Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

CHAPTER VIII.

ANOTHER EPOCH OF WORK AND TRAVEL

Very soon after their arrival in England the travellers went north to Kinnordy, where they remained till the end of October, when they returned again to their London home. Such an accumulation of specimens and of notes as had been gathered in America made necessary a long period of labour indoors, unpacking, classifying, and arranging; while certain groups of fossils had to be repacked and sent to friends, who had undertaken to work them out. These occupations apparently detained Lyell in London till August, 1843, when he started for Ireland, indulging himself on the way with a short run in Somersetshire for some geological work around Bath and Bristol, examining more particularly the "dolomitic conglomerate," a shore deposit of Keuper age, in which the remains of saurians had been found, and the Radstock Collieries, where he spent more than five hours underground "traversing miles of galleries in the coal," and finding here, as he had done in America, the stumps of trees in an upright position and shales full of fossil ferns as "roofs" to the seams. Then, in company with Mrs. Lyell, he crossed over to Cork, where the British Association assembled on August 17th, under the presidency of the late Earl of Rosse. The meeting was well attended by scientific men, but was coldly received by the neighbourhood and county – partly, as Lyell says, because the gentry cared little for science; partly because the townspeople, comprising many rich merchants and most of the tradesmen, were "Repealers"; "and, the agitation having occurred since we were invited, the opposite parties could never, in Ireland, act or pull together."

It was impossible to visit Cork without seeing the beauties of the lakes and mountains of Killarney; and after this a short stay was made at Birr Castle, Lord Rosse's pleasant home at Parsonstown. The huge reflecting telescope, which is now more than a local wonder, was not then completed; but the smaller one, itself on a gigantic scale, was in full working order, and already had led to grand results by "not only reducing nebulæ into clusters of distinct stars, but by showing that the regular geometric figures in which they presented themselves to Herschel, when viewed with a glass of less power, disappear and become very much like parts of the Milky Way." Thence they went northward to the coast of Antrim, to see the waves breaking upon the colonnades of basalt at the Giant's Causeway, and the dykes of that rock cutting through and altering the white chalk. Evidently the geology proved interesting, as well it might, for here Nature presents a volume of her geological history, that of the Secondary era, with only the opening and the concluding chapters, all the record from the early part of the Lias to the beginning of the Cretaceous having been torn out. The dark-tinted greensand, changing almost immediately into the pure white chalk, often presents curious colour-contrasts in a single section; while the classification of the several deposits offered a problem at which probably Lyell thought it wiser to "look and pass on." Several of the more interesting facts observed during this trip were afterwards described in the "Elements of Geology,"105 among them the beds of lignite which occur in Antrim, associated with the great flows of basalt. Somewhat similar deposits were found, about seven years later, at Ardtun, in Mull, by the Duke of Argyll – a discovery which led Lyell to suggest, in later editions of the above-named work, the probability that the basalts of Antrim and of the Inner Hebrides were of the same geological age, – an inference which since then has been abundantly confirmed by the researches of Professor Judd and other geologists.

One of the most interesting sections in Scotland faces Antrim. Here, on the Ayrshire coast, between Girvan and Ballantrae, a complex of several kinds of igneous rock and a region, not a little disturbed, of "greywackes" and other sedimentary deposits present the geologist with problems more than sufficiently perplexing. At these Lyell took the opportunity of glancing, but a day's trip afforded no opportunity for any serious attempt to read the riddle. That had to be left to a later generation, and so it remained for over forty years. Something is now known about the igneous rocks, though here work still remains to be done; and the sedimentary deposits have been brought into order by the labours of Professor Lapworth. They exhibit, according to his description,106 an ascending succession from the Llandeilo to the Llandovery group, and appear to be more modern than some, if not all, of the above-named igneous rocks. After their brief halt in this district the Lyells went on to Forfarshire, and spent the rest of the autumn at Kinnordy.

The winter was a busy time; he was writing steadily at his "Travels in North America," and working up some of the more distinctly scientific notes into formal papers for the Geological and other societies. Thus occupied, more than a year slipped away, diversified only by a summer visit to Scotland, attending the meeting of the British Association at York, and a journey to the Haswell Colliery, Durham, together with Faraday, as commissioners to examine into the cause of a recent disastrous explosion, and see whether such accidents could be prevented. Work at the "Travels in North America" took up all Lyell's spare time during the winter, and the book was published in the earlier part of 1845.

It was only a few months old when Mr. and Mrs. Lyell again set off for another tour in America. They left Liverpool on September 4th, and landed at Halifax on the 17th, after a voyage diversified agreeably by the sight of an iceberg and disagreeably by two gales. They went on at once to Boston, and thence made a tour through the State of Maine. During this sundry masses of drift were examined, which rested on polished and grooved surfaces of crystalline rock, and contained the usual shells, astarte, cardium, nucula, saxicava, etc., and in some places a fossil fish107 in concretionary nodules. At Portland similar shells had been found in drifts which also contained bones both of the bison and of the walrus. These drifts in some places attained a thickness of 170 feet, and in them valleys 70 feet deep had been excavated by streams. Then they went to the White Mountains, and on approaching them Lyell did not fail to notice "on the low granite hills many angular fragments of that rock, fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, resting on heaps of sand." On their way they came to the Willey Slide, where a whole family of that name had been killed nineteen years previously in a landslip. Lyell carefully examined the scene of the accident, in order to ascertain what effects were produced by a mass of mud and stones as it slid over a face of rock, and found that it only made short scratches and grooves, not long and straight furrows, like those left by a glacier. They halted at Fabyan's Hotel near Mount Washington, and after waiting for a favourable day reached the summit (6,225 feet above the sea) on October 7th. It is easily accessible on horseback.

The notes of this excursion among the mountains show that Lyell still retained his old liking for natural history in general, for they contain remarks on the flowers, the insects, and the birds. Some observations on the Alpine flora of the higher summits in the White Mountains indicate his position at that time in regard to the origin of species. He adopts the hypothesis of 'specific centres,' viz. that "each species had its origin in a single birthplace and spread gradually from its original centre to all accessible spots, fit for its habitation, by means of the power of migration given it from the first." He supposed that the plants common to the more arctic regions and to the higher ground further south in Europe and Northern America were dispersed by floating ice during the glacial epoch, when the ground stood at a lower level, and that afterwards, when the climate became warmer, they gradually mounted up the slopes of the hills. The possibility of a migration by land is not mentioned, though doubtless it would have been admitted, because the evidence which he had so often studied pointed rather to a downward than to an upward movement but he asserts with some emphasis that many living species are older than the existing distribution of sea and land.

On his return to Boston, he had other opportunities of studying ice-worn rocks and erratics, and from this city made an excursion to Plymouth (Massachusetts) to see the spot where, on a mid-winter day, the Pilgrim Fathers had landed. But even here he could not neglect the shells upon the strand, and he records that eighteen species were collected, one-third of which were common to Europe. Still, we may note that on this journey rather more attention was paid than on the former to questions political, commercial, educational, and theological, and these occupy a larger space in the "Second Visit to the United States," which may account for its greater popularity. For example, it contains a sketch of the witch-finding mania in Massachusetts late in the seventeenth century, and a whole chapter on the sea-serpent. This "hardy perennial" had appeared in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the previous August and in October, 1844,108 and had repeatedly visited the New England coast from 1815 to 1825, when it had been seen by many credible witnesses. Lyell appears to be satisfied that, though allowance had to be made for exaggeration and honest misconception, some big creature had been seen, and suggests that it may have been an exceptionally large specimen of the basking shark.109

After a stay of nearly two months in Boston, they left for the south early in December, and found a little difficulty at first, as on a former occasion, from the slippery state of the rails. They journeyed by Newhaven, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington to Richmond, where a halt was made to examine the coalfield some sixteen miles to the south-west of the city. The measures rest on the granite, filling up inequalities on its surface, and are occasionally cut by dykes, which produce the usual alteration in the adjacent coal. The principal seam is from thirty to forty feet thick but the field, as a whole, reminded Lyell most of that at St. Etienne (France), which he had visited in 1843.110 From Richmond they went, as on the former occasion, by Weldon to Wilmington, where the cliffs near the town yielded some Tertiary fossils, and on Christmas morning they landed from a steamer at Charleston.

From this city Lyell again visited the deposits near Savannah, which contained remains of megatherium, mastodon, and other large quadrupeds, as well as a second locality on Skiddaway Island, and then, on the last day of the year, quitted Charleston for Darien in Georgia. Here also were some more deposits of the same kind, while at St. Simon's Island Lyell examined a very large Indian mound. It was a mass of shells, chiefly of oysters, and contained flint arrow-heads, stone axes, and fragments of Indian pottery.

Returning to Savannah, they travelled towards the north-west, by Macon to Milledgeville. For more than 150 miles of the first part of the journey Lyell went along the railway on a hand-car, so as to study the cuttings and obtain the most continuous section possible of the Tertiary deposits from the sea to the inland granite. These deposits consisted of porcelain clays, yellow and white sands, and "burrstone," a flinty grit used for millstones, which often was full of silicified shells and corals, with the teeth of sharks and the bones of zeuglodon. Lyell mentions that in the neighbourhood of Macon he saw blockhouses such as those described by Cooper in the "Pathfinder," which twenty-five years earlier had been used for defence against the Indians before any white men's houses had been built in the forest.

Near Milledgeville the granite, gneiss, etc., is decomposed in situ to a considerable depth, and the rain-water, when the trees have been cut down, quickly furrows the detrital deposits of the neighbourhood. A remarkable instance of this action had occurred at Pomona Farm, where a ravine 180 feet broad and 55 feet deep had been excavated in the course of only twenty years.111 From Milledgeville they returned to Macon, and thence travelled westward by Columbus to Montgomery, being much jolted in the stage-coach, but securing as a reward some Tertiary fossils; and at the latter place they found red clays and sandstones, which, however, were about the same age as the chalk of England. After the coach travelling, a journey by steamer down the Alabama River to Mobile was a welcome change, and the not unfrequent halts for cargo or to take in wood gave opportunities for collecting fossils from the neighbouring bluffs. One night they were startled by loud crashing noises and the sound of breaking glass, and found that the steamer had run foul of the trees growing on the bank. Their branches touched the water, as the river was unusually high; and the vessel, in the darkness, had been steered too near to the shore. Longer halts were made at Claiborne, to collect fossils from deposits corresponding in age with those at Bracklesham in England; and at Macon (Alabama) to visit a place where some remarkable specimens of the zeuglodon had been discovered. From Mobile also a long river journey was undertaken to Tuscaloosa, to visit a coalfield which supplied the town with fuel and the materials for gas. The field, "a southern prolongation of the great Appalachian coalfield," is a large one, being about ninety miles long and thirty wide, with some seams sixteen feet thick worked in open quarries. He remarks that he made geological excursions "through forests recently abandoned by the Indians, and where their paths may still be traced."

The strata on the Alabama River afforded a useful lesson on the variability of lithological characters. Were it not for the fossils, Lyell says, the Lower Cretaceous beds of loose gravel might be taken for the newest Tertiary, the main body of the Chalk for Lias, and the soft Tertiary limestone for the representative of the Chalk. It was impossible to leave Mobile without seeing something of the Gulf of Mexico; so they went in a steamer down the Alabama River to the seaside, looked upon the muddy banks, with the shells112 which live in them and the quantities of drift-timber which bestrew them, and then went across to one of the minor mouths of the Mississippi, and, passing up it, landed at New Orleans.

This town, about 110 miles by water from the confluence of the main channel of the Mississippi with the sea, afforded a convenient opportunity for studying the character of the lower part of the delta of the "Father of Waters." Such a region might be expected to supply facts which would be helpful in the interpretation of many phenomena presented by the coal measures. Accordingly, Lyell made one excursion to Lake Pontchartrain, a great sheet of fresh water no great distance from both New Orleans and the sea, and another down to the mouth of the Mississippi. The road through the swamp to the former was constructed of a strange material – viz. the white valves of a freshwater mollusc.113 These are obtained from a huge bank over a mile in length, and sometimes about four yards in depth, at one end of the lake. How this had been formed seemed doubtful. Possibly the shells had been piled up by the waves during a storm; possibly there had been some slight change of level. The lake itself is about fifteen feet below high-water mark, and is about as many deep; but, as it receives an arm of the Mississippi, silt is gradually raising the bottom. The sea sometimes, when impelled by a strong south-east wind, makes its way into the lake. Among the English coal measures – as, for instance, at Coalbrook Dale or in Yorkshire – beds of marine shells are occasionally found intercalated among or even associated with freshwater molluscs, without any alteration in the general character of the beds in which they lie. How this might occur is illustrated by Lake Pontchartrain in the swampy alluvial delta. Here a very slight physical change might enable the sea to take, for a time, possession of the land, and the denizens of its water, like a band of pirates, to dispossess the usual inhabitants.

The other expedition also supplied not a few valuable facts relating to the history of river deltas, which were afterwards supplemented as they travelled northwards for some hundreds of miles up the river, following its sinuous course through leagues of marshy plain, densely overgrown with vegetation. In the seaward reaches, reed, and rush, and willow, but above New Orleans cypresses and other timber trees, rise above the rank herbage.

The minor channels, blocked with driftwood which formed natural rafts; the sand-bars and mud-banks; the great curves of the river, the "bayous"114 and isolated pools; the natural banks built up by the sediment arrested at flood-time by the herbage near the river brink; the floating timber and the "snags" – all provided valuable illustrations of the physical features of a great river delta, and supplied him with material which afterwards was worked up into newer editions of the "Principles" and the "Elements."

From New Orleans Lyell went by steamer to Natchez, halting on the way to examine more closely certain localities of interest and to obtain illustrations of how a coalfield might be formed. The bluffs of Natchez – almost the first place where distinctly higher ground approaches the river-side – afforded plenty of semi-fossil shells, specifically identical with those still inhabiting the valley of the Mississippi, but the loam in which they were embedded – a loam which reminded him of the loess of the Rhine – also contains the remains of the mastodon, and overlies a clay with bones of the megalonyx, horse, and other quadrupeds, mostly extinct. Beneath this clay are sands and gravel, the whole forming a platform which rises about 200 feet above the low river plain, revealing an earlier chapter in the history of the river. Similar bluffs occur at Vicksburg, but these disclosed Eocene strata beneath the alluvial deposits, and thus invited a halt in order to explore the neighbourhood. The next stage was to Memphis, nearly 400 miles. Lyell speaks highly of the accommodation generally afforded by the river steamers, but found the inquisitiveness of his American fellow-travellers rather a nuisance, and the spoiled children a still greater one. The former drawback to pleasure has certainly abated during the last half-century, but whether the latter has done the same may perhaps be disputed. New Madrid, 170 miles above Memphis, called for a longer halt, for the neighbouring district had suffered from a great earthquake in the year 1811, when shocks were felt at intervals for about three months, the ground was cracked, water mingled with sand was spouted out, yawning fissures opened (in one case draining a lake), portions of the river cliff were shaken down into the stream, and a large district – about 2,000 square miles in area – was permanently depressed. Some traces of the earthquake, in addition to the last-named, could still be recognised at the time of Lyell's visit, though more than thirty years had elapsed.

At Cairo, above New Madrid, the Ohio joins the Mississippi, and it was ascended to Mount Vernon. The geology now became a little more varied, for beneath the shelly loam already mentioned Carboniferous strata make their appearance, in which fossil plants are sometimes abundant and upright trees now and then occur. For nearly 200 miles higher up the Ohio, rocks of this age are exposed at intervals, till at last, near Louisville, those belonging to the Devonian system rise from beneath them. These, at New Albany, contain a fossil coral-reef, exposed in the bed of the river and crowded with specimens in unusually good preservation. At Cincinnati the travellers came at last upon old ground, and journeyed thence by steamer to Pittsburg. About thirty-two miles from this town, at a place called Greensburg, some remarkable footprints had been discovered on slabs of stone not many months before Lyell's visit, but as the beds on which they occurred belonged to the coal measures doubt had been expressed as to their being genuine, so he went thither to satisfy himself on this point. The footprints had disturbed the peace of Pittsburg, for they had started discussions in which one party had assumed, as matters of course, the high antiquity of the earth and the great changes in its living tenants, and had thus incurred the censure – which in some cases was followed by professional injury – not only of the multitude, but also of some of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran clergy. Commenting on this episode, Lyell quotes with approbation the words of a contemporary author,115 which even at the present time occasionally need to be remembered: – "To nothing but error can any truth be dangerous; and I know not where else there is to be seen so altogether tragical a spectacle, as that religion should be found standing in the highways to say 'Let no man learn the simplest laws of the universe, lest they mislearn the highest. In the name of God the Maker, who said, and hourly yet says, "Let there be light," we command that you continue in darkness!'"