My experiments with volcanoesJaggar, Thomas Augustus
Science
My experiments with volcanoes
Jaggar, Thomas Augustus
Geologists -- Biography; Volcanoes
Hague’s field method was to climb a peak, study the view, and ponder
the visible strata, dikes, valleys, escarpments, and pinnacles for
miles around, thus formulating each problem. Then we moved camp to a
new place to solve the problem.
We sought the ancient craters. The volcanic tuffs and agglomerates
covered thousands of square miles, dating from 30 million years ago
and continuing outpourings until 2 million years ago, and there were
lava flows, ropy or bouldery. Here were petrified trees; there could
be found fossil leaves. The tree species told the formation ages of
Tertiary time. Many peaks appeared but no volcano cones. The craters
had been over what now were eroded dikes, or fissure fillings of lava,
which stood out in crisscrossing walls. Where they clustered, ores
were found: the Sunlight, Crandall Creek, and Stinking Water mining
claims. These were the roots of lost volcanoes, lost by decay, tumble,
rainfall, glaciers, and rivers. Underneath the mountainous lavas,
appeared white marine limestone cliffs, and still lower appeared
ancient granite gneiss.
The geology of ancient seabeds, fossils, eruptions, and glaciers was
painted on a whole panorama of mountains and river basins. From a
mountain top silently gazing through field glasses--which he was always
losing and recovering--Hague would look around for hours. “That ledge
is the Madison limestone, those are the Red Beds, those pink, rounded
hills are Archean granites.”
After a day of packtrain travel I was free to fish or hunt. It was a
privilege to hunt with Anderson, the old negro cook, whose gray beard
and bushy white wool belied his keen eyes. He had been a slave, later
a soldier in General Custer’s Big Horn expedition, and a pioneer and
hunter. His father had been massacred by Indians, and Anderson swore he
would kill any Indian on sight.
One of our hunting trips near Crandall Creek was especially memorable.
“Mr. Jaggar, I smell sheep up on that shelf!”, said Anderson. And he
climbed up a pine tree growing at the bottom against the limestone
cliff. He laid his Winchester rifle on top of the steep slide rock
slope at the foot of the tree, muzzle upward, butt end downhill. “You
mind my gun, I’ll climb out on a limb against the cliff and get on
the shelf, and yo’ all hand the gun up to me.” He reached the shelf,
made of Cambrian limestone of trilobite fame, and sitting over on it
immediately knocked down slabs of rock. They fell on the gun which
started to slide down the slope. I grabbed for the muzzle pointed
toward my throat, the stock wiggling right and left. The gun went
off and I felt a nick in my ankle. Anderson had left a cartridge in
the barrel with the hammer resting on it, but my nick was made by a
pebble ploughed up by the bullet. So the trilobites took a shot at me.
“Well, this is natural history,” I murmured. Old Anderson was less
philosophical. He cussed me for letting the rifle kick itself far down
among the trees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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