My Terminal Moraine | Page 6

But get on your hat, my dear fellow,
and let's go over to the town for men."
The next day there were eight men working under the direction of my
friend Burton, and although they did not work at night as he wished
them to do, they labored steadfastly for ten days or more before Tom
was ready to announce what it was he had hoped to discover, and
whether or not he had found it. For a day or two I watched the
workmen from time to time, but after that I kept away, preferring to
await the result of my friend's operations. He evidently expected to find
something worth having, and whether he was successful or not, it
suited me better to know the truth all at once and not by degrees.
On the morning of the eleventh day Tom came into the room where I
was reading and sat down near me. His face was pale, his eyes
glittering. "Old friend," said he, and as he spoke I noticed that his voice
was a little husky, although it was plain enough that his emotion was
not occasioned by bad fortune--"my good old friend, I have found out
what made the bottom of your gravel-pit so uncomfortably cold. You
need not doubt what I am going to tell you, for my excavations have
been complete and thorough enough to make me sure of what I say.
Don't you remember that I told you that ages ago there was a vast
glacier in the country which stretches from here to the mountains? Well,
sir, the foot of that glacier must have reached further this way than is
generally supposed. At any rate a portion of it did extend in this
direction as far as this bit of the world which is now yours. This end or
spur of the glacier, nearly a quarter of a mile in width, I should say, and
pushing before it a portion of the terminal moraine on which you live,
came slowly toward the valley until suddenly it detached itself from the
main glacier and disappeared from sight. That is to say, my boy"--and
as he spoke Tom sprang to his feet, too excited to sit any longer--"it

descended to the bowels of the earth, at least for a considerable distance
in that direction, Now you want to know how this happened. Well, I'll
tell you. In this part of the country there are scattered about here and
there great caves. Geologists know one or two of them, and it is certain
that there are others undiscovered. Well, sir, your glacier spur
discovered one of them, and when it had lain over the top of it for an
age or two, and had grown bigger and bigger, and heavier and heavier,
it at last burst through the rock roof of the cave, snapping itself from
the rest of the glacier and falling in one vast mass to the bottom of the
subterranean abyss. Walter, it is there now. The rest of the glacier came
steadily down; the moraines were forced before it; they covered up this
glacier spur, this broken fragment, and by the time the climate changed
and the average of temperature rose above that of the glacial period,
this vast sunken mass of ice was packed away below the surface of the
earth, out of the reach of the action of friction, or heat, or moisture, or
anything else which might destroy it. And through all the long
procession of centuries that broken end of the glacier has been lying in
your terminal moraine. It is there now. It is yours, Walter Cuthbert. It is
an ice-mine. It is wealth, and so far as I can make out, it is nearly all
upon your land. To you is the possession, but to me is the glory of the
discovery. A bit of the glacial period kept in a cave for us! It is too
wonderful to believe! Walter, have you any brandy?"
It may well be supposed that by this time I was thoroughly awakened to
the importance and the amazing character of my friend's discovery, and
I hurried with him to the scene of operations. There he explained
everything and showed me how, by digging away a portion of the face
of the bluff, he had found that this vast fragment of the glacier, which
had been so miraculously preserved, ended in an irregularly
perpendicular wall, which extended downward he knew not how far,
and the edge of it on its upper side had been touched by my workmen
in digging their pit. "It was the gradual melting of the upper end of this
glacier," said Tom, "probably more elevated than the lower end, that
made your dell. I wondered why the