A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

In that pleistocene day the region, now summoned before the eye by the familiar process of adaptive reconstruction, shrunk far northward into low lying and frigid plains, narrowly escaping, by their slight differential elevation, submergence from the western ocean. In this uninviting northland, which lay like a neck of transition between the ice mountains and their glacial precincts still farther north, and the southern country, scattered forests of scrub willow, beech and spruces, alternated with sand flats, cold bogs, and cairn-like moraines of stone and gravel. The latter, swept by ice winds, drenched in snow and rains, darkened by thunder clouds or lit by momentary blazes of the sun, held the resistant remnants of the ice sheet, as tottering and stranded fractions perched upon their harsh shoulders. They exposed gulches, radiating from their summits, each occupied by momentary torrents of water, from the melting ice cap, which, often collecting in lower basins, formed extended semi-glacial lakes, hesitatingly bordered by a thin growth of herbs, and in sections connected by narrow straits into chains of untenanted and gloomy pools.

Through the monotony of this wilderness wandered herds of the mastodon, and here on the edges of the frosted lakes stood the primeval elephant, the mammoth of those swiftly receding days now scarcely penetrated by the vision of science and imagination.

These faunal restorations were yet further extended. To the east of this inhospitable and terrible zone, in cold and almost treeless sections scarred by ravine and canon, and trending upward into the abyssal recesses of the mountains, the cave bear secured an abiding home.

South over the edges of that sweeter land in which the crowded life of plants and animals, evicted from its northern habitat by the exactions of the cold, now strained its activity and device to maintain a simultaneous existence, in this prolific country, the pleistocene horse ranged in thronging bands. He scarcely impinged on the high terrains where the sabre-toothed tiger dwelt, but by preference traversed the grassy campus, following the streams, where their widened valleys, recently formed, were uninvaded by the forests, and sometimes forced an inquisitive path over the high country to the margins of the ocean.

A meteorological complexity reflected and rivalled all of these contrasts of position and occupation, and from within the sealed envelope of the earth’s crust, also, movements and voices responded to the ceaseless alternations of heat and cold, tempest and silence, serene and raging hours.

The warm southern winds sweeping from the broad Carribean Continent, gathering moisture from the wide gulf of the Mississippi, reached these more northern regions dense with saturation, and were suddenly chilled by rarefaction as they were lifted into higher elevations by the low lying flood of cold air, pouring in from the glaciated poles. The contact zone between these displaced masses of hot and moisture-laden air, and the underlying frosted and more slowly drifting atmosphere precipitated a meteorological violence, an exorbitant vigor of meteorological phenomena. Then ensued the tumult of storm and electrical perturbation.

The rivers rose upon their banks, the sinister and blackened skies emptied their bosoms of their watery contents, avalanches rolled down the mountain sides, the air smitten with a thousand forks of lightning vibrated with the internal electric charges that evoked all the echoes of canyon, peak and plain. Cyclonic winds tore through the forests and bent the crowded heads of the trees. Then the marshalled clouds fled in torrents of rain or were dissipated in the dazzling warfare, and then turquoise skies bent over the washed lands, a summer sun opened the petals of innumerable flowers, the cool air scarcely lifted from the ground the scent of its warm palpitations, and, to the detonations of the storm, succeeded the still unpacified but vanishing roar of the overladen streams.

In winter the petrifying touch of cold descended from the margins of the glaciers, and the denuded trees, the snow blankets of the higher land, the stilled streams and the pale skies imparted a sepulchral stare to the shrunk soil that turned its dead face upward to its leaden dome.

To the excitement and changes of external nature the unadjusted equilibria of the interior of the earth contributed new and dangerous surprises—earthquakes threw down the cliffs into foaming rivers, shook loose from their prehensile bases the towering pines upon the hillsides, or started in repetition the sundered strata from the mountains, and changed the face of nature with scarred exposures and inundated valleys. The earth opened along shivering seams, and the exuded lava rising from centres of stupendous pressure poured out in belts its half consolidated magmas.

Volcanic vents broke their seals and the uprushing tides of gas and steam and cinders turned the day to night, and signalized the distant craters with voluminous wreathes and columns and ash-filled whirlwinds; sometimes in a fierce intoxication of chaotic incident, emptying upon surrounding snowfields their hot and scorching rains.