Fragments of Earth Lore: Sketches & Addresses Geological and Geographical

III.

The Results of Fluvio-glacial Action in Europe

The third question which I now proceed to consider is the result produced by the rivers and torrents of the Ice Age. This, I am aware, is a wide subject, and one upon which much has been written. But there are a few points which may be advantageously discussed for the purpose of bringing into prominent view the conditions which obtained in the river-valleys of Europe during the last great extension of glacier-ice.

A little consideration will serve to convince one that the intense glacial conditions that obtained in our Continent during the cold epochs of the glacial period were due to a low temperature, combined with excessive snow-fall. The winters, we can have no doubt, must have been prolonged and severe. But mere low temperature will not account for the enormous precipitation of snow. For this, great evaporation was required. And we are therefore forced to admit that the direct heat of the sun in summer must have been greater than it is in the same regions at the present day. Now, if this were really the case (and I do not see how otherwise the facts can be explained), then we ought to meet with evidence of swollen rivers, torrents, and widespread inundations everywhere outside of the glaciated areas. And this is precisely what we do find. Immense accumulations of coarse gravels are widely spread over all the valleys that head in regions which were formerly the sites of snow-fields and glaciers. These gravels are of such a character and are so distributed as to make it certain that they could not have been transported to and deposited in their present positions by rivers like those which now wind their way down the valleys of middle Europe. Still more remarkable are the enormous sheets of loam which are spread over much wider areas and reach to more considerable heights than the gravels. The origin of the gravels is sufficiently evident; they are simply the coarser detritus, swept along by the enormously flooded rivers of the glacial period, and meet with their analogues in the torrential gravels of modern glacier-valleys in the Alps and other elevated regions. The more widely-spread loams, according to the opinion of most glacialists, represent the finer mud and silt deposited from the muddy waters of the same period. But the height to which such gravels and loams ascend is so great that those who hold them to be of fluvio-glacial origin have found it difficult to maintain this view. Some writers, indeed, who have not sufficiently considered the weight of the evidence in its favour, have set it aside, and boldly suggested all kinds of wonderful hypotheses in its place. One imaginative author, for example, believes the wide-spread loams to be of volcanic origin, while another finds in the same deposits strong evidence of the Deluge. By a well-known and experienced observer, the famous löss of middle Europe is considered to be an Æolian accumulation – that is to say, a wind-blown deposit – the result of long-continued or frequently-repeated dust-storms. This is the opinion of Baron Richthofen, whose great work on China is so justly esteemed. He infers that at the time of the formation of our löss central Europe was a dry desiccated region, just as wide areas in central Asia are in our own day. He does not attempt to show us, however, how such climatic conditions could ever obtain in Europe. In point of fact, the geographical conditions of our Continent have not changed materially since Pleistocene times, and the presence of the wide Atlantic Ocean, that laves all our western shores, is of itself sufficient to preclude the possibility of such a climate having obtained in middle Europe. Richthofen’s theory likewise fails to account for the geographical distribution of the löss, and for many facts relating to its geology. Only one of these last shall I mention. The löss is intimately associated with accumulations, the glacial and fluvio-glacial origin of which cannot be doubted. It belongs, in fact, to the glacial series, and was laid down at a time when vast snow-fields and ice-sheets existed, and when it is quite impossible that a dry climate could have characterised any part of our Continent. In common with most geologists, I believe that the löss is simply an inundation-mud, deposited in temporary lakes and over flooded areas during the summer meltings of the snow- and ice-fields; and I shall now try to show how the occurrence at high levels of gravels and such loams as the löss may be accounted for without having recourse to volcanic action or to winds, or even to the Deluge. I shall invoke no agencies other than those which we are perfectly well assured were in full operation during the Ice Age.

Now, I ask you, in the first place, to bear in mind that while a glacial epoch continued, extreme conditions could not have been restricted to the areas undergoing glaciation. There is abundant evidence, indeed, to show that heavy, snows occasionally covered other regions, and that in such places severe frosts acted upon the rocks and soils even of the low-grounds. Need we wonder if at a time when the northern ice-sheet approached the fiftieth parallel of latitude in middle Europe, when almost every mountain-group of central and southern Europe had its snow-fields and glaciers – need we wonder if at such a time the climate of wide areas outside of the glaciated tracts was extremely ungenial? The more closely the superficial accumulations of such areas are studied, the more clearly do we perceive in them the evidence of cold and humid conditions. Try, then, to picture to yourselves the probable aspect of those regions during a glacial epoch. Immediately south of the northern ice-sheet deep snows must have buried large tracts of country, and such snows may have endured often for long years, notwithstanding the great melting that took place in summer. Even much further south, as in Spain and Italy, deep snows would cover the lesser hills and hill-ranges, while frost would act energetically in many a district where such action is now either inconsiderable or unknown. Such being the general conditions that must have obtained in the non-glaciated areas, let us very briefly consider what the results of such conditions must necessarily have been. Every one has noticed, during the more or less rapid melting of snow in winter and early spring, that our streams and rivers are then much muddier than when in summer and autumn they are swollen by heavy rains. This of course is due to the action of frost, by means of which rocks are disintegrated and soils are broken up and pulverised, so that when thaw supervenes, the superficial covering becomes soaked with moisture like a sponge. To such an extent does this take place, that one may often see the saturated soil creeping, slipping, and even flowing down the slopes. The effect of mere thaw is of course much intensified when the water derived from melting snows is present. Rills and tiny brooks then become converted into dark muddy torrents, and enormous quantities of fine-grained detritus are eventually swept into the rivers. The rivers rise in flood and inundate their plains, over the surface of which considerable deposits of loam and silt often accumulate. We cannot doubt that similar but much more intense action must have taken place over very wide regions in Europe during a glacial epoch. Such having necessarily been the case, we are not required to suppose that the löss and similar loams have been deposited entirely by rivers flowing from glaciers. It is doubtless true that most of the rivers headed in those days in glacier regions, and must in consequence have been highly discoloured with glacial mud, and probably a very large proportion of the loams in question consists of the fine flour of rocks – the result of glacial grinding. But the action of frost and thaw and melting snow upon the low-grounds, such as I have described, cannot be ignored, and seems to have played a more important rôle than has yet been recognised. I think it helps us better to explain the well-known fact that land-shells are more or less commonly distributed through the löss. One can readily understand, at all events, how snail-shells might be swept down the slopes of the land at the time of the spring thaws, and how large numbers might find their way eventually into the swollen glacial rivers. I have often observed, during the melting of snow and the thawing of soils, quantities of snail-shells in the very act of being swept into our brooks and rills. And we are all familiar with the fact that, after a spring-flood has subsided, snail-shells, along with vegetable débris, are often plentifully stranded upon the valley-slopes and flood-plains of our rivers.

Admitting, then, that the löss and similar accumulations are simply inundation-loams formed at a time when glaciers were discharging immense volumes of muddy water, and when the low-grounds were liable every summer to the denuding action of melting snows, and so forth, I have yet to account for the fact that these supposed inundation-loams sometimes occur at a height of 100 feet, or even of 300 feet, above the present levels of the rivers. Two theories have been advanced in explanation, each of which seems to me to contain an element of truth. It has, in the first place, been maintained, as by Prestwich, that the löss at the higher levels was probably deposited long before the rivers had excavated their channels to their present depths. Thus, during flood, they would be enabled to overflow tracts which they could not possibly have reached when they had deepened their valleys to a much greater degree. But while we must fully admit that the erosion effected by the rivers of the Pleistocene or Glacial period was excessive, yet we find it difficult or impossible to believe that great valleys, several miles in width, and two or three hundred feet in depth, were excavated in hard Devonian and other equally durable rocks by the swollen and active rivers of the Ice Age. And although it is extremely probable that the löss at the highest levels is older than the similar deposit at the lowest levels of such a valley as the Rhine, yet this does not get us out of our difficulty.

The other view to which I have alluded takes little or no account of river-erosion, but maintains that the floods of the Ice Age were sufficiently great to reach the highest levels at which river-gravels and loams occur. It is likely enough that, under present conditions, we can form but a very inadequate idea of the vast bodies of freshwater which formerly swept down our valleys, but we may be pardoned if we express our inability to conceive of our European rivers flowing with a breadth of many miles, and a depth of two or three hundred feet.

A few years before his death, Mr. Darwin made a suggestion to me, which I think gives us the true solution of the problem. He thought that during an Ice Age great beds of frozen snow might have accumulated over the low-grounds outside of the glaciated areas (in the manner I have already described), and that many valleys might have been filled to a considerable depth during a large part of the year with blown snow, afterwards congealed. In autumn, when the running water failed, the lines of drainage might in many cases be more or less choked, and it would be a mere chance whether the drainage, together with gravel, sand, and mud, would follow precisely the same lines during the next summer. Such action being repeated year after year, it might well happen that many river-valleys might become largely filled with rudely alternating layers of frozen snow and fluviatile detritus. And if this were so, the flooded rivers in summer would be enabled to overflow much wider and more elevated tracts than they could otherwise have reached. As the climate became less excessive, we can conceive of the frozen snows gradually melting, and of river-detritus being deposited at lower and lower levels in the valleys.

The probability of such frozen masses having choked up valleys and impeded the drainage during the Ice Age is not a mere plausible conjecture. In the far north of Alaska – in a region which was certainly not overflowed by the North American ice-cap – extensive sheets of ice occur, more or less deeply buried under thick soil. Nor can there be much doubt that these ice-masses date back to the Glacial period itself, seeing that in the soils which overlie them we meet with remains of the mammoth and other contemporaneous mammalian forms. Here, then, we have direct proof of the fact of frozen snow and ice having accumulated in the hollows of the land outside of the glaciated areas.14

Now, if such conditions existed in the valleys of middle Europe, the widespread loss of those regions is readily accounted for. The occurrence of irregular sheets and shreds of gravel and loam at heights of more than a hundred feet above a valley-bottom offers no difficulty – it is in fact precisely the kind of phenomenon we might have expected. We are therefore not required to go out of our way to dream about impossible volcanic action, or to call upon the winds of heaven to help us, or upon the waters of the Deluge to float us out of our difficulties. But while I believe the views I have now advocated sufficiently account for the appearances presented by the ancient valley-gravels and loams of central Europe, there are two very considerable areas of löss which require some further explanation. The first of these is that broad belt of löss which extends from west to east across the plains of northern Germany, and the northern boundary of which coincides with the limits reached by the last great ice-sheet, from which it spreads south to the foot-hills of the Harz, and other mountains of middle Europe. Here we have a sheet of löss which bears no apparent relation to the valley-systems of the region in which it occurs. But the fact of its northern boundary being coincident with the terminal front of the last great northern ice-sheet at once suggests its origin. It is evident that this ice-sheet must have blocked the rivers flowing north, and dammed back their waters.15 A wide sheet of muddy water must therefore have extended east and west over the very area which is now covered by the belt of löss in question. This temporary lake would doubtless be subject to great alternations of level – a portion draining away perhaps under the ice-sheet – but the water would for the most part make its way westward, and eventually escape into the English Channel. From the waters of this great lake, fed by many large glacial rivers, abundant precipitation of loam and silt must have taken place.

The second and by far the most extensive sheet of löss in Europe is the so-called “black earth,” or “tchernozem,” with which such enormous tracts in southern Russia are covered. This widespread löss – for such it really is – I have elsewhere tried to show consists of the flood-loam and inundation-muds laid down by the water escaping along the margin of the northern ice-sheet, which discharged its drainage in the direction of the Black Sea, its black colour being due to the grinding down and pulverising of the black Jurassic shales which extend over such wide regions in middle Russia.

IV.

The Extent of Glaciation in North America

The various phenomena of glaciation which go to prove that a great ice-sheet formerly covered a wide region in northern Europe are developed on a still more extensive scale in North America. Smoothed and striated rock-surfaces, crushed and dislocated rock-masses, and enormous accumulations of morainic débris and fluvio-glacial detritus, all combine to tell the same tale. The morainic accumulations of North America have been distributed upon the same principles as the similar deposits of our own Continent. Boulder-clay of precisely the same character as that of Scotland and Scandinavia, of Switzerland and north Italy, covers vast tracts in the low-grounds of the British Possessions and the northern States of the Union, where it forms enormous sheets, varying in thickness from 30 or 50 up to 100 feet or more. In the rough Laurentian high-lands, however, it is more sparingly developed, and the same is the case in the hilly regions of New England. In short, it thickens out upon the low-grounds, and thins off upon the steeper slopes, while it attains its greatest thickness and forms the most continuous sheets in the country that lies south of the great lakes.

The southern limits of this deposit form a kind of rude semi-circle. From New York the boundary-line has been followed north-west through New Jersey and Pennsylvania to beyond the forty-second parallel, after which it turns to the south-west, passing down through Ohio to Cincinnati (39°); then, striking west and south-west through Indiana, it traverses the southern portion of Illinois. Its course after it reaches the valley of the Missouri has been only approximately determined, but it turns at last rather abruptly to the north-west, sweeping away in that direction through Kansas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Montana.

The general course followed by the ice-sheet underneath which this boulder-clay was formed has been well ascertained, partly by the evidence of the clay and its contents, and partly by that of roches moutonnées and striated rocks. The observations of geologists in Canada and the States leave it in no doubt that an enormous sheet of ice flowed south over all the tracts which are now covered with boulder-clay. During a recent visit to Canada and the States, I had opportunities of examining the glacial deposits at various points over a somewhat extensive area, and everywhere I found the exact counterparts of our own accumulations. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and again in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and the low-grounds of Canada, I recognised boulder-clay of precisely the same character as that with which we are familiar at home. The glacial phenomena of the Hudson valley and of the lower part of the Connecticut River were especially interesting. In those regions the evidence of a southward flow of the ice is most conspicuous, and the phenomena, down to the smallest details, exactly recalled those of many parts of Europe. Professor Dana, under whose guidance I visited the Connecticut valley, showed me, at a considerable height upon the valley-slope, an ancient water-course, charged with gravel and shingle, which could not possibly have been laid down under present conditions. It was, in fact, a sub-glacial water-course, and resembled the similar water-courses which are associated with boulder-clay in our own country.

If I met with only familiar glacial phenomena in the low-lying tracts traversed by me, I certainly saw nothing strange or abnormal in the hillier tracts. In passing over the dreary regions between the valley of the Red River and Lake Superior I was constantly reminded of the bleak tracts of Archæan gneiss in the north-west of Scotland, and of the similar rough broken uplands in many parts of Scandinavia and Finland. The whole of that wild land is moutonnée. Rough tors and crags are smoothed off, while boulder-clay nestles on the lee-side. In the hollows between the roches moutonnées are straggling lakes and pools and bogs innumerable. Frequently, too, one comes upon rounded cones and smooth banks of morainic gravel and sand, and heaps of coarse shingle and boulders, while erratics in thousands are scattered over the whole district. If you wish to have a fair notion of the geological aspect of the region I refer to, you will find samples of it in many parts of the Outer Hebrides and western Ross-shire and Sutherland. Cover those latter districts with scraggy pines, and their resemblance to the uplands of Canada will be complete.

From descriptions given by travellers it would appear that morainic detritus – mounds and sheets of stony clay, gravel and sand, shingle, boulders, and erratics – are more or less plentifully sprinkled over all the British Possessions and the islands of the Arctic Archipelago; so that we have every reason to believe that the ice-sheet which left its moraines at New York and Cincinnati extended northwards to the Arctic Ocean. Nor can there be much doubt that this same mer de glace became confluent in the west with the great glaciers that streamed outwards from the Rocky Mountains; while we know for a certainty that the southern portion of Alaska, together with British Columbia and Vancouver Island, were buried in ice that flowed outwards into the Pacific.

Along the eastern sea-board north of New York city there is no tract which has not been overflowed by ice. The islands in Boston Harbour are made up for the most part of tough boulder-clay; and boulder-clay and striated rocks occur also in Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

Thus we may say that the ice-covered region of North America was bounded on the north by the Arctic, on the west by the Pacific, and on the east by the Atlantic Oceans. The Rocky Mountains, however, divided the great mer de glace that overflowed Canada and the States from the ice that streamed outwards to the Pacific. Measured from the base of the Rockies to the Atlantic, the mer de glace of Canada and the States must have exceeded 2500 miles in width, and it stretched from north to south over 40 degrees of latitude.

Outside of this vast region and the great mountain-ranges of the far west, there are few hilly areas in the States which reach any considerable elevation. South of the mers de glace of the north and west, no such mountain-groups as those of middle and southern Europe occur, and consequently we do not expect to meet with many traces of local glaciation. Nevertheless, these have been recognised in the Alleghany Mountains, West Virginia, and in the Unaka Mountains, between Tennessee and North Carolina. But the glaciers of those minor hill-ranges were of course mere pigmies in comparison with the enormous ice-streams that flowed down the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Even as far south as the Sierra Madre of Mexico glaciers seem formerly to have existed; and Mr. Belt has described the occurrence of what he considered to be boulder-clays at a height of 2000 to 3000 feet in Nicaragua.

I have mentioned the fact that in Europe we have, outside of the glaciated areas, certain accumulations (such as the Gibraltar breccias) which could only have been formed under the influence of extreme cold. Similar accumulations occur in North Carolina, where they have been carefully studied by Mr. W. C. Kerr. According to Mr. Kerr, these deposits have crept down the declivities of the ground under the influence of successive freezings and thawings; and now that attention has been called to such phenomena, our American friends will doubtless detect similar appearances in many other places.

The facts which I have now briefly indicated suffice to show that during the climax of glaciation North America must have presented very much the same appearance as Europe. Each continent had its great northern ice-sheet, south of which local glaciers existed in hilly districts, many of which are now far below the limits of perennial snow. We may note, also, that in each continent the mers de glace attained their greatest development over those regions which at the present day have the largest rainfall. Following the southern limits of glaciation in Europe, we are led at first directly east, until we reach central Russia, when the line we follow trends rapidly away to the north-east. The like is the case with North America. Trace the southern boundary of the ice-sheet west of New York, and you find, when you reach the valley of the Missouri, that it bends away to the north-west. Now we can hardly doubt that one principal reason for the non-appearance of the mer de glace in the far east of Europe and the far west of America was simply a diminishing snow-fall. Those non-glaciated regions which lay north of the latitudes reached by the ice-sheets were dry regions in glacial times for the same reasons that they are dry still. The only differences between glacial Europe and America were differences due to geographical position and physical features. The glaciation of the Urals was comparatively unimportant, because those mountains, being flanked on either side by vast land-areas, could have had only a limited snow-fall; while the mountain-ranges of western North America, on the other hand, being situated near the Pacific, could not fail to be copiously supplied. For obvious reasons, also, the North American ice-sheet greatly exceeded that of Europe. In all other respects the conditions were similar in both continents.