Sir Samuel White Baker - "In the Heart of Africa"

William Morris - "Old French Romances"

Anthony Trollope - "The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne"

Constant - "The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, v10"

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Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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




Imagine such a creature as that, with a head _fifty times as large as
the moon_, and a tail one hundred and sixteen million miles long,
rushing past this poor little earth of ours, with its diameter of
only seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles! The earth,
seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five miles wide, would simply
make a bullet-hole through that tail, fourteen million miles broad,
where it passed through it!--a mere eyelet-hole--a pin-hole--closed
up at once by the constant movements which take place in the tail of
the comet. And yet in that moment of contact the side of the earth
facing the comet might be covered with hundreds of feet of _débris_.

Or, on the other hand, the comet may, as described in some of the
legends, have struck the earth, head on, amid-ships, and the shock
may have changed the angle of inclination of the earth's axis, and
thus have modified

[1. Schellen, "Spectrum Analysis," p. 392.]

{p. 95}

permanently the climate of our globe; and to this cause we might look
also for the great cracks and breaks in the earth's surface, which
constitute the fiords of the sea-coast and the trap-extrusions of the
continents; and here, too,

###

THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.

might be the cause of those mighty excavations, hundreds of feet
deep, in which are now the Great Lakes of America, and from which, as
we have seen, great cracks radiate out in all directions, like the
fractures in a pane of glass where a stone has struck it.

The cavities in which rest the Great Lakes have been attributed to
the ice-sheet, but it is difficult to comprehend how an ice-sheet
could dig out and root out a hole, as in the case of Lake Superior,
_nine hundred feet deep!_

{p. 96}

And, if it did this, why were not similar holes excavated wherever
there were ice-sheets--to wit, all over the northern and southern
portions of the globe? Why should a general cause produce only local
results?

Sir Charles Lyell shows[1] that glaciers do not cut out holes like
the depressions in which the Great Lakes lie; he also shows that
these lakes are not due to a sinking down of the crust of the earth,
because the strata are continuous and unbroken beneath them. He also
calls attention to the fact that there is a continuous belt of such
lakes, reaching from the northwestern part of the United States,
through the Hudson Bay Territory, Canada, and Maine, to Finland, and
that this belt does not reach below 50° north latitude in Europe and
40° in America. Do these lie in the track of the great collision? The
comet, as the striæ indicate, came from the north.

The mass of Donati's comet was estimated by MM. Faye and Roche at
about the seven-hundredth part of the bulk of the earth. M. Faye says:

"That is the weight of a sea of forty thousand square miles one
hundred and nine yards deep; and it must be owned that a like mass,
animated with considerable velocity, might well produce, by its shock
with the earth, very perceptible results."[2]

We have but to suppose, (a not unreasonable supposition,) that the
comet which struck the earth was much larger than Donati's comet, and
we have the means of accounting for results as prodigious as those
referred to.

We have seen that it is difficult to suppose that ice produced the
drift-deposits, because they are not found where ice certainly was,
and they are found where ice certainly was not. But, if the reader
will turn to the

[1. "Elements of Geology," pp. 168,171, _et seq_.

2. "The Heavens," p. 260.]

{p. 97}

illustration which constitutes the frontispiece of this volume, and
the foregoing engraving on page 93, he will see that the Drift is
deposited on the earth, as it might have been if it had suddenly
fallen from the heavens; that is, it is on one side of the globe--to
wit, the side that faced the comet as it came on. I think this map is
substantially accurate. There is, however, an absence of authorities
as to the details of the drift-distribution. But, if my theory is
correct, the Drift probably fell at once. If it had been twenty-four
hours in falling, the diurnal revolution would, in turn, have
presented all sides of the earth to it, and the Drift would be found
everywhere. And this is in accordance with what we know of the rapid
movements of comets. They travel, as I have shown, at the rate of
three hundred and sixty-six miles per second; this is equal to
twenty-one thousand six hundred miles per minute, and one million two
hundred and ninety-six thousand miles per hour!

And this accords with what we know of the deposition of the Drift. It
came with terrific force. It smashed the rocks; it tore them up; it
rolled them over on one another; it drove its material _into_ the
underlying rocks; "it _indented it_ into them," says one authority,
already quoted.

It was accompanied by inconceivable winds--the hurricanes and
cyclones spoken of in many of the legends. Hence we find the loose
material of the original surface gathered up and carried into the
drift-material proper; hence the Drift is whirled about in the
wildest confusion. Hence it fell on the earth like a great snow-storm
driven by the wind. It drifted into all hollows; it was not so thick
on, or it was entirely absent from, the tops of hills; it formed
tails, precisely as snow does, on the leeward side of all
obstructions. Glacier-ice is slow and plastic,

{p. 98}

and folds around such impediments, and wears them away; the wind does
not. Compare the following representation of a well-known feature of
the Drift, called

###

CRAG AND TAIL.--_c_, crag; _t_, till.

"crag and tail," taken from Geikie's work,[1] with the drifts formed
by snow on the leeward side of fences or houses.

The material runs in streaks, just as if blown by violent winds:

"When cut through by rivers, or denuded by the action of the sea,
_ridges_ of bowlders are often seen to be inclosed within it.
Although destitute of stratification, horizontal lines are found,
indicating differences in texture and color."[2]

Geikie, describing the bowlder-clay, says:

"It seems to have come from regions whence it is bard to see how they
could have been borne by glaciers. As a rule it is quite
unstratified, but traces of bedding are not uncommon."

"Sometimes it contains worn fossils, and fragments of shells, broken,
crushed, and striated; sometimes it contains bands of stones arranged
in lines."

In short, it appears as if it were gusts and great whirls of the same
material as the "till," lifted up by the cyclones and mingled with
blocks, rocks, bones, sands, fossils, earth, peat, and other matters,
picked up with terrible

[1. "The Great Ice Age," p. 18.

2. "American Cyclopædia," vol. vi, p. 112.]

{p. 99}

force from the face of the earth and poured down pell-mell on top of
the first deposit of true "till."

In England ninety-four per cent of these stones found in this
bowlder-clay are "stranger" stones; that is to say, they do not
belong to the drainage area in which they are found, but must have
been carried there from great distances.

But how about the markings, the _striæ_, on the face of the
surface-rocks below the Drift? The answer is plain. _Débris_, moving
at the rate of a million miles an hour, would produce just such
markings.

Dana says:

"The sands carried by the winds when passing over rocks sometimes
_wear them smooth_, or cover them with _scratches and furrows_, as
observed by W. P. Blake on granite rocks at the Pass of San
Bernardino, in California. Even quartz was polished and garnets were
left projecting upon pedicels of feldspar. Limestone was so much worn
as to look as if the surface had been removed by solution. Similar
effects have been observed by Winchell in the Grand Traverse region,
Michigan. Glass in the windows of houses on Cape Cod sometimes has
holes worn through it by the same means. The hint from nature has led
to the use of sand, driven by a blast, with or without steam, for
cutting and engraving glass, and even for cutting and carving granite
and other hard rocks."[1]

Gratacap describes the rock underneath the "till" as polished and
oftentimes lustrous."[2]

But, it may be said, if it be true that _débris_, driven by a
terrible force, could have scratched and dented the rocks, could it
have made long, continuous lines and grooves upon them? But the fact
is, the _striæ_ on the face of the rocks covered by the Drift are
_not_ continuous;

[1. Dana's "Text-Book," p. 275.

2. "Popular Science Monthly," January, 1878, p. 320.]

{p. 100}

they do not indicate a steady and constant pressure, such as would
result where a mountainous mass of ice had caught a rock and held it,
as it were, in its mighty hand, and, thus holding it steadily, had
scored the rocks with it as it moved forward.

"The groove is of irregular depth, its floor rising and falling, as
though hitches had occurred when it was first planed, the great
chisel meeting resistance, or being thrown up at points along its
path."[1]

What other results would follow at once from contact with the comet?

We have seen that, to produce the phenomena of the Glacial age, it
was absolutely necessary that it must have been preceded by a period
of heat, great enough to vaporize all the streams and lakes and a
large part of the ocean. And we have seen that no mere ice-hypothesis
gives us any clew to the cause of this.

Would the comet furnish us with such heat? Let me call another
witness to the stand:

In the great work of Amédée Guillemin, already cited, we read:

"On the other hand, it seems proved that the light of the comets is,
in part, at least, borrowed from the sun. But may they not also
possess a light of their own? And, on this last hypothesis, is this
brightness owing to a kind of phosphorescence, or to the state of
incandescence of the nucleus? Truly, if the nuclei of comets be
incandescent, the smallness of their mass would eliminate from the
danger of their contact with the earth only one element of
destruction: _the temperature of the terrestrial atmosphere would be
raised to an elevation inimical to the existence of organized
beings_; and we should only escape the danger of a mechanical shock,
to run into a not less frightful

[1. Gratacap, "The Ice Age," in "Popular Science Monthly," January,
1818, p. 321.]

{p. 101}

one of being _calcined in a many days passage through an immense
furnace_."[1]

Here we have a good deal more heat than is necessary to account for
that vaporization of the seas of the globe which seems to have taken
place during the Drift Age.

But similar effects might be produced, in another way, even though
the heat of the comet itself was inconsiderable.

Suppose the comet, or a large part of it, to have fallen into the
sun. The arrested motion would be converted into heat. The material
would feed the combustion of the sun. Some have theorized that the
sun is maintained by the fall of cometic matter into it. What would
be the result?

Mr. Proctor notes that in 1866 a star, in the constellation Northern
Cross, suddenly shone with _eight hundred times its former luster_,
afterward rapidly diminishing in luster. In 1876 a new star in the
constellation Cygnus became visible, subsequently fading again so as
to be only perceptible by means of a telescope; the luster of this
star must have increased from five hundred to _many_ thousand times.

Mr. Proctor claims that should our sun similarly increase in luster
even one hundred-fold, the glowing heat would destroy all vegetable
and animal life on earth.

There is no difficulty in seeing our way to heat enough, if we
concede that a comet really struck the earth or fell into the sun.
The trouble is in the other direction--we would have too much heat.

We shall see, hereafter, that there is evidence in our rocks that in
two different ages of the world, millions of years before the Drift
period, the whole surface of the

[1. "The Heavens," p. 260.]

{p. 102}

earth was actually fused and melted, probably by cometic contact.

This earth of ours is really a great powder-magazine there is enough
inflammable and explosive material about it to blow it into shreds at
any moment.

Sir Charles Lyell quotes, approvingly, the thought of Pliny: "It is
an amazement that our world, so full of combustible elements, stands
a moment unexploded."

It needs but an infinitesimal increase in the quantity of oxygen in
the air to produce a combustion which would melt all things. In pure
oxygen, steel burns like a candle-wick. Nay, it is not necessary to
increase the amount of oxygen in the air to produce terrible results.
It has been shown[1] that, of our forty-five miles of atmosphere, one
fifth, or a stratum of nine miles in thickness, is oxygen. A shock,
or an electrical or other convulsion, which would even partially
disarrange or decompose this combination, and send an increased
quantity of oxygen, the heavier gas, to the earth, would wrap
everything in flames. Or the same effects might follow from any great
change in the constitution of the water of the world. Water is
composed of eight parts of oxygen and one part of hydrogen. "The
intensest heat by far ever yet produced by the blow-pipe is by the
combustion of these two gases." And Dr. Robert Hare, of Philadelphia,
found that the combination which produced the intensest heat was that
in which the two gases were in the _precise proportions found in
water_.[2]

We may suppose that this vast heat, whether it came from the comet,
or the increased action of the sun, preceded the fall of the _débris_
of the comet by a few minutes or a few hours. We have seen the
surface-rocks

[1. "Science and Genesis," p. 125.

2. Ibid., p. 127.]

{p. 103}

described as lustrous. The heat may not have been great enough to
melt them--it may merely have softened them; but when the mixture of
clay, gravel, striated rocks, and earth-sweepings fell and rested on
them, they were at once hardened and almost baked; and thus we can
account for the fact that the "till," which lies next to the rocks,
is so hard and tough, compared with the rest of the Drift, that it is
impossible to blast it, and exceedingly difficult even to pick it to
pieces; it is more feared by workmen and contractors than any of the
true rocks.

Professor Hartt shows that there is evidence that some cause, prior
to but closely connected with the Drift, did decompose the
surface-rocks underneath the Drift to great depths, changing their
chemical composition and appearance. Professor Hartt says:

"In Brazil, and in the United States in the vicinity of New York
city, the surface-rocks, under the Drift, are decomposed from a depth
of a few inches to that of a hundred feet. The feldspar has _been
converted into slate_, and the mica _has parted with its iron_."[1]

Professor Hartt tries to account for this metamorphosis by supposing
it to have been produced by warm rains! But why should there be warm
rains at this particular period? And why, if warm rains occurred in
all ages, were not all the earlier rocks similarly changed while they
were at the surface?

Heusser and Clarez suppose this decomposition of the rocks to be due
to nitric acid. But where did the nitric acid come from?

In short, here is the proof of the presence on the earth, just before
the Drift struck it, of that conflagration which we shall find
described in so many legends.

[1. "The Geology of Brazil," p. 25.]

{p. 104}

And certainly the presence of ice could not decompose rocks a hundred
feet deep, and change their chemical constitution. Nothing but heat
could do it.

But we have seen that the comet is self-luminous--that is, it is in
process of combustion; it emits great gushes and spouts of luminous
gases; its nucleus is enveloped in a cloak of gases. What effect
would these gases have upon our atmosphere?

First, they would be destructive to animal life. But it does not
follow that they would cover the whole earth. If they did, all life
must have ceased. They may have fallen in places here and there, in
great sheets or patches, and have caused, until they burned
themselves out, the conflagrations which the traditions tell us
accompanied the great disaster.

Secondly, by adding increased proportions to some of the elements of
our atmosphere they may have helped to produce the marked difference
between the pre-glacial and our present climate.

What did these gases consist of?

Here that great discovery, the spectroscope, comes to our aid. By it
we are able to tell the elements that are being consumed in remote
stars; by it we have learned that comets are in part self-luminous,
and in part shine by the reflected light of the sun; by it we are
even able to identify the very gases that are in a state of
combustion in comets.

In Schellen's great work[1] I find a cut (see next page) comparing
the spectra of carbon with the light emitted by two comets observed
in 1868--Winnecke's comet and Brorsen's comet.

Here we see that the self-luminous parts of these comets

[1. "Spectrum Analysis," p. 396.]

{p. 105}

burned with substantially the same spectrum as that emitted by
burning carbon. The inference is irresistible that these comets were
wrapped in great masses of carbon in a state of combustion. This is
the conclusion reached by Dr. Schellen.

###

SOLAR SPECTRUM

Padre Secchi, the great Roman astronomer, examined Dr. Winnecke's
comet on the 21st of June, 1868, and concluded that the light from
the self-luminous part was produced by carbureted hydrogen.

We shall see that the legends of the different races speak of the
poison that accompanied the comet, and by which great multitudes were
slain; the very waters that

{p. 106}

first flowed through the Drift, we are told, were poisonous. We have
but to remember that carbureted hydrogen is the deadly fire-damp of
the miners to realize what effect great gusts of it must have had on
animal life.

We are told[1] that it burns with a _yellow_ flame when subjected to
great heat, and some of the legends, we will see hereafter, speak of
the "yellow hair" of the comet that struck the earth.

And we are further told that, "when it, carbureted hydrogen, is mixed
in due proportion with oxygen or atmospheric air, a compound is
produced which explodes with the electric spark or the approach of
flame." Another form of carbureted hydrogen, olefiant gas, is deadly
to life, burns with a white light, and when mixed with three or four
volumes of oxygen, or ten or twelve of air, it explodes with terrific
violence.

We shall see, hereafter, that many of the legends tell us that, as
the comet approached the earth, that is, as it entered our atmosphere
and combined with it, it gave forth world-appalling noises, thunders
beyond all earthly thunders, roarings, howlings, and hissings, that
shook the globe. If a comet did come, surrounded by volumes of
carbureted hydrogen, or carbon combined with hydrogen, the moment it
reached far enough into our atmosphere to supply it with the
requisite amount of oxygen or atmospheric air, precisely such
dreadful explosions would occur, accompanied by noises similar to
those described in the legends.

Let us go a step further:

Let us try to conceive the effects of the fall of the material of the
comet upon the earth.

We have seen terrible rain-storms, hail-storms, snow-storms;

[1. "American Cyclopædia," vol. iii, p. 776.]

{p. 107}

but fancy a storm of stones and gravel and clay-dust!--not a mere
shower either, but falling in black masses, darkening the heavens,
vast enough to cover the world in many places hundreds of feet in
thickness; leveling valleys, tearing away and grinding down hills,
changing the whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and above
it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; through
the drifts of _débris_ glimpses are caught of the glaring and burning
monster; while through all and over all is an unearthly heat, under
which rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, disappear as if by magic.

Now, reader, try to grasp the meaning of all this description. Do not
merely read the words. To read aright, upon any subject, you must
read below the words, above the words, and take in all the relations
that surround the words. So read this record.

Look out at the scene around you. Here are trees fifty feet high.
Imagine an instantaneous descent of granite-sand and gravel
sufficient to smash and crush these trees to the ground, to bury
their trunks, and to cover the earth one hundred to five hundred feet
higher than the elevation to which their tops now reach! And this not
alone here in your garden, or over your farm, or over your township,
or over your county, or over your State; but over the whole continent
in which you dwell--in short, over the greater part of the habitable
world!

Are there any words that can draw, even faintly, such a picture--its
terror, its immensity, its horrors, its destructiveness, its
surpassal of all earthly experience and imagination? And this human
ant-hill, the world, how insignificant would it be in the grasp of
such a catastrophe! Its laws, its temples, its libraries, its
religions, its armies, its mighty nations, would be but as the veriest

{p. 108}

stubble--dried grass, leaves, rubbish-crushed, smashed, buried, under
this heaven-rain of horrors.

But, lo! through the darkness, the wretches not beaten down and
whelmed in the _débris_, but scurrying to mountain-caves for refuge,
have a new terror: the cry passes from lip to lip, "The world is on
fire!"

The head of the comet sheds down fire. Its gases have fallen in great
volumes on the earth; they ignite; amid the whirling and rushing of
the _débris_, caught in cyclones, rises the glare of a Titanic
conflagration. The winds beat the rocks against the rocks; they pick
up sand-heaps, peat-beds, and bowlders, and whirl them madly in the
air. The heat increases. The rivers, the lakes, the ocean itself,
evaporate.

And poor humanity! Burned, bruised, wild, crazed, stumbling, blown
about like feathers in the hurricanes, smitten by mighty rocks, they
perish by the million; a few only reach the shelter of the caverns;
and thence, glaring backward, look out over the ruins of a destroyed
world.

And not humanity alone has fled to these hiding-places: the terrified
denizens of the forest, the domestic animals of the fields, with the
instinct which in great tempests has driven them into the houses of
men, follow the refugees into the caverns. We shall see all this
depicted in the legends.

The first effect of the great heat is the vaporization of the waters
of the earth; but this is arrested long before it has completed its
work.

Still the heat is intense--how long it lasts, who shall tell? An
Arabian legend indicates years.

The stones having ceased to fall, the few who have escaped--and they
are few indeed, for many are shut up for ever by the clay-dust and
gravel in their hiding-places,

{p. 109}

and on many others the convulsions of the earth have shaken down the
rocky roofs of the caves--the few survivors come out, or dig their
way out, to look upon a changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the
sky, no rivers or lakes are on the earth; only the deep springs of
the caverns are left; the sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze
heavens. It is to this period that the Norse legend of Mimer's well,
where Odin gave an eye for a drink of water, refers.

But gradually the heat begins to dissipate. This is a signal for
tremendous electrical action. Condensation commences. Never has the
air held such incalculable masses of moisture; never has heaven's
artillery so rattled and roared since earth began! Condensation means
clouds. We will find hereafter a whole body of legends about "the
stealing of the clouds" and their restoration. The veil thickens. The
sun's rays are shut out. It grows colder; more condensation follows.
The heavens darken. Louder and louder bellows the thunder. We shall
see the lightnings represented, in myth after myth, as the arrows of
the rescuing demi-god who saves the world. The heat has carried up
perhaps one fourth of all the water of the world into the air. Now it
is condensed into cloud. We know how an ordinary storm darkens the
heavens. In this case it is black night. A pall of dense cloud, many
miles in thickness, enfolds the earth. No sun, no moon, no stars, can
be seen. "Darkness is on the face of the deep." Day has ceased to be.
Men stumble against each other. All this we shall find depicted in
the legends. The overloaded atmosphere begins to discharge itself.
The great work of restoring the waters of the ocean to the ocean
begins. It grows colder--colder--colder. The pouring rain turns into
snow, and settles on all the uplands and north countries; snow falls
on

{p. 110}

snow; gigantic snow-beds are formed, which gradually solidify into
ice. While no mile-thick ice-sheet descends to the Mediterranean or
the Gulf of Mexico, glaciers intrude into all the valleys, and the
flora and fauna of the temperate regions become arctic; that is to
say, only those varieties of plants and animals survive in those
regions that are able to stand the cold, and these we now call arctic.