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Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

I >> Ignatius Donnelly >> Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel




We know that the heavenly bodies are formed of the same materials as
our globe.

Dana says:

"Meteoric stones exemplify the same chemical and crystallographic
laws as the rocks of the earth, and have afforded no new element or
principle of any kind."[2]

It may be presumed, therefore, that the granite crust of the exploded
globe from which some comet was created was the source of the finely
triturated material which we know as clay.

But the clays are of different colors--white, yellow, red, and blue.

[1. "Popular Science Monthly," November, 1881, p. 86.

2. "Manual of Geology," p. 3.]

{p. 75}

"The aluminous minerals contained in granite rocks are feldspar,
mica, and hornblende. . . . Mica and hornblende generally contain
considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar usually yields only a
trace or none. Therefore clays which are derived from feldspar are
light-colored or white, while those partially made up of decomposed
mica or hornblende are dark, either bluish or red."[1]

The tail of the comet seems to be perpetually in motion. It is, says
one writer, "continually _changing and fluctuating_ as vaporous
masses of cloud-like structure might be conceived to do, and in some
instances there has been a strong appearance even of an _undulating
movement_."[2]

The great comet of 1858, Donati's comet, which many now living will
well remember, and which was of such size that when its head was near
our horizon the extremity of the tail reached nearly to the zenith,
illustrated this continual movement of the material of the tail; that
appendage shrank and enlarged millions of miles in length.

Mr. Lockyer believed that he saw in Coggia's comet the evidences of a
_whirling_ motion--

"In which the regions of greatest brightness were caused by the
different coils _cutting_, or appearing to cut, each other, and so in
these parts leading to compression or condensation, and _frequent
collision of the luminous particles_."

Olbers saw in a comet's tail--

"A sudden flash and pulsation of light which vibrated for several
seconds through it, and the tail appeared during the continuance of
the pulsations of light to be lengthened by several degrees and then
again contracted."[1]

[1. "American Cyclopædia," article "Clay."

2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208,

3, "Cosmos," vol. i, p. 143.]

{p. 76}

Now, in this perpetual motion, this conflict, these great thrills of
movement, we are to find the source of the clays which cover a large
part of our globe to a depth of hundreds of feet. Where are those
exposures of granite on the face of the earth from which ice or water
could have ground them? Granite, I repeat, comes to the surface only
in limited areas. And it must be remembered that clay is the product
exclusively of granite ground to powder. The clays are composed
exclusively of the products of disintegrated granite. They contain
but a trace of lime or magnesia or organic matters, and these can be
supposed to have been infiltrated into them after their arrival on
the face of the earth.[1] Other kinds of rock, ground up, form sand.
Moreover, we have seen that neither glaciers nor ice-sheets now
produce such clays.

We shall see, as we proceed, that the legends of mankind, in
describing the comet that struck the earth, represent it as
party-colored; it is "speckled" in one legend; spotted like a tiger
in another; sometimes it is a _white_ boar in the heavens; sometimes
a _blue_ snake; sometimes it is _red_ with the blood of the millions
that are to perish. Doubtless these separate formations, ground out
of the granite, from the mica, hornblende, or feldspar, respectively,
may, as I have said, under great laws, acted upon by magnetism or
electricity, have arranged themselves in separate lines or sheets, in
the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region
are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue.
Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as
"winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely
as the telescopes show us the comets do to-day.

[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. iv, p. 650.]

{p. 77}

The very fact that these waves of motion run through the tail of the
comet, and that it is capable of expanding and contracting on an
immense scale, is conclusive proof that it is composed of small,
adjustable particles. The writer from whom I have already quoted,
speaking of the extraordinary comet of 1843, says:

"As the comet moves past the great luminary, it sweeps round its tail
as a sword may be conceived to be held out at arm's-length, and then
waved round the head, from one side to the opposite. But a sword with
a blade one hundred and fifty millions of miles long must be a
somewhat awkward weapon to brandish round after this fashion. Its
point would have to sweep through a curve stretching out more than
six hundred millions of miles; and, even with an allowance of two
hours for the accomplishment of the movement, the flash of the weapon
would be of such terrific velocity that it is not an easy task to
conceive how any blade of _connected material substance_ could bear
the strain of the stroke. Even with a blade that possessed the
coherence and tenacity of iron or steel, the case would be one that
it would be difficult for molecular cohesion to deal with. But that
difficulty is almost infinitely increased when it is a substance of
much lower cohesive tenacity than either iron or steel that has to be
subjected to the strain.

"There would be, at least, some mitigation of this difficulty if it
were lawful to assume that the substance which is subjected to this
strain was not amenable to the laws of ponderable existence; if there
were room for the notion that comets and their tails, which have to
be brandished in such a stupendous fashion, were sky-spectres,
immaterial phantoms, unreal visions of that negative shadow-kind
which has been alluded to. This, however, unfortunately, is not a
permissible alternative in the circumstances of the case. The great
underlying and indispensable fact that the comet comes rushing up
toward the sun out of space, and then shoots round that great center
of attraction by the force of its own acquired and ever-increasing
impetuosity; the fact that it is obedient

{p. 78}

through this course to the law of elliptical, or, to speak more
exactly, of conic-section, movement, _permits of no doubt as to the
condition of materiality_. The comet is obviously drawn by the
influence of the sun's mass, and is subservient to that all-pervading
law of sympathetic gravitation that is the sustaining bond of the
material universe. _It is ponderable substance beyond all question_,
and held by that chain of physical connection which it was the glory
of Newton to discover. If the comet were not a material and
ponderable substance it would not gravitate round the sun, and it
would not move with increasing velocity as it neared the mighty mass
until it had gathered the energy for its own escape in the enhanced
and quickened momentum. In the first instance, the ready obedience to
the attraction, and then the overshooting of the spot from which it
is exerted, combine to establish the comet's right to stand ranked at
least among the ponderable bodies of space."[1]

And it is to the comet we must look for the source of a great part of
those vast deposits of gravel which go to constitute the Drift.

"They have been usually attributed to the action of waves; but the
mechanical work of the ocean is mostly confined to its shores and
soundings, where alone material exists in quantity within reach of
the waves and currents.[2] . . . The eroding action is greatest for a
short distance above the height of half-tide, and, except in violent
storms, it is almost null below low-tide."[3]

But if any one will examine a sea-beach he will see, not a vast mass
of pebbles perpetually rolling and grinding each other, but an
expanse of sand. And this is to be expected; for as soon as a part of
the pebbles is, by the attrition of the waves, reduced to sand, the
sand packs around the stones and arrests their further waste. To form
such a mass of gravel as is found in the Drift we

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 202.

2. Dana's "Text Book," p. 286.

3. Ibid., p. 287.]

{p. 79}

must conceive of some way whereby, as soon as the sand is formed, it
is removed from the stones while the work of attrition goes on. This
process we can conceive of in a comet, if the finer _detritus_ is
constantly carried back and arranged in the order of the size of its
particles.

To illustrate my meaning: let one place any hard substance,
consisting of large fragments, in a mortar, and proceed to reduce it
with a pestle to a fine powder. The work proceeds rapidly at first,
until a portion of the material is triturated; you then find that the
pulverized part has packed around and protected the larger fragments,
and the work is brought to a stand-still. You have to remove the
finer material if you would crush the pieces that remain.

The sea does not separate the sand from the gravel; it places all
together at elevations where the waves can not reach them:

"Waves or shallow soundings have some transporting power; and, as
they always move toward the land, their action is landward. They thus
beat back, little by little, any _detritus_ in the waters, preventing
that loss to continents or islands which would take place if it were
carried out to sea."[1]

The pebbles and gravel are soon driven by the waves up the shore, and
beyond the reach of further wear;[2] and "_the rivers carry only silt
to the ocean_."[3]

The brooks and rivers produce much more gravel than the sea-shore:

"The _detritus_ brought down by rivers is vastly greater in quantity
than the stones, sand, or clay produced by the wear of the coasts."[4]

[1. Dana's "Text Book," p. 288.

2. Ibid., p. 291.

3. Ibid., p. 302.

4. Ibid., p. 290.]

{p. 80}

But it would be absurd to suppose that the beds of rivers could have
furnished the immeasurable volumes of gravel found over a great part
of the world in the drift-deposits.

And the drift-gravel is different from the gravel of the sea or
rivers.

Geikie says, speaking of the "till":

"There is something very peculiar about the shape of the stones. They
are neither round and oval, like the pebbles in river-gravel, or the
shingle of the sea-shore, nor are they sharply angular like
newly-fallen _débris_ at the base of a cliff, although they more
closely resemble the latter than the former. They are, indeed,
angular in shape, but the sharp corners and edges have _invariably
been smoothed away_. . . . Their shape, as will be seen, is by no
means their most striking peculiarity. Each is smoothed, polished,
and covered with striæ or scratches, some of which are delicate as
the lines traced by an etching-needle, others deep and harsh as the
scores made by the plow upon a rock. And, what is worthy of note,
most of the scratches, coarse and fine together, seem to run parallel
to the longer diameter of the stones, which, however, are scratched
in many other directions as well."[1]

Let me again summarize:

I. Comets consist of a blazing nucleus and a mass of ponderable,
separated matter, such as stones, gravel, clay-dust, and gas.

II. The nucleus gives out great heat and masses of burning gas.

III. Luminous gases surround the nucleus.

IV. The drift-clays are the result of the grinding up of granitic
rocks.

V. No such deposits, of anything like equal magnitude, could have
been formed on the earth.

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 13.]

{p. 81}

VI. No such clays are now being formed under glaciers or Arctic
ice-sheets.

VII. These clays were ground out of the substance of the comet by the
endless changes of position of the material of which it is composed
as it flew through space, during its incalculable journeys in the
long reaches of time.

VIII. The earth-supplies of gravel are inadequate to account for the
gravel of the drift-deposits.

IX. Neither sea-beach nor rivers produce stones like those found in
the Drift.

I pass now to the next question.

{p. 82}

CHAPTER III.

COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH?

READER, the evidence I am about to present will satisfy you, not only
that a comet might have struck the earth in the remote past, but,
that the marvel is that the earth escapes collision for a single
century, I had almost said for a single year.

How many comets do you suppose there are within the limits of the
solar system (and remember that the solar system occupies but an
insignificant portion of universal space)?

Half a dozen-fifty-a hundred-you will answer.

Let us put the astronomers on the witness-stand:

Kepler affirmed that "COMETS ARE SCATTERED THROUGH THE HEAVENS WITH
AS MUCH PROFUSION AS FISHES IN THE OCEAN."

Think of that!

"Three or four telescopic comets are now entered upon astronomical
records every year. Lalande had a list of seven hundred comets that
had been observed in his time."

Arago estimated that the comets belonging to the solar system, within
the orbit of Neptune, numbered _seventeen million five hundred
thousand!_

Lambert regards _five hundred millions_ as a very moderate
estimate![1]

[1. Guillemin, "The Heavens," p. 251.]

{p. 83}

And this does not include the monstrous fiery wanderers who may come
to visit us, bringing their relations

###

ORBITS OF THE PERIODIC COMETS.

along, from outside the solar system--a sort of celestial immigrants
whom no anti-Chinese legislation can keep away.

Says Guillemin:

"Leaving mere re-appearances out of the question, _new comets are
constantly found to arrive from the depths of space_, describing
around the sun orbits which testify to the attractive power of that
radiant body; and, for the

{p. 84}

most part, going away for centuries, to return again from afar after
their immense revolutions."[1]

But do these comets come anywhere near the orbit of the earth?

Look at the map on the preceding page, from Amédée Guillemin's great
work, "The Heavens," page 244, and you can answer the question for
yourself.

Here you see the orbit of the earth overwhelmed in a complication of
comet-orbits. The earth, here, is like a lost child in the midst of a
forest full of wild beasts.

And this diagram represents the orbits of only six comets out of
those seventeen millions or five hundred millions!

It is a celestial game of ten-pins, with the solar system for a
bowling-alley, and the earth waiting for a ten-strike.

In 1832 the earth and Biela's comet, as I will show more particularly
hereafter, were both making for the same spot, moving with celestial
rapidity, but the comet reached the point of junction one month
before the earth did; and, as the comet was not polite enough to wait
for us to come up, this generation missed a revelation.

"In the year 1779 Lexell's comet approached so near to the earth that
it would have increased the length of the sidereal year by three
hours if its mass had been equal to the earth's."[2]

And this same comet did strike our fellow-planet, Jupiter.

[1. "The Heavens," p. 251.

2. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]

{p. 85}

In the years 1767 and 1779 Lexell's comet passed though the midst of
Jupiter's satellites, and became entangled temporarily among them.
But not one of the satellites altered its movements to the extent of
a hair's breadth, or of a tenth of an instant."[1]

But it must be remembered that we had no glasses then, and have none
now, that could tell us what were the effects of this visitation upon
the surface of Jupiter or its moons. The comet might have covered
Jupiter one hundred feet--yes, one hundred miles--thick with gravel
and clay, and formed clouds of its seas five miles in thickness,
without our knowing anything about it. Even our best telescopes can
only perceive on the moon's surface--which is, comparatively
speaking, but a few miles distant from us--objects of very great
size, while Jupiter is sixteen hundred times farther away from us
than the moon.

But it is known that Lexell's comet was very much demoralized by
Jupiter. It first came within the influence of that planet in 1767;
it lost its original orbit, and went bobbing around Jupiter until
1779, when it became entangled with Jupiter's moons, and then it lost
its orbit again, and was whisked off into infinite space, never more,
perhaps, to be seen by human eyes. Is it not reasonable to suppose
that an event which thus demoralized the comet may have caused it to
cast down a considerable part of its material on the face of Jupiter?

Encke's comet revolves around the sun in the short period of twelve
hundred and five days, and, strange to say--

"The period of its revolution is _constantly diminishing_; so that,
if this progressive diminution always follows the same rate, _the
time when the comet_, continually

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 205.]

{p. 86}

describing a spiral, _will be plunged into the incandescent mass of
the sun can be calculated_."[1]

The comet of 1874, first seen by Coggia, at Marseilles, and called by
his name, came between the earth and the sun, and _approached within
sixty thousand miles of the flaming surface of the sun_. It traveled
through this fierce blaze at the rate of _three hundred and sixty-six
miles per second!_ Three hundred and sixty-six miles _per second!_
When a railroad-train moves at the rate of a mile per minute, we
regard it as extraordinary speed; but three hundred and sixty-six
miles _per second!_ The mind fails to grasp it.

When this comet was seen by Sir John Herschel, after it had made its
grand sweep around the sun, it was not more than _six times the
breadth of the sun's face away from the sun_. And it had come
careering through infinite space with awful velocity to this close
approximation to our great luminary.

And remember that these comets are no animalculæ. They are monsters
that would reach from the sun to the earth. And when we say that they
come so close to the sun as in the above instances, it means peril to
the earth by direct contact; to say nothing of the results to our
planet by the increased combustion of the run, and the increased heat
on earth should one of them fall upon the sun. We have seen, in the
last chapter, that the great comet of 1843 possessed a tail one
hundred and fifty million miles long; that is, it would reach from
the sun to the earth, and have over fifty million miles of tail to
spare; and it swept this gigantic appendage around in two hours,
describing the are of a circle _six hundred million miles long!_

[1. Guillemin, "The Heavens," p. 247.]

{p. 87}

The mind fails to grasp these figures. Solar space is hardly large
enough for such gyrations.

And it must be remembered that this enormous creature actually
_grazed the surface of the sun_.

And it is supposed that this monster of 1843, which was first seen in
1668, returned, and was seen in the southern hemisphere in 1880--that
is to say, it came back in thirty-seven years instead of one hundred
and seventy-five years. Whereupon Mr. Proctor remarked:

"If already the comet experiences such resistance in passing through
the corona when at its nearest to the sun that its period undergoes a
marked diminution, the effect must of necessity be increased at each
return, and after only a few, possibly one or two, circuits, the
comet will be absorbed by the sun."

On October 10, 1880, Lewis Swift, of Rochester, New York, discovered
a comet which has proved to be of peculiar interest. From its first
discovery it has presented no brilliancy of appearance, for, during
its period of visibility, a telescope of considerable power was
necessary to observe it. Since this comet, when in close proximity to
the earth, was very faint indeed, its dimensions must be quite
moderate.

The illustration on page 88 gives the orbit of the earth and the
orbit of this comet, and shows how closely they approached each
other; when at its nearest, the comet was only distant from the earth
0.13 of the distance of the earth from the sun.

It comes back in eleven years, or in 1891.

On the 22d of June, 1881, a comet of great brilliancy flashed
suddenly into view. It was unexpected, and advanced with tremendous
rapidity. The illustration on page 89 will show how its flight
intersected the orbit of the earth. At its nearest point, June 19th,
it was distant

{p. 88}

from the earth only 0.28 of the distance of the sun from the earth.

Now, it is to be remembered that great attention has been paid during
the past few years to searching for comets, and some of the results
are here given. As many as five were discovered during the year 1881.
But not

###

ORBIT OF EARTH AND COMET

a few of the greatest of these strange orbs require thousands of
years to complete their orbits. The period of the comet of July,
1844, has been estimated at not less than one hundred thousand years!

Some of those that have flashed into sight recently have been
comparatively small, and their contact with

{p. 89}

###

THE EARTH'S ORBIT

the earth might produce but trifling results. Others, again, are
constructed on an extraordinary scale; but even the largest of these
may be but children compared with the monsters that wander through
space on orbits

{p. 90}

that penetrate the remotest regions of the solar system, and even
beyond it.

When we consider the millions of comets around us, and when we
remember how near some of these have come to us during the last few
years, who will undertake to say that during the last thirty
thousand, fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand years, one of these
erratic luminaries, with blazing front and train of _débris_, may not
have come in collision with the earth?

{p. 91}

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE EARTH.

IN this chapter I shall try to show what effect the contact of a
comet must have had upon the earth and its inhabitants.

I shall ask the reader to follow the argument closely first, that he
may see whether any part of the theory is inconsistent with the
well-established principles of natural philosophy; and, secondly,
that he may bear the several steps in his memory, as he will find, as
we proceed, that _every detail of the mighty catastrophe has been
preserved in the legends of mankind_, and precisely in the order in
which reason tells us they must have occurred.

In the first place, it is, of course, impossible at this time to say
precisely how the contact took place; whether the head of the comet
fell into or approached close to the sun, like the comet of 1843, and
then swung its mighty tail, hundreds of millions of miles in length,
moving at a rate almost equal to the velocity of light, around
through a great are, and swept past the earth;--the earth, as it
were, going through the midst of the tail, which would extend for a
vast distance beyond and around it. In this movement, the side of the
earth, facing the advance of the tail, would receive and intercept
the mass of material--stones, gravel, and the finely-ground-up-dust
which, compacted by water, is now clay--which came in contact with
it, while the comet would sail off into space,

{p. 92}

demoralized, perhaps, in its orbit, like Lexell's comet when it
became entangled with Jupiter's moons, but shorn of a comparatively
small portion of its substance.

The following engraving will illustrate my meaning. I can not give,
even approximately, the proportions of the

###

THE COMET SWEEPING PAST THE EARTH.

objects represented, and thus show the immensity of the sun as
compared with our insignificant little orb. In a picture showing the
true proportions of the sun and earth, the sun would have to be so
large that it would take up the entire page, while the earth would be
but as a

{p. 93}

###

THE SIDE OF THE EARTH STRUCK BY THE COMET {left}

THE SIDE NOT STRUCK BY THE COMET {right}

{p. 94}

pin-head. And I have not drawn the comet on a scale large enough as
compared with the earth.

If the reader will examine the map on page 93, he will see that the
distribution of the Drift accords with this theory. If we suppose the
side of the earth shown in the left-hand figure was presented to the
comet, we will see why the Drift is supposed to be confined to
Europe, Africa, and parts of America; while the right-hand figure
will show the half of the world that escaped.

"The breadth of the tail of the great comet of 1811, at its widest
part, was nearly fourteen million miles, the length one hundred and
sixteen million miles, and that of the second comet of the same year,
one hundred and forty million miles."[1]

On page 95 is a representation of this monster.