The Deluge
In the seventh volume of the Journal (1824)35 we read:
“After the production of these regular strata of sand, clay, limestone, &c. came a terrible irruption of water from the north, or northwest, which in many places covered the preceding formations with diluvial gravel, and carried along with it those immense masses of granite, and the older rocks, which attest to the present day the destruction and ruin of a former world.”
Another author remarks:
“We find a mantle as it were of sand and gravel indifferently covering all the solid strata, and evidently derived from some convulsion which has lacerated and partly broken up those strata....”
The catastrophe favored by most geologists was floods of water violently released—“we believe,” says the editor, “that all geologists agree in imputing... the diluvium to the agency of a deluge at one period or another.”36 Such conclusions rested in no small way upon Hayden’s well-known treatise on surficial deposits (1821),37 a volume which deserves a prominent place in American geological literature. Hayden clearly distinguished the topographic and structural features of the drift but found an adequate cause in general wide-spread currents which “flowed impetuously across the whole continent... from north east to south west.” In reviewing Hayden’s book Silliman remarks:
“The general cause of these currents Mr. Hayden concludes to be the deluge of Noah. While no one will object to the propriety of ascribing very many, probably most of our alluvial features, to that catastrophe, we conceive that neither Mr. Hayden, nor any other man, is bound to prove the immediate physical cause of that vindictive infliction.
We would beg leave to suggest the following as a cause which may have aided in deluging the earth, and which, were there occasion, might do it again.
The existence of enormous caverns in the bowels of the earth, (so often imagined by authors,) appears to be no very extravagant assumption. It is true it cannot be proved, but in a sphere of eight thousand miles in diameter, it would appear in no way extraordinary, that many cavities might exist, which collectively, or even singly, might well contain much more than all our oceans, seas, and other superficial waters, none of which are probably more than a few miles in depth. If these cavities communicate in any manner with the oceans, and are (as if they exist at all, they probably are,) filled with water, there exist, we conceive, agents very competent to expel the water of these cavities, and thus to deluge, at any time, the dry land.”
The teachings of Hayden were favorably received by Hitchcock, Struder, and Hubbard, and many Europeans. They found a champion in Jackson, who states (1839):38
“From the observations made upon Mount Ktaadn, it is proved, that the current did rush over the summit of that lofty mountain, and consequently the diluvial waters rose to the height of more than 5,000 feet. Hence we are enabled to prove, that the ancient ocean, which rushed over the surface of the State, was at least a mile in depth, and its transporting power must have been greatly increased by its enormous pressure.”
Gibson, a student of western geology, reaches the same conclusion (1836):39
“That a wide-spread current, although not, as imagined, fed from an inland sea, once swept over the entire region between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains is established by plenary proof.”
Professor Sedgwick (1831) thought the sudden upheaval of mountains sufficient to have caused floods again and again. The strength of the belief in the Biblical flood, during the first quarter of the 19th century, may be represented by the following remarks of Phillips (1832):40
“Of many important facts which come under the consideration of geologists, the ‘Deluge’ is, perhaps, the most remarkable; and it is established by such clear and positive arguments, that if any one point of natural history may be considered as proved, the deluge must be admitted to have happened, because it has left full evidence in plain and characteristic effects upon the surface of the earth.”
However, the theory of deluges, whether of ocean or land streams, did not hold the field unopposed. In 1823, Granger,41 an observer whose contributions to science total only six pages, speaks of the striæ on the shore of Lake Erie as
“having been formed by the powerful and continued attrition of some hard body.... To me, it does not seem possible that water under any circumstances, could have effected it. The flutings in width, depth, and direction, are as regular as if they had been cut out by a grooving plane. This, running water could not effect, nor could its operation have produced that glassy smoothness, which, in many parts, it still retains.”
Hayes and also Conrad expressed similar views in the Journal 16 years later.
The idea that ice was in some way concerned with the transportation of drift has had a curious history. The first unequivocal statement, based on reading and keen observation, was made in the Journal by Dobson in 1826:42
“I have had occasion to dig up a great number of bowlders, of red sandstone, and of the conglomerate kind, in erecting a cotton manufactory; and it was not uncommon to find them worn smooth on the under side, as if done by their having been dragged over rocks and gravelly earth, in one steady position. On examination, they exhibit scratches and furrows on the abraded part; and if among the minerals composing the rock, there happened to be pebbles of feldspar, or quartz, (which was not uncommon,) they usually appeared not to be worn so much as the rest of the stone, preserving their more tender parts in a ridge, extending some inches. When several of these pebbles happen to be in one block, the preserved ridges were on the same side of the pebbles, so that it is easy to determine which part of the stone moved forward, in the act of wearing.
These bowlders are found, not only on the surface, but I have discovered them a number of feet deep, in the earth, in the hard compound of clay, sand, and gravel....
I think we cannot account for these appearances, unless we call in the aid of ice along with water, and that they have been worn by being suspended and carried in ice, over rocks and earth, under water.”
In Dobson’s day the hypothesis of “gigantic floods,” “debacles,” “resistless world-wide currents,” was so firmly entrenched that the voice of the observant layman found no hearers, and a letter from Dobson to Hitchcock written in 1837 and containing additional evidence and argument remained unpublished until Murchison, in 1842,43 paid his respects to the remarkable work of a remarkable man.44
“I take leave of the glacial theory in congratulating American science in having possessed the original author of the best glacial theory, though his name had escaped notice; and in recommending to you the terse argument of Peter Dobson, a previous acquaintance with which might have saved volumes of disputation on both sides of the Atlantic.”