Creatures of the Kingdom: Stories of Animals and Nature

by James A. Michener

  Its soil was later made from dozens of smaller volcanoes that erupted for a few hundred thousand years, then passed into death and silence. One exploded in dazzling glory and left a crater looking like a punch bowl. Another, at the very edge of the island, overlooking the sea, was transformed into a gaunt headland shaped like a diamond.

  When the island was fully formed—and what an enchanting island it was—some force of nature, almost as if by subtle plan, hid in its bowels a wealth of incalculable richness. It was not diamonds, because the island was 250 million years too young to have acquired the carboniferous plant growth that produced diamonds. It was not either oil or coal, for the same reason. It wasn’t gold, for neither the age nor the conditions required for the creation of that metal were present on this island. It was none of these commonly accepted treasures, but it was a greater one.

  The volcanic basalt from which the island was built was porous, and when the tremendous storms that swept the ocean struck the island, the waters they disgorged ran partly out to sea in surface rivers but seeped partly into the heart of the island. Billions of tons of water thus crept down into secret reservoirs of the island.

  They did not stay there, of course, for since the rock was porous, there were avenues that led back out to sea, and in time the water was lost. But any animal, a man perhaps, could intercept the water and use it, for the entire island was a catchment; the entire core of the island was permeated with life-giving water.

  But that was not the special treasure of this particular island, for a man could bore into almost any porous rock on any island and catch some water. Here, on this island, there was to be an extra treasure, and the way it was deposited was something of a miracle.

  When the ice came and went, causing the great ocean to rise, and when the island itself sank slowly and then was rebuilt with new lava—when these titanic convolutions were in progress, the south shore of the island was alternately exposed to sunlight or buried fathoms deep in ocean. When the first condition prevailed, the exposed shore was cut by mountain streams that threw their debris across the plain, depositing there claylike soils and minute fragments of lava. Sometimes the sea would bring bits of animal calcium or a thundering storm would rip away a cliff face and throw its remnants over the shore. Bit by bit, over a hundred thousand years at a time, the shore accumulated its debris.

  Then, when the ocean next rose, it would press down heavily upon this shelving land, which would lie for ages, submerged under tons of dark green water. But while the great brutal ocean thus pressed down hydraulically, it at the same time acted as a life-giving agent, for through its shimmering waves filtered silt and dead bodies, and water-logged fragments of trees and sand. All these things, the gifts of both land and sea, the immense weight of ocean would bind together until they united to form rock.

  Cataclysmically the island would rise from the sea to collect new fragments washed down from the hills, then sink beneath the waves to accumulate new deposits of life-building slime. But whenever the monstrous ocean beat down heavily upon the shore for ten thousand years at a time, new rock would be formed, an impermeable shield that sloped down from the lower foothills and extended well out to sea. It was a caprock, imprisoning in a gigantic underground reservoir all that lay beneath it.

  What lay trapped below, of course, was water. Secretly, far beneath the visible surface of the island, imprisoned by this watertight cap of rock, lay the purest, sweetest, most copious water in all the lands that bordered upon or existed in the great ocean. It lay there under vast pressure, so that not only was it available, but it was ready to leap forth twenty or thirty or forty feet into the air, and engulf with life-giving sweetness anyone who could penetrate the imprisoning rock and set it free. It waited—an almost inexhaustible supply of water to sustain life. It waited—a universe of water hidden beneath the caprock. It waited.

  The adventurous plants and insects that had reached the earlier northwest island had plenty of time in which to make their way to the newer lands as the latter rose to life. It might take a million years for a given grass to complete its journey down the chain. But there was no hurry. Slowly, trees and vines and crawling things crept down the islands, while in other parts of the world a new and more powerful animal was rising and preparing himself for his invasion of the islands.

  Before the two-volcano island with its trapped treasure of water had finished growing, humankind had developed in distant areas. Before the last island had assumed its dominant shape, Egyptians had erected both mighty monuments and a stable form of government. They could already write and record their memories.

  While volcanoes still played along the chain, China developed a sophisticated system of thought and Japan codified art principles that would later enrich the world. While the islands were taking their final form, Jesus spoke in Jerusalem and Muhammad came from the blazing desert with a new vision of heaven, but no one knew the heaven that awaited them on these islands.

  For these lands were the youngest part of the earth’s visible surface. They were new. They were raw. They were empty. Ancient books that we still read today were written before these islands were known to anyone except the birds of passage. Songs that we still sing were composed and recorded while these islands remained vacant. The Bible had been compiled, and the Koran.

  Raw, empty, youthful islands, sleeping in the sun and whipped by rain, they waited. It is proper to review them carefully in their last, unoccupied moments, those sad, sweet, overpowering days before the first canoes reached them.

  They were beautiful, verdant with wooded mountains. Their cool waterfalls, existing in the thousands, were spectacular. Their cliffs, where the restless ocean had eroded away the edges of great mountains, dropped thousands of feet clear into the sea, and birds nested on the vertical stones. Rivers were fruitful. The shores of the islands were white and waves that washed them were crystal-blue. At night the stars were close, brilliant dots of fire fixing forever the location of the islands and forming majestic pathways for the moon and sun.

  If paradise consists solely of beauty, then these islands were the fairest paradise that man ever invaded. But if the concept of paradise includes the ability to sustain life, then these islands in the time of Jesus and Muhammad were far from heavenly. They contained almost no food. Of all the things that grew on their magnificent hillsides, nothing could be relied upon to sustain life adequately. There were a few pandanus trees whose spare and bitter fruits could be chewed for minimal subsistence. There were a few tree ferns whose cores were just barely edible, a few roots. There were fish if they could be caught and birds if they could be trapped. But there was nothing else.

  Few more inhospitable major islands have ever existed than this group. Here there were no chickens, pigs, cattle or edible dogs; no bananas, taro, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, pineapple, guava, gourds, melons or mangoes, no fruit of any kind; no palms for making sugar. The islands did not have even that one essential, that miraculous sustainer of tropical life, the coconut. Some of the fruit had drifted to the shores, but in salty soil along the beaches they could not grow.

  Any man who came to the islands would have to bring with him all his food. If he was wise, he would also bring most of the materials required for physical comfort. There were no candlenuts for lamps, no mulberry bark for making tapa cloth. Nor were there any flamboyant flowers: no frangipani, or hibiscus, or bright croton, or colorful orchids. Instead of joy-giving, life-sustaining plants there was a tree whose only virtue was that its wood when dried yielded a persistent perfume. This was the tree of death, the sandalwood tree. It was not poisonous, but the uses to which it would be put on these islands would make it a permanent blight.

  The soil of the islands was not particularly good. It was not rich and black like the soil that peasants were already farming, not loamy and productive like that known to the Dakota and Iowa tribes of Indians. It was red and of a sandlike consistency, apparently rich in iron because it had been formed of decomposed basalt, bu
t lacking in other essentials. If a farmer could add to this soil the missing minerals and supply it with adequate water, it had the capacity to produce enormously. But of itself it was inadequate.

  Tremendous quantities of rain did fall on the islands, but it fell in an unproductive manner. From the northeast, trade winds blew constantly, pushing ahead of them low clouds pregnant with pure water. But along the northeast shores of each island high cliffs and mountains rose, and these reached up and knocked the water out of the clouds, so that it fell in cascades where it could not be used and never reached the southwest plains where the red soil was. Of the flatlands that could be tilled, fully three fourths were, in effect, deserts. If one could capture the wasted water that ran useless down the steep mountainsides and back out to sea, bringing it through the mountains and onto the flatlands, then crops could be grown. Or if one could find the secret reservoirs deep in the bowels of the islands, one would have ample water and more than ample food. But barring such a discovery, men who lived on these islands would never have enough water or enough food. The best that could be said of the islands was that they harbored no poisonous snakes, no mosquitoes and no organisms that cause disfiguring diseases.

  * * *

  Of all the growing things that existed on these islands at the time of Jesus, ninety-five of every hundred grew nowhere else in the world. These islands were unique, alone, apart, off the mainstream of life, a secluded backwater of nature, an authentic natural paradise where each growing thing followed its own distinctive pattern of development.

  The first seed, which was brought by that adventurous bird, was a grass seed perhaps, one whose brothers and sisters—if the term may be used of grasses—stayed behind on their original islands, where they developed as the family had always done for millions of generations. On these original islands the grass maintained its standard characteristics and threw forth no venturesome modifications; or, if such mutations occurred, the stronger normal stock quickly submerged them, and the primary strain was preserved.

  But on the new islands the grass, left alone in sun and rain, became a different grass, unique and adapted to these islands. When men looked at such grass, millions of years later, they would be able to discern that it was a grass, and that it had come from original stock still existing elsewhere; but they would also see that it was nevertheless a new grass, with new qualities, new vitality and new promise.

  Birds, flowers, worms, trees and insects all developed unique forms and qualities on these islands. There was then, as there is now, no place known on earth that could even begin to compete with these islands in their capacity to encourage forms of life to develop freely and radically their own best potential.

  Why this should have been so remains a mystery. Perhaps a fortunate combination of rainfall, climate, sunlight and soil accounted for this miracle. Perhaps eons in which diverse growing things were left alone to work out their own best destinies was the explanation, as, for example, when a grass reached here it had to rely on its own capacities because it could not be refertilized by grasses of the same kind from the parent stock. But whatever the reason, the fact remains: in these islands new breeds developed, and they prospered, and they grew strong, and they multiplied. These islands were a crucible of exploration and development.

  And so, rich with potential, the islands waited. England was settled by mixed and powerful races, and the islands waited for their own settlers. Mighty kings ruled in India, and in China and in Japan, while the islands waited.

  Volcanoes, still building the ramparts with fresh flows of lava, hung lanterns in the sky so that if a man in his canoe was lost on the great dark sea, wandering this way and that, he might spot the incandescent glow of the underside of a distant cloud, and thus find a fiery star to steer by.

  Large gannets and smaller terns skimmed across the waters leading to land, while frigate birds drew sharp and sure navigation lines from the turbulent ocean wastes right to the heart of the islands, where they nested. If a man in a canoe could spot a frigate bird, its cleft tail cutting the wind, he could be sure that land lay in the direction toward which the bird had flown at dusk.

  But, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruit and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish.

  But if you come with growing things, and good foods and better ideas, if you come with gods that will sustain you, and if you are willing to work until the swimming head and the aching arms can stand no more, then you can gain entrance to this miraculous crucible where the units of nature are free to develop according to their own capacities and desires.

  On these harsh terms the islands waited.

  THE BIRTH OF THE ROCKIES

  When the earth was already ancient, of an age incomprehensible to man, an event of basic importance occurred in the area of the North American continent that would later be known as Colorado. To appreciate its significance, one must understand the structure of the earth, and to do this, one must start at the vital center.

  Since the earth is not a perfect sphere, the radius from center to surface varies. At the poles it is 3,950 miles and at the equator 3,963. At the time we are talking about, Colorado lay about the same distance from the equator as it does now, and its radius was 3,956 miles.

  At the center then, as today, was a ball of solid material, very heavy and incredibly hot, made up mostly of iron; this extended for about 770 miles. Around it was a cover about 1,375 miles thick, which was not solid but which could not be called liquid either, for at that pressure and that temperature, nothing could be liquid. It permitted movement, but it did not easily flow. It transmitted heat, but it did not bubble. It is best described as having characteristics with which we are not familiar, perhaps like a warm plastic.

  Around this core was fitted a mantle of dense rock 1,784 miles thick, whose properties are difficult to describe, though much is known of them. Strictly speaking, this rock was in liquid form, but the pressures exerted upon it were such as to keep it more rigid than a bar of iron. The mantle was a belt that absorbed both pressure and heat from any direction and was consequently under considerable stress. From time to time the pressure became so great that some of the mantle material forced its way toward the surface of the earth, undergoing marked change in the process. The resultant body of molten liquid, called magma, would solidify to produce the igneous rock, granite, but if it was still in liquid form as it approached the surface, it would become lava. It was in the mantle that many of the movements originated that would determine what was to happen next to the visible structure of the earth; deep beneath the surface, it accumulated stress and generated enormous heat as it prepared for its next dramatic excursion toward the surface, producing the magma that would appear as either granite or lava.

  At the top of the mantle, only twenty-seven miles from the surface, rested the earth’s crust, where life would develop. What was it like? It can be described as the hard scum that forms at the top of a pot of boiling porridge. From the fire at the center of the pot, heat radiates not only upward, but in all directions. The porridge bubbles freely at first when it is thin, and its motion seems to be always upward, but as it thickens, one can see that for every slow bubble that rises at the center of the pan, part of the porridge is drawn downward at the edges; it is this slow reciprocal rise and fall that constitutes cooking. In time, when enough of this convection has taken place, the porridge exposed to air begins to thicken perceptibly, and the moment the internal heat stops or diminishes, it hardens into a crust.

  This analogy has two weaknesses. The flame that keeps the geologic pot bubbling does not come primarily from the hot center of the earth, but rather from the radioactive structure of the rocks themselves. And as the liquid magma cools, different types of rocks
solidify: heavy dark ones rich in iron settle toward the bottom; lighter ones like quartz move to the top.

  The crust was divided into two distinct layers. The lower and heavier, twelve miles thick, was composed of a dark, dense rock known by its made-up name of ‘sima,’ indicating the predominance of silicon and magnesium. The upper and lighter layer, fifteen miles thick, was composed of lighter rock known by the invented word ‘sial,’ indicating silicon and aluminum. The subsequent two miles of Colorado’s rock and sediment would eventually come to rest on this sialic layer.

  Three billion six hundred million years ago the crust had formed, and the cooling earth lay exposed to the developing atmosphere. The surface as it then existed was not hospitable. Temperatures were too high to sustain life, and oxygen was only beginning to accumulate. What land had tentatively coagulated was insecure, and over it winds of unceasing fury were starting to blow. Vast floods began to sweep emerging areas and kept them swamplike, rising and falling in the agonies of a birth that had not yet materialized. There were no fish, no birds, no animals, and had there been, there would have been nothing for them to eat, for grass and trees and worms did not exist.

  Even under these inhospitable conditions, there were elements like algae from which recognizable life would later develop, but the course of their future development had not yet been determined.

  The earth, therefore, stood at a moment of decision: would it continue as a mass with a fragile covering incapable of sustaining either structures or life, or would some tremendous transformation take place that would alter its basic surface appearance and enlarge its capacity?

  Sometime around three billion six hundred million years ago, the answer came. Deep within the crust, or perhaps in the upper part of the mantle, a body of magma began to accumulate. Its concentration of heat was so great that previously solid rock partially melted. The lighter materials were melted first and moved upward through the heavier material that was left behind, coming to rest at higher elevations and in enormous quantities.