The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-10-26
NOT THE GLACIERS WORK
HOW THE PACIFIC COAST WAS CHS
ELED BY THE HAND OF NATURE.
The CONCEALED lee Cap Broke, n Del
uge of Water Was Let Loose, and
Its Action Wrought the Change.
Henry NeidIg's Juneau Letter in Pittsburg


so much drift on the Pacific coast. 1 have
had no personal observation that could be
extended in leisurely way beyond the dis
trict embraced by Puget sound but judge
that either the presence or absence of drift
on the coast is readily explainable.
Cast aside the idea as simply indefensible
folly that glaciers have wrought this stu
pendous consequence known as the drift.
Let it be admitted that in a local way,
within certain limitations and restrictions,
glaciers make drift; but when you see
WOODWORK boring into a tree do not con-
clude that the heavy forests of Ohio and
Pennsylvania were removed by any such
agency I have known more change of
channel to be wrought and more material
to be deposited in the Beaver river from
Snake run, in Lawrence county, Pennsyl-
vania, in one phenomenal rain shower, than
Patterson glacier out here can accomplish
in ten years.
The action of water in the Johnstown
cataclysm in ten hours time wrought
greater changes than are accomplished by
all the glaciers of North America in half
century. Grasp the fact that water is the
great agent in operating terrestrial changes,
ana you get at the key to the situation.
we nave never seen water only as 1t
manifests itself in it's gentler action. Once
in while, in what we designate flood"
we are led to suspect what a latent might
there is in this thing we call water but we
nave not seen the oceans rise in their might
and, impelled toward one common point,
meet and hurl themselves into the heavens,
as 1t were. then dispense again in their re-
cession, in a moving continental cataclysm,
starting tens of thousands feet in height,
rush over land and over sea, and to which
a thousand Niagaras would be but as the
ebullition of a teakettle.
If the physical surroundings of the pres
ent north polar area were such that no ice
could annually be dispersed as now goes
down through BaffinS bay and down the
farther side of Greenland then what? If
there should be steady accession of
weight localized there drawing the humid
lty from other areas and having it condense
and precipitate to remain permanently held,
what would result?
POLES WOULD HAVE TO SHIFT.
This might go on age after age; but If
this accumulation continued, however slow
ly, and the action of the law under which
it operated was never suspended, what is
the simple arithmetic of the case? What
must the solution finally be. as given either
by mechanics or dynamics?
Without question the continued local.
izing of an amending accession of weight
would in time demand rearrangement OF
l the center of gravity. 1t is not this that
demands rearrangement of the poles but
the shi1tlng OF the poles is merely an in
cldent In the consequences that ensue when
This
added weight can only be around a pole or
center point, that is already established.
put when the earths mass is once too far
from being properly conferred with refer
ence TO It's weight, the first thing to feel
this is the envelope of water that even
now in its restlessness tries to follow the
moon ~ as swelling tide around the world.
~ is due TO this rushing together lifting
the ice cap and bearing fragments toward
ulrectlons that present least resistance, and
the swinging and swaying that ensue that
the earth loses her former pivotal points
and turns on other axes.
Naturally, the landslides contribute less
water TO such an inrushing to restore an
equilibrium as to centered weight and thus
IL is that the aqueous force coming from
the directions presenting the least impede
ment strikes that side of the lifted can
hardest and bears 1t in fast breaking frag-
ments, with inconceivable force over the
iaila, across such distance over which this
action insult expend itself.
Inns is When nature does some colossal
plowlng, planning and grading; when She
srinds on mountains, makes plains fills up
canyons. makes lakes of her stranded sec
tions Of ice-cap, leave the Dakotas in
places places IKE a sea: CONCEALED while in mo-
mighty eddies, finishing the operation in
others AZ
Both the past tropical botany and 20
oiogy OF the present polar area will yield to
this Interpretation. Wyoming. Oregon
Calltornia--in fact, all the phenomena from
Alaska to northern Texas-discose them
selves intelligently when viewed from this
standpoint. as the operation of one OF ma
ture simplest laws. 1t is not then sur
prlslng when the awful continental tenn
pest took place. when this mighty drift
deluSe was on, and miles high of grinding
rocks ana an ocean Of moving mud was
seeking rest, that the overflow should 60
spllling through the low places in the Rocky
ana cascade range of mountains and pile
up IN the colossal hills on Puget sound.
There was action on the Pacific side of the
mountains also, but more of the Character
OF clear water. For a time and until the
waters again found equilibrium the Pa
cific lay up high above its present level and
passes were thus left with holder water
fronts than would have been the case had
the material been carried seward with
strong current to impel It, as would have
been the case with a lower Pacific level.
NOT THE WORK OF A GLACIER.
l cannot, in the limited space and limited
time accorded a newspaper letter, go into
many details, but l may say that from the
standpoint that 1 have advocated for many
years it does not seem really so new, but
rather as a confederation and confirmation
of view that was started Alright The
huge Travelled powders that lie on the vest
ward slope of the Rocky mountains at
stampede tunnel tell another story than one
pEeulcated on an absolute impossibility in
physics when they are approached with a
grasp of the real situation
IL was the mighty action of rushing
waters that ground rocks into gravel sand
and the material we designate as drift and
not an impossible glacier that no cross
eyed conception has ever yet got into log
zeal FOCUS, just as an ak and saw action
leVeled the forests, and not the operation of
the wood beetle. Still, the glacier has con-
tributed its mite just as the tirredo con-
trlbuted his; but 1t is a microscopic mis-
conception that enlarges the smaller and
fails to see the larger at all.
On the pleasant decks of the steamer Civ
OF Seattle as she sped over her thousand
mile course on her inside passage from
Puget sound to Juneau, with the soft sky
and the balmy air and the unendine pano-
lation was INDUCED in as to how such a
maze OF passages was wrought.
Let it be understood that ordinary mans
do not present one-fourth of them. They
run sometimes wide and then narrow,
having parallel directions, once in a while
often connected with the sea with zigzag
openings, often dotted with islands both
large and small, and seemingly number
less, and yet the formation of the shores
and Islands is ever the same in any given
district, though cleft apart by multifar-
ious ways. Now, what did it?
My friend Noyes, once the owner of the
and which has a dead glacier on one
of its gulch slopes, is sanguine that a
glacier plowed out these multifa rious
channels, all on a level, forty miles four
miles wide or one-fourth of mile for that
matter, eighty feet or eight hundred feet
a mans imagination that it can be hitched
to any puzzle in surface geology and can be
relied on to pull him through. Now. what
would be the initial force to plane a channel
Ia dozen of them--through a solid granite
for one thousand miles with no
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