

So far as we can judge, after every cataclysm the world has risen to
higher levels of creative development.

If I am right, despite these incalculable tons of matter piled on the
earth, despite heat and cyclones and darkness and ice and floods, not
even a tender tropical plant fit to adorn or sustain man's life was
blotted out; not an animal valuable for domestication was
exterminated; and not even the great inventions which man had
attained to, during the Tertiary Age, were lost. Nothing died but
that which stood in the pathway of man's development,--the monstrous
animals, the Neanderthal races, the half-human creatures intermediate
between man and the brute. The great centers of human activity to-day
in Europe and America are upon the Drift-deposits; the richest soils
are compounded of the so-called glacial clays. Doubtless, too, the
human brain was forced during the Drift Age to higher reaches of
development under the terrible ordeals of the hour.

Surely, then, we can afford to leave God's planets in God's hands.
Not a particle of dust is whirled in the funnel of the cyclone but
God identifies it, and has marked its path.

If we fall again upon

"Axe-ages, sword-ages,
Wind-ages, murder-ages--

if "sensual sins grow huge"; if "brother spoils brother" if Sodom and
Gomorrah come again--who can say that God may not bring out of the
depths of space a rejuvenating comet?

Be assured of one thing--this world tends now to a deification of
matter.

Dives says: "The earth is firm under my feet; I own my possessions
down to the center of the earth and up to

{p. 440}

the heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company
reimburses me; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me; if civil
war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away until the
storm is over; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at my call
to fight it back; if death comes, I am again insured, and my estate
makes money by the transaction; and if there is another world than
this, still am I insured: I have taken out a policy in the -----
church, and pay my premiums semiannually to the minister."

And Dives has an unexpressed belief that heaven is only a larger Wall
Street, where the millionaires occupy the front benches, while those
who never had a bank account on earth sing in the chorus.

Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of all the underfed,
under-paid, benighted millions of the earth--his fellow-men--to
higher levels of comfort, and joy, and intelligence--not tearing down
any but building up all--and Dives can not understand you.

Ah, Dives! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate of
these uncounted millions of your race! What does existence give to
them? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful world?

To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into
one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking
bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the poor
man's coming on, ghastly shapes look out:--sickness and want and sin
and grim despair and red-eyed suicide.

Put yourself in his place, Dives, locked up in such a cavern as that,
and the key thrown away!

Do not count too much, Dives, on your lands and houses and
parchments; your guns and cannon and laws; your insurance companies
and your governments. There

{p. 441}

may be even now one coming from beyond Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or
Coma Berenices, with glowing countenance and horrid hair, and
millions of tons of _débris_, to overwhelm you and your possessions,
and your corporations, and all the ant-like devices of man in one
common ruin.

Build a little broader, Dives. Establish spiritual relations. Matter
is not everything. You do not deal in certainties. You are but a
vitalized speck, filled with a fraction of God's delegated
intelligence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling
madly through infinite space, a target for the bombs of a universe.

Take your mind off your bricks and mortar, and put out your tentacles
toward the great spiritual world around you. Open communications with
God. You can not help God. For Him who made the Milky Way you can do
nothing. But here are his creatures. Not a nerve, muscle, or
brain-convolution of the humblest of these but duplicates your own;
you excel them simply in the coordination of certain inherited
faculties which have given you success. Widen your heart. Put your
intellect to work to so readjust the values of labor, and increase
the productive capacity of Nature, that plenty and happiness, light
and hope, may dwell in every heart, and the Catacombs be closed for
ever.

And from such a world God will fend off the comets with his great
right arm, and the angels will exult over it in heaven.

End of Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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