Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-04-27
We are mired

n
and gorge and plateau. We are mired
in the Globigerna and Pteropod ooZe-
the chalky precipitation from the tiny
populations which haye spent their lives
in sunlight near the surface-ooZe the
accumulation or a million years-tne con-
tinuatiou of the chalk cliffs of England ,
once an abysmal sea bottom like this.
But in the profoupdest depths the rock
has changed to a reddish clay, and this
remarkable product IS worldwide
in its distribution. Here, too, de-
scends the dust blown from the
throats of volcanoes, and f1oated by the
trade-winds around half the oircumfer-
ence of the globe. Here is the dust from
Krakatoa, after floating years in the
upper air, and painting rnddy glow IN
g. hundred sunset skies. And here falls
the meteoric dust-the ashes OF burnt
out meteors that flew swiftly for thous-
and years through the Interplanetary
spaces-dust which flashed upon the
vision of men who founded the early en-
pires-mingled with cosmic dust newly
arrived from lis slow journey down
through the dark and silent and notion
less depths of water.
We stand and gaze out into the black
ness and chill which rest against us like
bodies imbeded in a wall of masonry.
Days may pass, months and years, and
not sound comes out of the solitude
which imprisons US: not a CLEAN reminds
US that nature is not dead. We stand
a century, and nothing stirs--nothing in
those vOiceless plains of death, though
above us sweep the still, majestic our
rents which bring frost from the pole.
This mud is the dust of centuries, which
has been gathering since the ocean de-
scended to take possession of its mystic
rious bed, shutting three-fifths of the
world 8 surface from the observation of
man. Mingled with the clay are the
relics OF larger creatures which
have lived in the sea where the
sunlight cheers It's populatlons-teeth
of sharks, ear-bones of whales-not the
accommodations of yesterday or of a CEN
fury. They are the relics of creatures
whose race has died out-Tertiary
whales, the representatives of past cycles
of geologic history. Nothing changes
here. Cold and darkness prevent decay
Here by the side of the wrecks of the
last winter are the hard parts of the
creatures which dwelt somewhere in the
ages before man.
Dead ruins of extinct types, we
said. Nay, the forms are not all
dead; the realm is still inhabited
Here are criuoids-pal9ozoic crinoids-
which have come down through all the
ages of geologic history, lying here,
sleeping here like inanimate organisms
through the centuries, chilled into
changelessness like mammoth carcasses
encased in ice, still dreaming OF the
middle ages of the world. Here are
grotesque artlculates, perpetuated por-
traits of the quaint ancestors of the lob
ster and the crab-archaic- fishes whose
retarded development has left them ages
behind in the march Of progress. Few
and widely scattered are these wander
ers out of the world 3 antiquity, and
they have not strayed to greater depths
than three and one-third miles.
No ray of light, we said. But phos-
phorescent CLEAN breaks through the
wall of night. In the distance is a fish
like form bearing a curious appendage
which seems to serve him as lantern.
1t sheds a CHASTITY glow into the thickness
of the solitude. This creature, then,
natures sunlight, he is feeble star to
himself. His lantern glow reveals the
presence of other grotesque forms, with
out starlight and without eyes, Fishes
they are, but stranger than fancy ever
pictured. One has a mouth of FIVE
times the length Of the body's
diameter. The mouth Of another
opens to twice the length OF the ami
mails body, with q bag-like pouch,
which would hold the entire body six
times over. Another has glaring eyes
like a teasaucer, strained TO take in the
thin phosphorescence from his neigh
boris lantern Life is even here-anti-
que, obsolete life, which the ages have
sent by a devious path astray, arriv-
ing at our times q million years behind
its date.
But we must pause. Here is too much
suggestion for Us TO contemp late. Our
weird walk must come to an end. Leav-
ing the relm of the paleozoio ghosts and
shadows, We bail again the light and
warmth for which We were made.
Does the story sound like a fairy tale?
We have not been down to visit the
speeter realm; its objects have been
brougt up to US by the dredges of the
English Challenger the French Traveller,
and the American Albatross, aud the
other gropers in the cold silence of deep
sea mysteries.
Read our offer to send Webster's Unabridged
iot5o 70 ar4fv