modern geognosy, prairie talk borrowed from von Humboldt

NEW FIND

Alexander von Humbodt's Cosmos is the source for the dialogue on geology in the August 1852 installment of "Scenes Beyond the Western Border":

C.  "... I have found in the rugged hill-side food for thought at least;—the impression of a sea-shell in primitive limestone;—this, at the top, or rather at the base of the Rock Mountains, (for this South Pass, 60 miles wide, has not the characteristics of a mountain, is merely the highest steppe of the continent,) is a fruitful subject for paleontological research, if such be not without the pale of your practical system .'"

F.  "Bah! your modern geognosy is a humbug! or, too deep at least, for a wandering dragoon. Now. would you go about determining the age of the formation from your knowledge of the shell? or give it physiological gradation from your profound knowledge of superposition of strata?"

C. "The former, if I only knew it. You will allow me at least, on your own recommendation to note the fact in my journal?"

F.  "Of course; but with becoming modesty. It is enough to ruffle one, to have such a long word thrust at him, of a pleasant summer evening, and a thousand miles from a library."

C. "But, good heavens! do not condemn a word for its length. Paleontology is an almost poetical triumph, which throws an attractive grace over the sterility of geognostic investigations and symbols on the human tombs, which throw beams of startling light over the obscurity of fabulous antiquity,—so when we discover the traces or remains of existing, or the extinct life of the old world, their natural tombs—the fossil rocks—are monuments on which Time thus records their relative ages. It is a beautiful chronometry of the earth's surface!"

F.  "Allow me then a few years of devotion to the study of the analysis of primitive zoology and botany, and I will then, if possible, give you my speculations with all the boldness of poetical science upon the formation and age of the continent—all by the light of your chronological, fossiliferous, infernal shell!"

-- Southern Literary Messenger 18 - August 1852

The dialogue above appears with interesting revisions in the 1857 book version Scenes and Adventures in the Army (359-60), where the sentence with "chronometry" is deleted.  Both magazine and book versions derive from Humboldt, as shown below in the relevant passages from

Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos (New York:  Harper & Brothers, 1850):

"Modern geognosy, the mineral portion of terrestrial physics, has made no slight advance in having investigated this connection of phenomena."(203)

"The order of succession, and the relative age of the different formations, may be recognized by the superposition of the sedimentary, metamorphic, and conglomerate strata; by the nature of the formations traversed by the erupted masses, and —with the greatest certainty—by the presence of organic remains and the differences of their structure. The application of botanical and zoological evidence to determine the relative age of rocks—this chronometry of the earth's surface, which was already present to the lofty mind of Hooke—indicates one of the most glorious epochs of modern geognosy, which has finally, on the Continent at least, been emancipated from the sway of Semitic doctrines. Palaeontological investigations have imparted a vivifying breath of grace and diversity to the science of the solid structure of the earth."

"The fossiliferous strata contain, entombed within them, the floras and faunas of by gone ages. We ascend the stream of time, as in our study of the relations of superposition we descend deeper and deeper through the different strata, in which lies revealed before us a past world of animal and vegetable life."  (270)

"The dependence of physiological gradation upon the age of the formations...is most regularly manifested in vertebrated animals."  (273)

At sea chronometry is done by marine chronometer, a clock that navigators use to keep precise time--and, as the editors of the Longman critical edition of Moby-Dick point out, "a major metaphor in Pierre" (117).

as a sailor might say

"'But yonder is land on our lee bow,—as a sailor might say—'"

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border" Southern Literary Messenger 17 (September 1851): 568

and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army ("on our lee bow" revised, now "to leeward")

 ".... dark objects floating on the sea, some three points off our lee-bow."   (White-Jacket)

F.  "Then fire away !—though hang me if I know what you mean."

("Scenes Beyond the Western Border" Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 508 and, slightly revised,
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

 "'Look you: one man—hang me, half'a man—with one leg, one arm, one eye—hang me, with only a piece of a carcass, flogged your whole shabby nation.'"  (Omoo)

 "'...what, in that jacket? Hang me, I hope the old man hasn't been shipping any more greenhorns like you—'"  (Redburn)

"'Hang me, but I know you, sir!'" (White-Jacket)

step-mother nature

 "...the step-mother world, so long cruel-forbidding...."
Moby-Dick (1851), chapter 132

"...he is a hardy and light-hearted child of nature—of nature in her wildest simplicity: and in these, her solitudes, he receives a stepmother's care, and battles with a stout heart against her most wintry moods."
"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 18 (June 1852): 377 and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

"fair play" deleted, why?

"Ah! my good friend, let this wild mountain air have fair play; let us with the desert's freedom joyously float convention and opinion—upstart usurpers!"  "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger  (August 1852): 508 

 In revision for the 1857 book version, "fair play" was deleted, thus:

"I am only in a mood; buoyant and bitter; tameless as the Arab coursing his native desert; free as yonder soaring eagle! it's this wild mountain air! Let us have a fling at the world,—the poor dollar-dealing sinners, cooped up in their great dens—"

Friend.—But you began by a fling at me—

"Only a love tap, Friend; my way of argument. Let us with the desert's freedom joyously flout convention and opinion—upstart usurpers!"  (Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

 Why delete "fair play"?  Uncomfortably close to, or evocative of, Ahab's language in Moby-Dick (1851)?

"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines."  (Moby-Dick, chapter 36)

 "'Avast!' cried Ahab; 'let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker side.'" 
(Moby-Dick, chapter 119)

mountains, snow, pinnacles, another world

"At the top we paused insensibly, and all gathered there, first to behold and gaze excitedly at the glittering summits of the Rocky Mountains. Their sharp pyramids of snow seemed to penetrate,—or all sun-lit—were sublimely relieved by the dark clouds. We descended to find a level camp ground on the Sweet Water; and the telescope now reveals faintly many more pinnacles penetrating dim, airy space, beyond the eye's power to catch the bright reflections of their snow mantles. Like phantoms they seem, mysteriously shadowing forth an unknown land,—a new world."
"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852): 507; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 * * *

On our starboard beam, like a pile of glaciers in Switzerland, lay this Staten Land, gleaming in snow-white barrenness and solitude. Unnumbered white albatross were skimming the sea near by, and clouds of smaller white wings fell through the air like snow-flakes. High, towering in their own turbaned snows, the far-inland pinnacles loomed up, like the border of some other world. 
White-Jacket (1850), chapter 28

scouring on prairies, in the scullery

"That night we scoured all the prairies of reading; dived into the bosoms of authors, and tore out their hearts; and that night White Jacket learned more than he has ever done in any single night since." 
White-Jacket (1850)

 "I 'scoured,' as was right, the three miles of open forest. We have to borrow this word from the scullery, while the French say, euphoneously, eclairer—and emerged upon prairies, when I soon reached a lofty hill-top."
"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 18 (September 1852): 557 and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

 "... engaged like a scullion in scouring"  "Benito Cereno" (1855)

life, threads, warp and woof

"But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof...."  

-- Moby-Dick (1851) chapter 114, The Gilder   

 

"Thus do the silent Fates prepare for our warped life-threads their sombre woof!" -- "Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 18 (September 1852) page 554.

"Thus do the Fates spin our warped life-threads,--thus do we weave its chequered or sombre web!" -- Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857 and 1859).

pop-guns

"'...let us shoot popguns at least, against the solid bulwarks where folly and selfishness sit enthroned.'"  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, Southern Literary Messenger 18 (August 1852) page 507; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army, page 355.

For three or four hours I was engaged in manufacturing pop-guns,but at last made over my good-will and interest in the concern to a lad of remarkably quick parts, whom I soon initiated into the art and mystery.
Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, now resounded all over the valley. Duels, skirmishes, pitched battles, and general engagements were to be seen on every side. Here, as you walked along a path which led through a thicket, you fell into a cunningly laid ambush, and became a target for a body of musketeers whose tattooed limbs you could just see peeping into view through the foliage. There you were assailed by the intrepid garrison of a house, who levelled their bamboo rifles at you from between the upright canes which composed its sides. Farther on you were fired upon by a detachment of sharpshooters, mounted upon the top of a pi-pi.

Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop! green guavas, seeds, and berries were flying about in every direction, and during this dangerous state of affairs I was half afraid that, like the man and his brazen bull, I should fall a victim to my own ingenuity. Like everything else, however, the excitement gradually wore away, though ever after occasionally pop-guns might be heard at all hours of the day.--Typee chapter 19.