Principles of Geology Part 21

But the largest area affected by the great convulsion lies eight or ten miles to the westward of the Mississippi, and inland from the town of New Madrid, in Missouri. It is called "the sunk country," and is said to extend along the course of the White Water and its tributaries, for a distance of between seventy and eighty miles north and south, and thirty miles or more east and west. Throughout this area, innumerable submerged trees, some standing leafless, others prostrate, are seen; and so great is the extent of lake and marsh, that an active trade in the skins of muskrats, mink, otters, and other wild animals, is now carried on there. In March, 1846, I skirted the borders of the "sunk country"

nearest to New Madrid, pa.s.sing along the Bayou St. John and Little Prairie, where dead trees of various kinds, some erect in the water, others fallen, and strewed in dense ma.s.ses over the bottom, in the shallows, and near the sh.o.r.e, were conspicuous. I also beheld countless rents in the adjoining dry alluvial plains, caused by the movements of the soil in 1811-12, and still open, though the rains, frost, and river inundations, have greatly diminished their original depth. I observed, moreover, numerous circular cavities, called "sunk holes," from ten to thirty yards wide, and twenty feet or more in depth, which interrupt the general level of the plain. These were formed by the spouting out of large quant.i.ties of sand and mud during the earthquakes.[365]

That the prevailing changes of level in the delta and alluvial plain of the Mississippi have been caused by the subsidence, rather than the upheaval of land, appears to me established by the fact, that there are no protuberances of upraised alluvial soil, projecting above the level surface of the great plain. It is true that the gradual elevation of that plain, by new accessions of matter, would tend to efface every inequality derived from this source, but we might certainly have expected to find more broken ground between the opposite bluffs, had local upthrows of alluvial strata been of repeated occurrence.

_Antiquity of the delta._--The vast size of the alluvial plain both above and below the head of the delta, or the branching off of the uppermost arm of the Atchafalaya, has been already alluded to. Its superficial dimensions, according to Mr. Forshey, exceed 30,000 square miles, nearly half of which belong to the true delta. The deposits consist partly of sand originally formed upon or near the banks of the river, and its tributaries, partly of gravel, swept down the main channel, of which the position has continually s.h.i.+fted, and partly of fine mud slowly acc.u.mulated in the swamps. The farther we descend the river towards its mouth, the finer becomes the texture of the sediment.

The whole alluvial formation, from the base of the delta upwards, slopes with a very gentle inclination, rising about three inches in a mile from the level of the sea at the Balize, to the height of about 200 feet in a distance of about 800 miles.

That a large portion of this fluviatile deposit, together with the fluvio-marine strata now in progress near the Balize, consists of mud and sand with much vegetable matter intermixed, may be inferred from what has been said of the abundance of drift trees floated down every summer. These are seen matted together into a net-work around the extensive mud banks at the extreme mouths of the river. Every one acquainted with the geography of Louisiana is aware that the most southern part of the delta forms a long narrow tongue of land protruding for 50 miles into the Gulf of Mexico, at the end of which are numerous channels of discharge. This singular promontory consists simply of the river and its two low, flat banks, covered with reeds, young willows, and poplars. Its appearance answers precisely to that of the banks far in the interior, when nothing appears above water during inundations but the higher part of the sloping glacis or bank. In the one case we have the swamps or an expanse of freshwater with the tops of trees appearing above, in the other the bluish green surface of the Gulf of Mexico. An opinion has very commonly prevailed that this narrow promontory, the newest product of the river, has gained very rapidly upon the sea, since the foundation of New Orleans; but after visiting the Balize in 1846, in company with Dr. Carpenter, and making many inquiries of the pilots, and comparing the present outline of the coast with the excellent Spanish chart, published by Charlevoix 120 years before, we came to a different conclusion. The rate of permanent advance of the new land has been very slow, not exceeding perhaps one mile in a century. The gain may have been somewhat more rapid in former years, when the new strip of soil projected less far into the gulf, since it is now much more exposed to the action of a strong marine current. The tides also, when the waters of the river are low, enter into each opening, and scour them out, destroying the banks of mud and the sand-bars newly formed during the flood season.

An observation of Darby, in regard to the strata composing part of this delta, deserves attention. In the steep banks of the Atchafalaya, before alluded to, the following section, he says, is observable at low water:--first an upper stratum, consisting invariably of bluish clay, common to the banks of the Mississippi; below this a stratum of red ochreous earth, peculiar to Red River, under which the blue clay of the Mississippi again appears; and this arrangement is constant, proving, as that geographer remarks, that the waters of the Mississippi and the Red River occupied alternately, at some former periods, considerable tracts below their present point of union.[366] Such alternations are probably common in submarine s.p.a.ces situated between two converging deltas; for, before the two rivers unite, there must almost always be a certain period when an intermediate tract will by turns be occupied and abandoned by the waters of each stream; since it can rarely happen that the season of highest flood will precisely correspond in each. In the case of the Red River and Mississippi, which carry off the waters from countries placed under widely distant lat.i.tudes, an exact coincidence in the time of greatest inundation is very improbable.

The antiquity of the delta, or length of the period which has been occupied in the deposition of so vast a ma.s.s of alluvial matter, is a question which may well excite the curiosity of every geologist.

Sufficient data have not yet been obtained to afford a full and satisfactory answer to the inquiry, but some approximation may already be made to the minimum of time required.

When I visited New Orleans, in February, 1846, I found that Dr. Riddell had made numerous experiments to ascertain the proportion of sediment contained in the waters of the Mississippi; and he concluded that the mean annual amount of solid matter was to the water as 1/1245 in weight, or about 1/3000 in volume.[367] From the observations of the same gentleman, and those of Dr. Carpenter and Mr. Forshey, an eminent engineer, to whom I have before alluded, the average width, depth, and velocity of the Mississippi, and thence the mean annual discharge of water were deduced. I a.s.sumed 528 feet, or the tenth of a mile, as the probable thickness of the deposit of mud and sand in the delta; founding my conjecture chiefly on the depth of the Gulf of Mexico, between the southern point of Florida and the Balize, which equals on an average 100 fathoms, and partly on some borings 600 feet deep in the delta, near Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, in which the bottom of the alluvial matter is said not to have been reached. The area of the delta being about 13,600 square statute miles, and the quant.i.ty of solid matter annually brought down by the river 3,702,758,400 cubic feet, it must have taken 67,000 years for the formation of the whole; and if the alluvial matter of the plain above be 264 feet deep, or half that of the delta,[368] it must have required 33,500 more years for its acc.u.mulation, even if its area be estimated as only equal to that of the delta, whereas it is in fact larger. If some deduction be made from the time here stated, in consequence of the effect of the drift-wood, which must have aided in filling up more rapidly the s.p.a.ce above alluded to, a far more important allowance must be made on the other hand, for the loss of matter, owing to the finer particles of mud not settling at the mouths of the river, but being swept out far to sea during the predominant action of the tides, and the waves in the winter months, when the current of fresh water is feeble. Yet however vast the time during which the Mississippi has been transporting its earthy burden to the ocean, the whole period, though far exceeding, perhaps, 100,000 years, must be insignificant in a geological point of view, since the bluffs or cliffs, bounding the great valley, and therefore older in date, and which are from 50 to 250 feet in perpendicular height, consist in great part of loam containing land, fluviatile, and lacustrine sh.e.l.ls of species still inhabiting the same country. (See fig. 23, p. 265.)

Before we take leave of the great delta, we may derive an instructive lesson from the reflection that the new deposits already formed, or now acc.u.mulating, whether marine or freshwater, must greatly resemble in composition, and the general character of their organic remains, many ancient strata, which enter largely into the earth's structure. Yet there is no sudden revolution in progress, whether on the land or in the waters, whether in the animate or the inanimate world. Notwithstanding the excessive destruction of soil and uprooting of trees, the region which yields a never-failing supply of drift-wood is densely clothed with n.o.ble forests, and is almost unrivalled in its power of supporting animal and vegetable life. In spite of the undermining of many a lofty bluff, and the encroachments of the delta on the sea--in spite of the earthquake, which rends and fissures the soil, or causes areas more than sixty miles in length to sink down several yards in a few months, the general features of the district remain unaltered, or are merely undergoing a slow and insensible change. Herds of wild deer graze on the pastures, or browse upon the trees; and if they diminish in number, it is only where they give way to man and the domestic animals which follow in his train. The bear, the wolf, the fox, the panther, and the wild-cat, still maintain themselves in the fastnesses of the forests of cypress and gum-tree. The rac.o.o.n and the opossum are everywhere abundant, while the musk-rat, otter, and mink still frequent the rivers and lakes, and a few beavers and buffaloes have not yet been driven from their ancient haunts. The waters teem with alligators, tortoises, and fish, and their surface is covered with millions of migratory waterfowl, which perform their annual voyage between the Canadian lakes and the sh.o.r.es of the Mexican Gulf. The power of man begins to be sensibly felt, and many parts of the wilderness to be replaced by towns, orchards, and gardens. The gilded steamboats, like moving palaces, stem the force of the current, or shoot rapidly down the descending stream, through the solitudes of the forests and prairies. Already does the flouris.h.i.+ng population of the great valley far exceed that of the thirteen United States when first they declared their independence. Such is the state of a continent where trees and stones are hurried annually by a thousand torrents, from the mountains to the plains, and where sand and finer matter are swept down by a vast current to the sea, together with the wreck of countless forests and the bones of animals which perish in the inundations. When these materials reach the gulf, they do not render the waters unfit for aquatic animals; but on the contrary, the ocean here swarms with life, as it generally does where the influx of a great river furnishes a copious supply of organic and mineral matter. Yet many geologists, when they behold the spoils of the land heaped in successive strata, and blended confusedly with the remains of fishes, or interspersed with broken sh.e.l.ls and corals; when they see portions of erect trunks of trees with their roots still retaining their natural position, and one tier of these preserved in a fossil state above another, imagine that they are viewing the signs of a turbulent instead of a tranquil and settled state of the planet. They read in such phenomena the proof of chaotic disorder and reiterated catastrophes, instead of indications of a surface as habitable as the most delicious and fertile districts now tenanted by man.

DELTA OF THE GANGES AND BRAHMAPOOTRA.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 25.

MAP OF THE DELTA OF THE GANGES AND BRAHMAPOOTRA.]

As an example of a still larger delta advancing upon the sea in opposition to more powerful tides, I shall next describe that of the Ganges and Brahmapootra (or Burrampooter). These, the two princ.i.p.al rivers of India, descend from the highest mountains in the world, and partially mingle their waters in the low plains of Hindostan, before reaching the head of the Bay of Bengal. The Brahmapootra, somewhat the larger of the two, formerly pa.s.sed to the east of Dacca, even so lately as the beginning of the present century, pouring most of its waters into one of the numerous channels in the delta called "the Megna." By that name the main stream was always spoken of by Rennell and others in their memoirs on this region. But the main trunk now unites with an arm of the Ganges considerably higher up, at a point about 100 miles distant from the sea; and it is constantly, according to Dr. Hooker, working its way westward, having formerly, as may be seen by ancient maps, moved eastward for a long period.

The area of the delta of the combined rivers, for it is impossible now to distinguish what belongs to each, is considerably more than double that of the Nile, even if we exclude from the delta a large extent of low, flat, alluvial plain, doubtless of fluviatile origin, which stretches more than 100 miles to the hills west of Calcutta (see map, fig. 25), and much farther in a northerly direction beyond the head of the great delta. The head of a delta is that point where the first arm is given off. Above that point a river receives the waters of tributaries flowing from higher levels; below it, on the contrary, it gives out portions of its waters to lower levels, through channels which flow into adjoining swamps, or which run directly to the sea. The Mississippi, as before described, has a single head, which originated at an unknown period when the Red River joined it. In the great delta of Bengal there may be said to be two heads nearly equidistant from the sea, that of the Ganges (G, map, fig. 25), about 30 miles below Rajmahal, or 216 statute miles in a direct line from the sea, and that of the Brahmapootra (B), below Chirapoonjee, where the river issues from the Khasia mountains, a distance of 224 miles from the Bay of Bengal.

It will appear, by reference to the map, that the great body of fresh water derived from the two rivers enters the bay on its eastern side; and that a large part of the delta bordering on the sea is composed of a labyrinth of rivers and creeks, all filled with salt water, except those immediately communicating with the Hoogly, or princ.i.p.al arm of the Ganges. This tract alone, known by the name of the Woods, or Sunderbunds (more properly Soonderbuns), a wilderness infested by tigers and crocodiles, is, according to Rennell, equal in extent to the whole princ.i.p.ality of Wales.[369]

On the sea-coast there are eight great openings, each of which has evidently, at some ancient period, served in its turn as the princ.i.p.al channel of discharge. Although the flux and reflux of the tide extend even to the heads of the delta when the rivers are low, yet, when they are periodically swollen by tropical rains, their volume and velocity counteract the tidal current, so that, except very near the sea, the ebb and flow become insensible. During the flood season, therefore, the Ganges and Brahmapootra almost a.s.sume in their delta, the character of rivers entering an inland sea; the movements of the ocean being then subordinate to the force of the rivers, and only slightly disturbing their operations. The great gain of the delta in height and area takes place during the inundations; and, during other seasons of the year, the ocean makes reprisals, scouring out the channels, and sometimes devouring rich alluvial plains.

_Islands formed and destroyed._--Major R. H. Colebrooke, in his account of the course of the Ganges, relates examples of the rapid filling up of some of its branches, and the excavation of new channels, where the number of square miles of soil removed in a short time (the column of earth being 114 feet high) was truly astonis.h.i.+ng. Forty square miles, or 25,600 acres, are mentioned as having been carried away, in one place, in the course of a few years.[370] The immense transportation of earthy matter by the Ganges and Brahmapootra is proved by the great magnitude of the islands formed in their channels during a period far short of that of a man's life. Some of these, many miles in extent, have originated in large sand-banks thrown up round the points at the angular turning of the rivers, and afterwards insulated by breaches of the streams. Others, formed in the main channel, are caused by some obstruction at the bottom. A large tree, or a sunken boat, is sometimes sufficient to check the current, and cause a deposit of sand, which acc.u.mulates till it usurps a considerable portion of the channel. The river then undermines its banks on each side, to supply the deficiency in its bed, and the island is afterwards raised by fresh deposits during every flood. In the great gulf below Luckipour, formed by the united waters of the Ganges and Megna, some of the islands, says Rennell, rival in size and fertility the Isle of Wight. While the river is forming new islands in one part, it is sweeping away old ones in others. Those newly formed are soon overrun with reeds, long gra.s.s, the Tamarix Indica, and other shrubs, forming impenetrable thickets, where the tiger, the rhinoceros, the buffalo, deer, and other wild animals, take shelter. It is easy, therefore, to perceive, that both animal and vegetable remains may occasionally be precipitated into the flood, and become imbedded in the sediment which subsides in the delta.

Three or four species of crocodile, of two distinct sub-genera, abound in the Ganges, and its tributary and contiguous waters; and Mr. H. T.

Colebrooke informed me, that he had seen both forms in places far inland, many hundred miles from the sea. The Gangetic crocodile, or Gavial (in correct orthography, Garial), is confined to the fresh water, living exclusively on fish, but the commoner kinds, called Koomiah and Muggar, frequent both fresh and salt, being much larger and fiercer in salt and brackish water.[371] These animals swarm in the brackish water along the line of sand-banks, where the advance of the delta is most rapid. Hundreds of them are seen together in the creeks of the delta, or basking in the sun on the shoals without. They will attack men and cattle, destroying the natives when bathing, and tame and wild animals which come to drink. "I have not unfrequently," says Mr. Colebrooke, "been witness to the horrid spectacle of a floating corpse seized by a crocodile with such avidity, that he half emerged above the water with his prey in his mouth." The geologist will not fail to observe how peculiarly the habits and distribution of these saurians expose them to become imbedded in the horizontal strata of fine mud, which are annually deposited over many hundred square miles in the Bay of Bengal. The inhabitants of the land, which happen to be drowned or thrown into the water, are usually devoured by these voracious reptiles; but we may suppose the remains of the saurians themselves to be continually entombed in the new formations. The number, also, of bodies of the poorer cla.s.s of Hindoos thrown annually into the Ganges is so great, that some of their bones or skeletons can hardly fail to be occasionally enveloped in fluviatile mud.

It sometimes happens, at the season when the periodical flood is at its height, that a strong gale of wind, conspiring with a high spring-tide, checks the descending current of the river, and gives rise to most destructive inundations. From this cause, in 1763, the waters at Luckipour rose six feet above their ordinary level, and the inhabitants of a considerable district, with their houses and cattle, were totally swept away.

The population of all oceanic deltas are particularly exposed to suffer by such catastrophes, recurring at considerable intervals of time; and we may safely a.s.sume that such tragical events have happened again and again since the Gangetic delta was inhabited by man. If human experience and forethought cannot always guard against these calamities, still less can the inferior animals avoid them; and the monuments of such disastrous inundations must be looked for in great abundance in strata of all ages, if the surface of our planet has always been governed by the same laws. When we reflect on the general order and tranquillity that reigns in the rich and populous delta of Bengal, notwithstanding the havoc occasionally committed by the depredations of the ocean, we perceive how unnecessary it is to attribute the imbedding of successive races of animals in older strata to extraordinary energy in the causes of decay and reproduction in the infancy of our planet, or to those general catastrophes and sudden revolutions so often resorted to.

_Deposits in the delta._--The quant.i.ty of mud held in suspension by the waters of the Ganges and Brahmapootra is found, as might be expected, to exceed that of any of the rivers alluded to in this or the preceding chapters; for, in the first place, their feeders flow from mountains of unrivalled alt.i.tude, and do not clear themselves in any lakes, as does the Rhine in the Lake of Constance, or the Rhone in that of Geneva. And, secondly, their whole course is nearer the equator than that of the Mississippi, or any great river, respecting which careful experiments have been made, to determine the quant.i.ty of its water and earthy contents. The fall of rain, moreover, as we have before seen, is excessive on the southern flanks of the first range of mountains which rise from the plains of Hindostan, and still more remarkable is the quant.i.ty sometimes poured down in one day. (See above, p. 200.) The sea, where the Ganges and Brahmapootra discharge their main stream at the flood season, only recovers its transparency at the distance of from 60 to 100 miles from the delta; and we may take for granted that the current continues to transport the finer particles much farther south than where the surface water first becomes clear. The general slope, therefore, of the new strata must be extremely gentle. According to the best charts, there is a gradual deepening from four to about sixty fathoms, as we proceed from the base of the delta to the distance of about one hundred miles into the Bay of Bengal. At some few points seventy, or even one hundred, fathoms are obtained at that distance.

One remarkable exception, however, occurs to the regularity of the shape of the bottom. Opposite the middle of the delta, at the distance of thirty or forty miles from the coast, a deep submarine valley occurs, called the "swatch of no ground," about fifteen miles in diameter, where soundings of 180, and even 300, fathoms fail to reach the bottom. (See map, p. 275.) This phenomenon is the more extraordinary, since the depression runs north to within five miles of the line of shoals; and not only do the waters charged with sediment pa.s.s over it continually, but, during the monsoons, the sea, loaded with mud and sand, is beaten back in that direction towards the delta. As the mud is known to extend for eighty miles farther into the gulf, an enormous thickness of matter must have been deposited in "the swatch." We may conclude, therefore, either that the original depth of this part of the Bay of Bengal was excessive, or that subsidences have occurred in modern times. The latter conjecture is the less improbable, as the whole area of the delta has been convulsed in the historical era by earthquakes, and actual subsidences have taken place in the neighboring coast of Chittagong, while "the swatch" lies not far from the volcanic band which connects Sumatra, Barren Island, and Ramree.[372]

Opposite the mouth of the Hoogly river, and immediately south of Saugor Island, four miles from the nearest land of the delta, a new islet was formed about twenty years ago, called Edmonstone Island, on the centre of which a beacon was erected as a landmark in 1817. In 1818 the island had become two miles long and half a mile broad, and was covered with vegetation and shrubs. Some houses were then built upon it, and in 1820 it was used as a pilot station. The severe gale of 1823 divided it into two parts, and so reduced its size as to leave the beacon standing out in the sea, where, after remaining seven years, it was washed away. The islet in 1836 had been converted by successive storms into a sand-bank, half a mile long, on which a sea-mark was placed.

Although there is evidence of gain at some points, the general progress of the coast is very slow; for the tides, when the river water is low, are actively employed in removing alluvial matter. In the Sunderbunds the usual rise and fall of the tides is no more than eight feet, but, on the east side of the delta, Dr. Hooker observed, in the winter of 1851, a rise of from sixty to eighty feet, producing among the islands at the mouths of the Megna and Fenny rivers, a lofty wave or "bore" as they ascend, and causing the river water to be ponded back, and then to sweep down with great violence when the tide ebbs. The bay for forty miles south of Chittagong is so fresh that neither algae nor mangroves will grow in it. We may, therefore, conceive how effective may be the current formed by so great a volume of water in dispersing fine mud over a wide area. Its power is sometimes augmented by the agitation of the bay during hurricanes in the month of May. The new superficial strata consists entirely of fine sand and mud; such, at least, are the only materials which are exposed to view in regular beds on the banks of the numerous creeks. Neither here or higher up the Ganges, could Dr. Hooker discover any land or freshwater sh.e.l.ls in sections of the banks, which in the plains higher up sometimes form cliffs eighty feet in height at low water. In like manner I have stated[373] that I was unable to find any buried sh.e.l.ls in the delta or modern river cliffs of the Mississippi.

No substance so coa.r.s.e as gravel occurs in any part of the delta of the Ganges and Brahmapootra, nor nearer the sea than 400 miles. Yet it is remarkable that the boring of an Artesian well at Fort William, near Calcutta, in the years 1835-1840, displayed, at the depth of 120 feet, clay and sand with pebbles. This boring was carried to a depth of 481 feet below the level of Calcutta, and the geological section obtained in the operation has been recorded with great care. Under the surface soil, at a depth of about ten feet, they came to a stiff blue clay about forty feet in thickness; below which was sandy clay, containing in its lower portion abundance of decayed vegetable matter, which at the bottom a.s.sumed the character of a stratum of black peat two feet thick. This peaty ma.s.s was considered as a clear indication (like the "dirt-bed" of Portland) of an ancient terrestrial surface, with a forest or Sunderbund vegetation. Logs and branches of a red-colored wood occur both above and immediately below the peat, so little altered that Dr. Wallich was able to identify them with the Soondri tree, _Heritiera littoralis_, one of the most prevalent forms, at the base of the delta. Dr. Falconer tells me that similar peat has been met with at other points round Calcutta at the depth of nine feet and twenty-five feet. It appears, therefore, that there has been a sinking down of what was originally land in this region, to the amount of seventy feet or more perpendicular; for Calcutta is only a few feet above the level of the sea, and the successive peat-beds seem to imply that the subsidence of the ground was gradual or interrupted by several pauses. Below the vegetable ma.s.s they entered upon a stratum of yellowish clay about ten feet thick, containing horizontal layers of kunkar (or kankar), a nodular, concretionary, argillaceous limestone, met with abundantly at greater or less depths in all parts of the valley of the Ganges, over many thousand square miles, and always presenting the same characters, even at a distance of one thousand miles north of Calcutta. Some of this kunkar is said to be of very recent origin in deposits formed by river inundations near Saharanpoor. After penetrating 120 feet, they found loam containing water-worn fragments of mica-slate and other kinds of rock, which the current of the Ganges can no longer transport to this region. In the various beds pierced through below, consisting of clay, marl, and friable sandstone, with kunkar here and there intermixed, no organic remains of decidedly marine origin were met with. Too positive a conclusion ought not, it is true, to be drawn from such a fact, when we consider the narrow bore of the auger and its effect in crus.h.i.+ng sh.e.l.ls and bones. Nevertheless, it is worthy of remark, that the only fossils obtained in a recognizable state were of a fluviatile or terrestrial character. Thus, at the depth of 350 feet, the bony sh.e.l.l of a tortoise, or trionyx, a freshwater genus, was found in sand, resembling the living species of Bengal. From the same stratum, also, they drew up the lower half of the humerus of a ruminant, at first referred to a hyaena. It was the size and shape, says Dr. Falconer, of the shoulder-bone of the _Cervus porcinus_, or common hog-deer, of India. At the depth of 380 feet, clay with fragments of lacustrine sh.e.l.ls was inc.u.mbent on what appears clearly to have been another "dirt-bed," or stratum of decayed wood, implying a period of repose of some duration, and a forest-covered land, which must have subsided 300 feet, to admit of the subsequent superposition of the overlying deposits. It has been conjectured that, at the time when this area supported trees, the land extended much farther out into the Bay of Bengal than now, and that in later times the Ganges, while enlarging its delta, has been only recovering lost ground from the sea.

At the depth of about 400 feet below the surface, an abrupt change was observed in the character of the strata, which were composed in great part of sand, s.h.i.+ngle, and boulders, the only fossils observed being the vertebrae of a crocodile, sh.e.l.l of a trionyx, and fragments of wood very little altered, and similar to that buried in beds far above. These gravelly beds const.i.tuted the bottom of the section at the depth of 481 feet, when the operations were discontinued, in consequence of an accident which happened to the auger.

The occurrence of pebbles at the depths of 120 and 400 feet implies an important change in the geographical condition of the region around or near Calcutta. The fall of the river, or the general slope of the alluvial plain may have been formerly greater; or, before a general and perhaps unequal subsidence, hills once nearer the present base of the delta may have risen several hundred feet, forming islands in the bay, which may have sunk gradually, and become buried under fluviatile sediment.

_Antiquity of the delta._--It would be a matter of no small scientific interest, if experiments were made to enable us to determine, with some degree of accuracy, the mean quant.i.ty of earthy matter discharged annually into the sea by the united waters of the Ganges and Brahmapootra. The Rev. Mr. Everest inst.i.tuted, in 1831-2, a series of observations on the earthy matter brought down by the Ganges, at Ghazepoor, 500 miles from the sea. He found that, in 1831, the number of cubic feet of water discharged by the river per second at that place was, during the

Rains (4 months) 494,208 Winter (5 months) 71,200 Hot weather (3 months) 36,330

so that we may state in round numbers that 500,000 cubic feet per second flow down during the four months of the flood season, from June to September, and less than 60,000 per second during the remaining eight months.

The average quant.i.ty of solid matter suspended in the water during the rains was, by weight, 1/428th part; but as the water is about one-half the specific gravity of the dried mud, the solid matter discharged is 1/856th part in bulk, or 577 cubic feet per second. This gives a total of 6,082,041,600 cubic feet for the discharge in the 122 days of the rain. The proportion of sediment in the waters at other seasons was comparatively insignificant, the total amount during the five winter months being only 247,881,600 cubic feet, and during the three months of hot weather 38,154,240 cubic feet. The total annual discharge, then, would be 6,368,077,440 cubic feet.

This quant.i.ty of mud would in one year raise a surface of 228 square miles, or a square s.p.a.ce, each side of which should measure 15 miles, a height of one foot. To give some idea of the magnitude of this result, we will a.s.sume that the specific gravity of the dried mud is only one-half that of granite (it would, however, be more); in that case, the earthy matter discharged in a year would equal 3,184,038,720 cubic feet of granite. Now about 12 cubic feet of granite weigh one ton; and it is computed that the great Pyramid of Egypt, if it were a solid ma.s.s of granite, would weigh about 600,000,000 tons. The ma.s.s of matter, therefore, carried down annually would, according to this estimate, more than equal in weight and bulk forty-two of the great pyramids of Egypt, and that borne down in the four months of the rains would equal forty pyramids. But if, without any conjecture as to what may have been the specific gravity of the mud, we attend merely to the weight of solid matter actually proved by Mr. Everest to have been contained in the water, we find that the number of tons weight which pa.s.sed down in the 122 days of the rainy season was 339,413,760, which would give the weight of fifty-six pyramids and a half; and in the whole year 355,361,464 tons, or nearly the weight of sixty pyramids.

The base of the great Pyramid of Egypt covers eleven acres, and its perpendicular height is about five hundred feet. It is scarcely possible to present any picture to the mind which will convey an adequate conception of the mighty scale of this operation, so tranquilly and almost insensibly carried on by the Ganges, as it glides through its alluvial plain, even at a distance of 500 miles from the sea. It may, however, be stated, that if a fleet of more than eighty Indiamen, each freighted with about 1400 tons' weight of mud, were to sail down the river every hour of every day and night for four months continuously, they would only transport from the higher country to the sea a ma.s.s of solid matter equal to that borne down by the Ganges, even in this part of its course, in the four months of the flood season. Or the exertions of a fleet of about 2000 such s.h.i.+ps going down daily with the same burden, and discharging it into the gulf, would be no more than equivalent to the operations of the great river.

The most voluminous current of lava which has flowed from Etna within historical times was that of 1669. Ferrara, after correcting Borelli's estimate, calculated the quant.i.ty of cubic yards of lava in this current at 140,000,000. Now, this would not equal in bulk one-fifth of the sedimentary matter which is carried down in a single year by the Ganges, past Ghazepoor, according to the estimate above explained; so that it would require five grand eruptions of Etna to transfer a ma.s.s of lava from the subterranean regions to the surface, equal in volume to the mud carried down in one year to that place.

Captain R. Strachey, of the Bengal Engineers, has remarked to me, not only that Ghazepoor, where Mr. Everest's observations were made, is 500 miles from the sea, but that the Ganges has not been joined there by its most important feeders. These drain upon the whole 750 miles of the Himalaya, and no more than 150 miles of that mountain-chain have sent their contributions to the main trunk at Ghazepoor. Below that place, the Ganges is joined by the Gogra, Gunduk, Khosee, and Teesta from the north, to say nothing of the Sone flowing from the south, one of the largest of the rivers which rise in the table-land of central India.

(See map, fig. 25, p. 275.) Moreover the remaining 600 miles of the Himalaya comprise that eastern portion of the basin where the rains are heaviest. (See above, p. 200.) The quant.i.ty of water therefore carried down to the sea may probably be four or five times as much as that which pa.s.ses Ghazepoor.

The Brahmapootra, according to Major Wilc.o.x,[374] in the month of January, when it is near its minimum, discharges 150,000 cubic feet of water per second at Gwalpara, not many miles above the head of its delta. Taking the proportions observed at Ghazepoor at the different seasons as a guide, the probable average discharge of the Brahmapootra for the whole year may be estimated at about the same as that of the Ganges. a.s.suming this; and secondly, in order to avoid the risk of exaggeration, that the proportion of sediment in their waters is about a third less than Mr. Everest's estimate, the mud borne down to the Bay of Bengal in one year would equal 40,000 millions of cubic feet, or between six and seven times as much as that brought down to Ghazepoor, according to Mr. Everest's calculations in 1831, and ten times as much as that conveyed annually by the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Captain Strachey estimates the annually inundated portion of the delta at 250 miles in length by 80 in breadth, making an area of 20,000 square miles. The s.p.a.ce south of this in the bay, where sediment is thrown down, may be 300 miles from E. to W. by 150 N. and S., or 45,000 square miles, which, added to the former, gives a surface of 65,000 square miles, over which the sediment is spread out by the two rivers. Suppose then the solid matter to amount to 40,000 millions of cubic feet per annum, the deposit, he observes, must be continued for forty-five years and three-tenths to raise the whole area a height of one foot, or 13,600 years to raise it 300 feet; and this, as we have seen, is much less than the thickness of the fluviatile strata actually penetrated, (and the bottom not reached) by the auger at Calcutta.

Nevertheless we can by no means deduce from these data alone, what will be the future rate of advance of the delta, nor even predict whether the land will gain on the sea, or remain stationary. At the end of 13,000 years the bay may be less shallow than now, provided a moderate depression, corresponding to that experienced in part of Greenland for many centuries shall take place (see chap. 30). A subsidence quite insensible to the inhabitants of Bengal, not exceeding two feet three inches in a century, would be more than sufficient to counterbalance all the efforts of the two mighty rivers to extend the limits of their delta. We have seen that the Artesian borings at Calcutta attest, what the vast depth of the "swatch" may also in all likelihood indicate, that the antagonist force of subsidence has predominated for ages over the influx of fluviatile mud, preventing it from raising the plains of Bengal, or from filling up a larger portion of the bay.

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON DELTAS.

_Convergence of deltas._--If we possessed an accurate series of maps of the Adriatic for many thousand years, our retrospect would, without doubt, carry us gradually back to the time when the number of rivers descending from the mountains into that gulf by independent deltas was far greater in number. The deltas of the Po and the Adige, for instance, would separate themselves within the _recent_ era, as, in all probability, would those of the Isonzo and the Torre. If, on the other hand, we speculate on future changes, we may antic.i.p.ate the period when the number of deltas will greatly diminish; for the Po cannot continue to encroach at the rate of a mile in a hundred years, and other rivers to gain as much in six or seven centuries upon the shallow gulf, without new junctions occurring from time to time; so that Erida.n.u.s, "the king of rivers," will continually boast a greater number of tributaries. The Ganges and the Brahmapootra have perhaps become partially confluent in the same delta within the historical, or at least within the human era; and the date of the junction of the Red River and the Mississippi would, in all likelihood, have been known, if America had not been so recently discovered. The union of the Tigris and the Euphrates must undoubtedly have been one of the modern geographical changes of our Earth, for Col.

Rawlinson informs me that the delta of those rivers has advanced two miles in the last sixty years, and is supposed to have encroached about forty miles upon the Gulf of Persia in the course of the last twenty-five centuries.

When the deltas of rivers, having many mouths, converge, a partial union at first takes place by the confluence of some one or more of their arms; but it is not until the main trunks are connected above the head of the common delta, that a complete intermixture of their joint waters and sediment takes place. The union, therefore, of the Po and Adige, and of the Ganges and Brahmapootra, is still incomplete. If we reflect on the geographical extent of surface drained by rivers such as now enter the Bay of Bengal, and then consider how complete the blending together of the greater part of their transported matter has already become, and throughout how vast a delta it is spread by numerous arms, we no longer feel so much surprise at the area occupied by some ancient formations of h.o.m.ogeneous mineral composition. But our surprise will be still farther lessened, when we afterwards inquire (ch. 21) into the action of tides and currents in disseminating sediment.

_Age of existing deltas._--If we could take for granted, that the relative level of land and sea had remained stationary ever since all the existing deltas began to be formed--could we a.s.sume that their growth commenced at one and the same instant when the present continents acquired their actual shape--we might understand the language of geologists who speak of "the epoch of existing continents." They endeavor to calculate the age of deltas from this imaginary fixed period; and they calculate the gain of new land upon the sea, at the mouths of rivers, as having begun everywhere simultaneously. But the more we study the history of deltas, the more we become convinced that upward and downward movements of the land and contiguous bed of the sea have exerted, and continue to exert, an influence on the physical geography of many hydrographical basins, on a scale comparable in magnitude or importance to the amount of fluviatile deposition effected in an equal lapse of time. In the basin of the Mississippi, for example, proofs both of descending and ascending movements to a vertical amount of several hundred feet can be shown to have taken place since the existing species of land and freshwater sh.e.l.ls lived in that region.[375]

The deltas also of the Po and Ganges have each, as we have seen (p.

257), when probed by the Artesian auger, borne testimony to a gradual subsidence of land to the extent of several hundred feet--old terrestrial surfaces, turf, peat, forest-land, and "dirt-beds," having been pierced at various depths. The changes of level at the mouth of the Indus in Cutch (see below, chap. 27), and those of New Madrid in the valley of the Mississippi (see p. 270, and chap. 27), are equally instructive, as demonstrating unceasing fluctuations in the levels of those areas into which running water is transporting sediment. If, therefore, the exact age of all modern deltas could be known, it is scarcely probable that we should find any two of them in the world to have coincided in date, or in the time when their earliest deposits originated.

_Grouping of strata in deltas._--The changes which have taken place in deltas, even within the times of history, may suggest many important considerations in regard to the manner in which subaqueous sediment is distributed. With the exception of some cases hereafter to be noticed, there are some general laws of arrangement which must evidently hold good in almost all the lakes and seas now filling up. If a lake, for example, be encircled on two sides by lofty mountains, receiving from them many rivers and torrents of different sizes, and if it be bounded on the other sides, where the surplus waters issue, by a comparatively low country, it is not difficult to define some of the leading geological features which must characterize the lacustrine formation, when this basin shall have been gradually converted into dry land by the influx of sediment. The strata would be divisible into two princ.i.p.al groups: the _older_ comprising those deposits which originated on the side adjoining the mountains, where numerous deltas first began to form; and the _newer_ group consisting of beds deposited in the more central parts of the basin, and towards the side farthest from the mountains.

The following characters would form the princ.i.p.al marks of distinction between the strata in each series:--The more ancient system would be composed, for the most part, of coa.r.s.er materials, containing many beds of pebbles and sand, often of great thickness, and sometimes dipping at a considerable angle. These, with a.s.sociated beds of finer ingredients, would, if traced round the borders of the basin, be seen to vary greatly in color and mineral composition, and would also be very irregular in thickness. The beds, on the contrary, in the newer group, would consist of finer particles, and would be horizontal, or very slightly inclined.

Their color and mineral composition would be very h.o.m.ogeneous throughout large areas, and would differ from almost all the separate beds in the older series.