Grayling Junction - Chapter Three and a half

Cassiterite

Before ingenuity gave birth to the town there was only the earth: a barren, dusty soil that in the absence of obstructions gathered in swirling clouds over the surface. This vast undiscovered plain pushed out between mountains of red rock and scrub, the tail end dragging eastward. To the far north – if passage through the baked landscape was actually possible – those travelling far enough might reach the border where the soil darkens in hue and the first tendrils of commerce can be seen. To the south were boulders, scabrous shale and arid vegetation patrolled by packs of sharp-toothed predatory animals.

Over this narrow strip of land running westward before meeting the lap of the ocean, was a natural spread of sparse, rooted vegetation. Shrubs grew in patchy clumps and amidst the tangle of indigenous species occasional clusters of furious yellow gorse, exotic, purple-crowned scented lavender. Hefty oaks, throbs of Juniper, Cedar, Cyprus and lesser-known species met in whispering groups, brows bent.
As night tumbled over these plains, unidentifiable howls, hoots and cries mingled with the restless crackle of parched, brittle leaves, the night breeze rolling from the slow moving waters of an unnamed river that eventually snuck into the sea.

With no one present to mark the passing of the years, each season left its mark on the land. Winter – coppiced neatly at either end by the linger of autumn and the spry eagerness of spring – brought respite from the routine heat, the temperature plunging low enough to produce glittering dawn frosts and to deprive the majority of trees of their leaves. In those days snow was a rarity and when people later nestled together to form a town, it became the preserve of ripened memory and imagination.

Spring arrived with such thunderous downpours it was as though the underbelly of the sky had been sliced open. In the later years, the town having been forced to learn brutally from experience, this became the season of collection, during which any manner of household items were forced to serve as makeshift containers for the precious rainwater.
Each spring the ground swallowed the sweet cascade of water without etiquette, gorging on the liquid. In no time came a knotted frenzy of struggling shoots, leaves and fragile petals. Stubbornly this new growth strained free of the ground, muddied by the rainfall, fighting for strength before summer arrived flaming. As the volatile fade of July exploded and August passed the torch to September the arid fronds became fatally dry, reaching a point where they could no longer resist bursting into coral coloured flames that erupted violently from the ground, hovering in the air like corpse candles.

The first man to arrive in the area – bringing numerous items in the saddlebags of a dehydrated train of mules, including a spade which he promptly forced deep into the cracked earth – was Cuthbert Jenks Grayling, a wilful man, of considerable insight and effort. His determination, initially with his spade and later with rudimentary drilling equipment, resulted in a fortuitous discovery. For beneath the forbidding layer of scorched dirt lay many millennia of strata containing, amongst the many elements and minerals in lesser quantities, an abundant supply of Cassiterite, locked inside of which was a secret that would give birth to a town, for deep within these oxidized deposits, recognised by a far more convenient name, was hidden an untapped bounty of tin.