The Canyon drops down into the Chasm

This is my friend's rather impressionist painting of another location where the Canyon turns into the Chasm (see this post for photos). The vine tree roots are rather exaggerated, but true to their tendency to root into any surface and allow the trunk to be almost suspended in air. The monkey, or troll bats have also been exaggerated.

There are plenty of miniature geysers all over the floor. The Chasm opening is lit up with reddish glow from below by settlements.

This is where the Canyon becomes the Chasm

Because most of the fissure, that is, the Canyon and the Chasm are deep and narrow, they are always semi-dark and gloomy. Wherever possible, the already overcrowded Attland populace has succeeded in settling the Fissure, either by building on to the ledges, nooks and crannies, or simply building houses on the Fissure floor.

In most of the Chasm, flash photography is against the law. Flash can spook the wildlife, especially the tarsiers, and most dangerously, the troll (flying monkey) bats. Since the Fissure has over 50 million of them, the spooked bats might rush for the exit holes, or the person using flash, and cause harm to themselves or people. That is why the Canyon and the Chasm (especially) have been portrayed mostly in paintings.


above:this is ruins of an ancient temple that used to serve Nordic idols, and then Queen Linga. This is one of numerous transitions of Canyon to the Chasm. You can see here a northerner who entered the Canyon at this point, looking at the rather large bats (you can see why they are called troll bats). These are the only bat species that can stand up, especially before taking off.

River Glada is running through one of cracks in the rock behind the temple face.
Some of the ruins I hear have been settled for some time by gold diggers and bush silk harvesters.


Here is the Canyon at mid-day, at the point where it starts to narrow into the Chasm. Even though it is a canyon, the ere are already the stalactite and stalagmite formations. Further in the background and higher up you can see someone's home built into the rock face. On teh opposite wall there is an entrance to some form of a housing.

River Glada is a vary narrow stream, running to the right, almost obscured by the overhanging rock. This rare photo shows the typical look of an old deep lake that filled the Fissure. This is not a typical river-carved canyon.

The Chasm and the Canyon Gorge - the Fissure

Academia has still not decided on the sequence of events that led to the formation of the Chasm and Canyon fissure. There are many conflicting scientific observations.

Firstly, the date of the sudden cataclysmic uplift that thrust Attland island, and its northern mountainous peninsula high above the sea level is different from the formation of the inner peninsula geology. However, they are not too ancient: the dates point to a very recent phase of the quaternary period. It seems that the Fissure appeared shortly after the catastrophic uplift.



What is certain is that the fissure happened when the northward down slope of the northern mountains cracked and slid relatively short distance, which created a deep gorge.
The width of the gorge varies erratically from several meters to about 300 meters.

The fissure as seen in the image, is a U shaped tear, is anywhere from 30 meters to 2000 meters deep.

In its early history, the cataclysmic fissure caused the river to fall into the newly formed canyon and start to fill it, eventually creating a deep lake that almost reached the upper rim of the fissure. At least 200 hundred years passed before another critical event took place. The waters of Glada river found a newer, shorter drainage path, (though not through corroding the canyon walls) and rushed along the new course. Most likely, post-fissure, minor racking lasted for many years, finally creating a narrow and deep passage for the river. See the image above.

The relatively wide parts (the middle 20 miles and the 10 miles at the eastern end) of the fissure remains open, while the narrower parts have become overgrown with vegetation, effectively closing it off from much of sunlight. The fissure has multitude of dry and flooded caves, ledges and arches of mysterious geological origin, and unique flora and fauna (marsupial tarsiers and bats).