Darwinia

Weston anchored in a broad, slow turn of the river T. Compton calls Cathedral Pool. Rhine flows from a gentle rift valley, mountainous Bergischland east of us, the Rhine Gorge somewhere ahead. Generously forested terrain: mosque trees (taller than English spp.), immense khaki-colored sage-pine, complex undergrowth. Fire perhaps a threat in dry weather. This was brown coal territory in the other Europe; Compton says wildcatters have been spotted here shallow mines already operating (marginally), and we have seen crude roads a little river traffic. Finch claims to find evidence of coking coal, says this area will be an iron and steel center someday, God willing, with pig iron from the Oolitic scarps of the Cotes de Moselle, esp. if U.S. keeps continent from being “fenced with borders.”

Sullivan says coal is more evidence of an ancient Darwinia, a stratigraphic sequence caused by the Tertiary uplift of the Rhine Plateau. Real question, he says, is whether Darwinian geology is identical to old European geology, changes due solely to different weathering and river meanders; or whether Darwinian geology is only approximately the same, different in its finer points — which may affect our survey of the Alps: an unexpected gorge at Mount Genevre or Brenner would send us chastened back to J’ville.

Weather fine, blue skies, the river current stronger now.

It couldn’t last, Guilford knew, this leisurely river cruise, with a well-stocked galley and long days with the camera and plant-press, graveled beaches free of troublesome insects or animals, nights as rich with stars as any Guilford had seen in Montana. The Weston moved farther up the rift valley of the Rhine and the gorge walls grew steeper, the scraps more dramatic, until it was easy for Guilford to imagine the old Europe here, the vanished castles (“Eberbach,” Keck would intone, “Marksburg, Sooneck, Kaiserpfalz…”), massed Teutonic warriors with spikes and tassles on their helmets.

But this was not Old Europe and the evidence was everywhere: thornfish fluttering in the shallows, the cinammon reek of sage-pine forests (neither sage nor pine but a tall tree that grew branches in a spiral terrace), the night cries of creatures yet unnamed. Human beings had been this way — Guilford saw the occasional passing raft, plus evidence of tow-ropes, trappers’ huts, woodsmoke, fish weirs — but only very recently.

And there was, he found, a kind of comfort in the emptiness of the country enfolded around him, his own terrible and wonderful anonymity in it, making footprints where no footprints had been and knowing that the land would soon erase them. The land demanded nothing, gave nothing more than itself.

But the easy days couldn’t last. The Rheinfelden was ahead. The Weston would have to turn back. And then, Guilford thought, we’ll see what it means, to be truly alone, in all this unknown world of rock and forest.

The Rheinfelden Cascade, or Rhine River Falls, head of navigation. This is as far as Tom Compton has been. Some trappers, he says, claim to have portaged as far as Lake Constance. But trappers are inclined to boast.