James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist. Marion I. Newbigin
his early papers, and especially the publication of The Great Ice Age, had attracted the attention of a wider circle of geologists, that this correspondence was enlarged to include most parts of the civilised world. As we shall see later, his early foreign letters gave him great pleasure, even though, until he realised the value of a feeling for languages and a good stock of dictionaries, he had often to ask for help in their translation.
A few lines from a letter to Mr. Horne, written from Eaglesham on 8th May 1868, may help to show the kind of work he was doing, and reveal also those characteristics which made his colleagues willing to give him all the help they could:—
Dear Young Man—I hope you are still in the land of the living and the place of hope wherever that may be. These lines I write unto you not that your joy may be full but that you may know that I take (I won’t say a fatherly) interest in your welfare, but any other kind of interest you like but self-interest. What are you about, and how do you like the work? Is the Drift blinding your eyes and do you yet see as through a glass darkly? I suppose your Boulder-clay in the high grounds will give you no bother. If you get any gravel will you be so good as let me know whether it occurs in valleys whose watershed is over or under 1000 feet?
Mr. Horne was then working in the Nith valley, being stationed at Thornhill. James Geikie by this time had moved from Ayrshire into Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire.
But the great event of 1868, apart from the publication of two more glacial papers, was a trip up the Rhine and on to Switzerland, of which one of the note-books contains a very full and jovial record, which has been supplemented by the recollections of some of the surviving members of the party, who were all Survey men. The record is too long to quote in full, but certain passages may be given. The opening gives so lively a picture of the party, and of the rollicking spirits with which they started, that it cannot be omitted. In connection with the informality of tone, it must be remembered that the diary was only a private record of a gay holiday. It is interspersed, quite characteristically, by very neat diagrams and sketches, and details of the geological observations, which were no doubt worked up afterwards.
Wednesday, 29th July 1868.
Edinburgh to London—Peach, Skae, Horne, and Archie in company. Arrive infernally hungry and dirty at St. Catherine’s dock. Have to swear at a cabman, etc. This of course was Thursday, 30th. Friday, 31st—Start in the Orion for Antwerp—ship none of the best, but passable. Of course a number of English on board. None of them I know. Have a kind of luncheon and satisfy hunger pangs. Brisk breeze gets up towards the afternoon, and puts to flight notions of dinner in the respective buzzums of Skae, Horne, and Archie. Peach and I wait so long that our hunger vanishes. Ladies laid out in corpse-like fashion all over the deck, and a good deal of basin work performed. Two very pretty English girls on board—as pretty I think as I ever saw before. Both hold up for a while, but after a time they give in and close up their eyes like daisies. Skae off to bed—Horne having meanwhile mysteriously disappeared. Archie follows suit. I smoke, and Peach in despair hovers about the door of the feeding saloon in hopes of being able to see something like preparations for tea. Tea at last! Only 5 out of nearly 150 passengers sit down—one of them a lady. Peach and I make a furious onslaught to make up for loss of dinner. Horne, to our surprise, enters, tastes a cup of tea and beats a hasty retreat. The place is close and stifling, and the sounds issuing from the surrounding berths make appeals which cannot be resisted. Peach and I make for the deck, where the fresh air revives us, and I finish off my meal with a pipe.
There follow, by one of the sudden transitions in which the diary abounds, notes on the colour of the water, and on the jellyfish seen.
A night’s sleep seems to have restored the party, for they landed at Antwerp the following morning apparently all in good spirits, and after a stroll round the town took train for Cologne, passing Liège, “which lies beautifully in a lovely wooded valley,” en route. After a short visit to Cologne—“here I was pleased to find Heine’s good Christopher in the Dom”—the party went on by boat to Königswinter. “Sail up the Rhine not very interesting, but the evening is exquisite and the flat country looks well.” At Königswinter they spent some days—very hot ones—climbing the Siebengebirge and geologising, with lighter intervals. One of the interludes may be mentioned:—“Peach swam across the Rhine in twelve minutes (before breakfast).”
After a day or two at Königswinter the party went down the Rhine to Bonn, to see Prof. Zirkel there and to visit the museum. Bonn is somewhat briefly dismissed:—“This is a lost day. I hate Bonn … hooked it back to Königswinter—and loafed about.” At Bonn the party met Sir Roderick Murchison, then Director-General of the Geological Survey, profanely called “the Duke” in the diary, for his mannerisms made a strong appeal to the sense of humour of the more lively members of the party. The veteran geologist—or at least so the juniors asserted—graduated his greetings in careful accordance with the official position of each. But the old chief’s genuine interest in geology was shown by his eager questions about the recent results of the Survey work in the Southern Uplands.
Finally Königswinter was left, “with regret,” for the Laacher See, a detailed visit to the Eifel country being one of the great objects of the tour. James Geikie’s early work in the Ochils had aroused his interest in volcanic phenomena, and his geological notes in regard to the next section of the tour are singularly full.
The party took steamer to Brohl, and then drove to the lake, being, as is carefully recorded, cheated both by the boatman who took them off the steamer and by the driver. Perhaps the fact accounts for the next entry:—“I have seen prettier places than the Laacher See.” The party had an introduction, obtained presumably through Prof. Zirkel, to one of the fathers at Laach Abbey, and he and a companion accompanied them on a tour round the lake, in order to point out the objects of geological interest. A trip to the Bausenberg was also made. Next day the members of the party walked to Niedermendig to see the famous quarries there. Here they tasted the beer stored in the caverns, and characteristically—for James Geikie did not have to wait for Mr. Chesterton to sing the merits of beer—the diary devotes nearly equal space to the geology and the beverage. “It was deliciously cold and I like the flavour. I had heard much of the coldness of this beer, viz., that no one could drink more than a small glassful at a time. But I found no difficulty in taking down a good pint, and if I had not had the mine to get out of, I could easily have stowed away double the quantum.”
Some other interesting excursions were made in the neighbourhood of the Laacher See, in company with the friendly monks, and then finally the party set off in a farm wagon for a thirty-mile drive to Daun, in the heart of the Eifel country, over very rough roads. The vehicle was cheap, but this seems to have been its only merit, and the driver, a prosperous peasant with money in the bank, as he explained to them, had the disadvantage of not knowing the way. The journey took over twelve hours, and when the tired party reached the village it was to find that it was market-day there, and rooms were difficult to obtain, so that the weary scientists had to seek lodgings where they could, some in an inn, where they were “nearly eaten up with fleas,” and others in a private house. After a day here, another long drive was taken to Bertrich, where the better hotels, an indirect result of the local medicinal springs, revived the drooping spirits of the diarist. Unfortunately the bill next morning proved that the presence of the visitors had another effect also, and the tone of the diary again becomes subdued, till, after a long drive, the Moselle was reached, and its scenery had a restorative effect.
At Cochem the geologists engaged a boat and two men to row them forty miles down the Moselle to Coblentz. The first twenty miles, it is carefully explained, were delightful; but darkness came on long before the destination was reached, and it was midnight before an unwilling dockkeeper allowed the boat to enter Coblentz. But in spite of the fatigue and tedium of the long journey, the diarist expresses himself as highly delighted with the trip.
Coblentz did not make a favourable impression on the travellers, and the diary contains some caustic remarks on the Prussian soldiers, with whom the town was full, and on the Prussian officers whose manners at table in the hotel were a trial to persons accustomed to place reliance upon a fork rather than a knife as an implement for conveying food into the mouth. The subject is one which recurs more than once, for James Geikie, who was singularly susceptible to feminine