A Woman of the Ice Age

by L. P. Gratacap

Far to the north rose a group of mountain peaks, so arranged that they appeared like successive steps of ascent to the swelling dome, central and dominant, over its gathered satellites, each of which was marvellous alone, but in this association seemed forgotten or remembered only as it increased by contrast the majesty of the great mountain mass it attended.

This superb elevation was itself broken up into radiating chasms, whose rocky sides rose in black keels of relief above the snow filled gorges they defined, while surmounting them all a keen shaft of granite, roseate in a hundred lights, or wrapped in pendulous and waving veils of mist, climbed steeply to the clouds.

The crowded and crushed snow masses, nevé-like emerged upon all the lower shoulders of the huge crest in glacial fields of ice. Here their Arctic currents, sweeping around the lower summits, were reinforced by new accessions, springing from these lesser altitudes, which in confusion poured upon them, and by many avenues of obstruction and accidents of interference, repulse and rupture, converted the great multiplied ice zone, encircling the whole congery of peaks, and plunging outward over vertical escarpments to lower levels, into a stupendous spectacle of chaos. Icebergs crossed their pinnacles in the descent, the riven ice stream ejected blocks of ice hundreds of feet in length, and the split glacier, seamed by colossal cleavages to the abysses of its rocky floor, displayed its green depths. Detonations rose upon the air, caught by the waiting winds and drifted southward over the wild plains, the long indented coast and the far interior canons; south to forest lands and waving grass savannahs, while near at hand its rough roar startled the sleeping mastodon and brought terror to men.

From this glory, which in the Sun of that strange day shone like a titanic crown of jewels, the land areas fell suddenly away, and expanded southward into a long sea margin on the west, and arid and rocky wildernesses on the east, where deep canyons with vertical walls, a thousand feet high, held in their dark bosoms the frigid waters from the northern glaciers. An intermediate region, between the palisaded or tenuous coast-line and these mysterious untenanted rents and time, wind and water worn ravines, revealed scenes more mild and radiant, wherein the apparel of nature was more colored, and where she bore those features of appropriate beauty where river and lake, forest land and flowered field unite in their abundance to appeal to the hearts of men.

This hospitable land was varied. It slowly liberated itself, like an escaping captive, from the desolation of the East, where the plains were broken with chilled lava beds, jagged peaks, asperities of stone, standing like geologic spectres, canyons holding emprisoned and viewless rivers, wide and gloomy lakes around whose margins the struggling relics of an extinct flora seemed slowly confessing their defeat before phases of climate less lenient than their predecessors. It freed itself from broad depressions, the beds of ancient lakes swept by freezing winds from the northern ice country, and bare and empty, exposing to the sky their orb-like circumference, ghastly with white alkaline encrustation, like the pallid optic of a great leviathan, whitened with the films of decomposition.

From all this area, rigid with the articulate expression of Death, a land to the West began its fertile margins, tentatively uttering a new design, with grass grown hills, low vegetation, and modest, scarcely obvious brooks, loosening themselves in placid currents from the highlands. Then, as if it felt the assurance of an improving destiny, woods rose over ranges of increasing altitude, rivers swept in circling glory through narrow and alluvial valleys, and groves of great trees clustered over mountain terraces, defiled in green seas of leafy glory to the lowlands, where the rhythm of verdurous beauty was resumed in more open country, the reincarnated spirit of Nature loosened its power upon a coast line, washed by the restless ocean.

The coast was strangely beautiful. Wide coves paved with argent or golden sands opened the straight lines of its rocky and lofty shores with broad emarginations. These inviting bays, defended by crowning capes or jutting and attenuated peninsulas of dethroned basaltic columns, formed peaceful harbors wherein the fleeing surges of the sea often came to rest in limpid pulsations; or else, with diminished power, but greater speed and imposing crescent beauty, rolled upon them in avalanches of spray. The land came down to these charming regions in undulating surfaces, sometimes deeply wooded, though often more artificially indented with scattered or solitary trees. Not infrequently it accompanied, in its descent, the devious flow of rivers, expanding into estuaries of such proportions that the fleet of a modern nation might have floated safely within their borders.

The smaller coves furnished a more minute and exquisite interest. Here partially degraded escarpments of stone walled them in with steep ascents of talus, over which ambitious vegetation, almost baffled in its encounter with sea fogs and saline breezes, produced an irregular covering of green, and displayed the ample ingenuity of its struggle. This ingenuity was shown in the twisted roots of trees holding, like closed fists enwrapped boulders, by roots penetrating at obtuse angles the split surfaces of the palisades, or, entangled in a knot of mutually helpful buttresses, suspending some adventurous pine at a sharp angle above the splashing and murmurous tides below it. The dazzlingly clear water in these darkened and umbrageous coves, revealed with every shaft of light, the broad fronds of algae, floating like aprons in green sheets, rising upon dark stem-like roots from the cold waters. Here, upon the sides of detached masses of rock, sported companies of sea lions, their gleaming and undulated flanks formed for an instant into motionless groups of beauty, to be dissolved the next moment in revels of wreathed confusion. Far out beyond the shore, domes of rock, just covered by each swelling wave, broke the surface with areas of foam, and again beyond these stood, as the last vestige of the eroded coast frontier, some needle of stone, in whose fugitive and vanishing shadows sea-gulls rested, that again, by a sudden access of volition, swept over it in clouds of ascending and descending plumes.

The coast-line was itself the index of a varied origin. For miles the palisades of dark or frowning trap dikes rose precipitously above the tide, their columnar formation yielding only a stubborn concession to the incessant labors of air and ocean, though the scenic marvel of cathedral spires and excavated reverberating sea caves, left by their retreat, excused the tardy surrender to decay.

Wherever the sedimentary strata of slate or limestone, frequently but half consolidated, and therefore more easily attacked, formed the land surfaces, the country descended gently to the sea, and swept backward with dissected features to the coast ranges, gleaming distantly. Through these tracts the beds of rivers were formed, and their currents, under two contrasted phases, appeared upon the coast-line. They either flowed through degraded valleys, slowly expanding into the broad estuarine coves mentioned before, or, unable to reach the easily attacked mineral beds, and forced to flow outward upon the surface of dense igneous rocks, leaped into the sea by cascades walled in somber gorges, or broke with sudden splendor over precipices of unchanged basalt.